S E E M O 1ST 8
FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM,
CATHOLICITY.
BY THE
REV. FERDINAND C. EWER, S. T. 1).,
NEW YORK:
I). AIM' LET OX AND COMPANY,
90. 92 & 94 GKAND STREET.
1869.
y
S E E M N S
OX THE
FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM,
AND ON
CATHOLICITY.
t->
-* ~ *
BY THE
REY. FERDINAND C. EWER, S. T. D.,
RECTOR OF CHRIST CHURCH, NEW YORK.
NEW YOEK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
90, 92 & 94 GRAND STEEET.
1869.
ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
D. APPLETON & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
CORRESPONDENCE.
NEW YOKK, November 19, 1S6S.
REV. F. C. EWER, D. D. :
BELOVED HECTOR, The undersigned, Wardens and Vestrymen of
Christ Church, respectfully request the manuscripts of your late able
sermons on " The Failure of Protestantism " for publication ; believing,
as they do, that the wide spreading of the same will prove a great bene-
fit to the Catholic cause in the Church.
Very respectfully yours,
(Signed) SPENCEE K. GREEN, Senior Warden.
JAMES DIXON, Junior Warden.
JOHN H. RUCKEL,
HENRY A. WILMERDING,
JACOB LANSING,
CHARLES T. COOK,
GEORGE H. PERINE,
Vestrymen.
REPLY.
CHRIST CHURCH RECTORY,
NEW YORK, November 20, 1863.
DEAR BRETHREN : Your note of yesterday is before me. I beg you
will accept my thanks for its kind expressions. Arrangements, how-
ever, are already closed with the Messrs. Appleton, who have the ser-
mons you allude to in hand for publication ; otherwise they would be
freely at your disposal.
Very truly your friend and rector,
F. C. EWER.
To Messrs. GREEN, DIXON, RUCKEL,
and others, of the Vestry.
NOTE.
INASMUCH as the following Sermons were
written to be preached before mixed congrega-
tions, the reader will therefore pardon such
repetition of ideas as he may observe.
F. C. E.
CHRIST CHURCH KECTORY, N. Y.,
ST. ANDREW'S DAY, 1868.
CONTENTS.
SERMON I.
PAGE
THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM 7
SERMON II.
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH NOT PROTESTANT . . 24
SERMON III.
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FROM THE
PROTESTANT SECTS . . . . .42
SERMON IV.
PROTESTANTISM LOGICALLY DESTRUCTIVE OF CHRISTIANITY 75
SERMON V.
PROTESTANTISM ONE OF THE THREE GREAT HERESIES OF THE
CHRISTIAN ERA . . . . .91
SERMON VI.
CATHOLICITY, AND ITS PRESENTMENT OF CHRISTIANITY, AS OP-
POSED TO THE PRESENTMENT MADE BY PROTESTANTISM 109
6 CONTENTS.
SERMON VII.
PAGE
REPLY TO PROTESTANT CRITICISMS ON THE PRECEDING SER-
MONS IN THE RELIGIOUS PRESS AND FROM THE PUL-
PIT ....... 136
SERMON Vm.
THE LATE PRACTICAL ADMISSIONS OF THE FAILURE OF PROT-
ESTANTISM BY PROTESTANTS THEMSELVES . .151
Bancroft LlfirSf
SEEMONS.
FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM.
" I came not to send peace but a sword." ST. MATT., x. 34.
THE history of Christianity illustrates this
text. Her career has been marked by crises,
when men, stirred by unusual earnestness, have
risen against the quiet order of things round about
them. These crises have occurred at irregular
intervals. They have always been provoked by
some evil that has been long and silently growing.
They are periods^ which try men's souls, because
they are periods when new men attack old and
cherished prejudices. In the second century after
Christ the germs of what afterward became Ari-
anism appeared in Lucian of Antioch. Those
germs grew and spread in the Church silently, but
so widely and alarmingly at last, as to lead earnest
Catholics in the subsequent century to rise in
their majesty, reassert the Faith in its purity as
8 THE FAILUKE OF PKOTESTANT1SM
it had come down from the Apostles, and brand
the new dogmas as deadly heresy. In the Middle
Ages Roman errors silently and slowly grew and
spread, till at last, in the eleventh century, earnest
Catholics in the Eastern portion of the Church,
enduring the evil no longer, rose in their majesty
to condemn it ; and that non-intercommunion with
Rome was decreed by the Orthodox Eastern (or
Greek) Church, which has lasted till to-day. In
the Roman portion of the Church the same evils
continued to grow, with new ones which broke
out from time to time, until at last, in the sixteenth
century, earnest men all over the West rose in
their majesty against them; and we have the
Reformation so called. Subsequently coldness
and deadness grew and spread in the Anglican
portion of the Church, till at last, in the eighteenth
century, those earnest souls, JOHN and CHARLES
WESLEY, kindled the blaze of Methodism. God
hath cast our lines at the opening of one of these
crises. I would not have you un alive to the fact,
or undervalue its importance.
For many years men have been floating calmly
down the stream of Christianity. There have
been petty differences and discussions between
sects, it is true, but no general upheaval. Foun-
dations have been undisturbed. But now a storm
is very evidently rising which is disturbing the
bottom of affairs ; and it is impossible to predict
how we shall all come out of it. There are evils
raising great fronts around us, evils that have
AS A KELIGIOUS SYSTEM. 9
been long and silently growing. And as in the
fourth century, as in the eleventh, as in the
fifteenth, and as in the eighteenth, earnest souls
are at last roused at these evils, and men are
beginning boldly to speak out. It is note-
worthy that the laity are ahead of the clergy
in this matter. It is the evident and disastrous
failure of Protestantism as a religious system, first,
to reach the masses, and secondly, to preserve
Christianity on earth, that is raising the mutter-
ings of this storm. What is it that is the mother
of all this infidelity ? What is it that is the pro-
lific cause of all this low grade of spirituality in
character and life ? What is it that hath broken
up respect for old age, for parents, for authorities ?
What is it that hath laid Christianity open to the
successful attacks of any resolute skeptic ? What
is it that hath dimmed the clearness of the eye of
faith ? What is it that hath removed the spiritual
world and its dwellers far off to an astronomical
distance, practically sundering the communion of
the saints by the wall of death ? What is it that
hath substituted sentiment for principle that
standeth over the sick-bed anxious to wrest from
the lips of the sufferer a cabalistic a magical ut-
terance about belief in Christ, that shall save him
in his sins, but with scarce a word as to repent-
ance and confession and amendment, and his sal-
vation from sin ? What is it that is the prolific
cause of all this absence of the self-sacrificing
spirit ? What is it that has left the masses with-
1*
IQ THE FAILUEE OF PROTESTANTISM
out a religion, and that has set us all on a course
where we are at last ignorant as to how we can
get at those masses? Mission Chapels for the
poor, with Protestant or semi-Protestant services,
and with a limited attendance at each of the well-
to-do poor, are amiable but melancholy efforts of
the day. God knows we are thankful for the
good they do, but it is time that we no longer
flattered ourselves that with them we are getting
at the masses. The very pamphlets on church
work that are pouring from the press are indica-
tions that we are walking in darkness ; that we
have been and are in the midst of some great
blunder. What is it that hath set its face stub-
bornly, and reared stubborn prejudices against
the only appliances that have ever succeeded in
reaching down to the masses so as to hold them
under control ? It is time for us to ask how much
the Protestant prejudices, which we have inherited
from generations behind us by no means infallible,
are worth, and how much they are costing. It is
time for us to ask whether we shall longer weigh
them against the Christianizing of millions of the
neglected poor. What is it that hath left minis-
ters stranded upon the high rocks of life, preach-
ing to the select rich ? What is it that hath sold
the gospel to the rich in the house of God ?
What is it that hath hushed the voice of resound-
ing praise throughout the great congregation, and
delegated the praise of God to a salaried four?
What is it that hath killed out from among us all
AS A KELIGIOUS SYSTEM. H
anxiety for the salvation of God's MAN, as a unit
of creation, extending through all time and space
on earth, and that has elevated instead that self-
ish aspect of religion which makes it simply a
process for the salvation of the given individual ?
Your and my salvation, my brother, are, of course,
all-important to ourselves ; but God, when He
made His Church, made it for all time and for
MAN, in the fullest meaning of the word. Nowa-
days, however, so long as a given individual of
to-day can " get saved " in some human religious
institution, that institution is considered as an-
swering all the purposes of the Church ; and there
is not the slightest anxiety as to whether or not
that institution contain a theological disease
which will kill it, and leave the individual of two
centuries hence without any institution to " get
saved in."
I propose to call your attention to a few of the
facts that mark the disastrous failure of Protestant-
ism ; and to ask you whether those facts are not
enough of themselves to say nothing of others
to stir to its depths any spirit that has a particle
of earnestness. And I warn you beforehand, that,
if Protestantism has failed, we are not to look to
Rome for a cure. A recent able writer * has said,
this would be but to fly from the effect to the
cause. Justly has he said it ; for Protestantism
was produced by the errors of Home ; and why
fly for cure from a system that has proved itself
* The Rev. Dr. M. Dix.
12 THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM
false in the nineteenth century to one that proved
itself false in the fifteenth ?
I remark, first, that in this city there are 300
churches some of them large most of them
comparatively small. They will hold, when all
full, say about 200,000 persons call it 250,000.
Where are the other three-quarters of a million
of people in this city every Sunday ? Making a
liberal allowance for children too young to attend,
for the sick who cannot, and for all engaged in
employments for the public convenience, and
considering those of our vast floating population
who attend as strangers, and considering, more-
over, the empty seats in all the churches each Sun-
day, there is an enormous residue that are non-
church-goers. Compare, nay, contrast the im-
mense church-attendance of the population in
Roman and Greek Catholic countries with the at-
tendance of the mere fragment of the population
in Protestant lands. My friends, have you ever
thought of the fact that there are countless thou-
sands all over this land, that have rejected Protes-
tantism ? Have you ever thought of the fact that
Germany has, as a nation, rejected Protestantism ?
Look, too, at IsTew England, the headquarters of
Infidelity in America. Look, too, at the Protestant
Cantons of Switzerland. I do not mean to say
that, in rejecting Protestantism, these countless
thousands have taken to Rome ; but they have at
any rate abandoned the Protestant presentment
of Christianity. There is scarcely a man or a
AS A EELIGIOUS SYSTEM. ^3
woman in the land that has not a relative shall
I not say relatives ? who, while they still have
a kind of respect for the Christian religion, no
longer believe those dogmas that all Protestant
denominations preach in common. The fact is,
with the most of them, dogmatic Christianity is
identified with its Protestant presentment. They
know no other ; and, in abandoning Christianity
for skepticism, it is Protestantism that they have
weighed in the balances and found wanting. And
there are thousands of men and women, therefore,
that at last do not go to church anywhere. These
men and women are rearing children; and the
latter are, by example, by casual domestic remark,
and by carelessness of their parents, inheriting a
similar abandonment. Protestantism has been
trying to meet the evil by modifying and soften-
ing some of its subordinate dogmas. But people
see that its fundamental dogmas remain, and that
the modified subordinate dogmas only make the
whole system more thoroughly inconsistent with
itself; and so the great evil of abandonment grows
greater and greater.
'Now rise a grade above this class, and take the
men and women that do attend church. How
many of them are there that really believe Chris-
tianity as presented by Protestantism ? Some of
its dogmas they believe from habit, from early
prejudice, or they scarcely know why. But those
whose minds are shaken as to the rest form a very
large element of every Protestant congregation.
14 THE FAILURE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
This is a fact which the clergy may not wish to
contemplate. But it is a fact. Here we see not
total abandonment, but that process of abandon-
ment in progress, which has been working for
much more than a century, and which is at last
very noticeable from the large proportions it has
at length assumed. These two classes I have men-
tioned form the vast bulk of the community. Isn't
that an alarming fact ? What are you going to clo
with your prejudices against Catholicity under the
circumstances? Mark me; I make a sharp dis-
tinction between Catholicity and Romanism. Now
turn and look at the individuals that compose
these two classes. There was a time when it was
the staple remark that men became infidels be-
cause they desired to live a wicked or careless life.
Doubtless there are some even to-day who are
skeptics for the above-mentioned reason. But it
were sheer blindness thus to account for the pres-
ent general disease of infidelity which afflicts the
community. Look around upon our relatives and
friends who belong to the two great classe's I have
spoken of. Are they bad men ? !N~o. Are they
unreasoning or unreasonable men ? JSTo. Are
they unearnest men? No. Many of them are
filled with the spirit of honesty, and truthfulness,
and uprightness, and conscientiousness, and noble-
ness, and generosity, and hospitality, and kindness
of heart, filled with all that which is the very basis
of religion. Often they are men that stir our ad-
miration for their good qualities of mind, and
AS A EELIGIOUS SYSTEM. 15
heart, and conscience. But they are logical men
men who cannot be stayed from passing into
the legitimate conclusions that fellow from false
premises ; and they have, therefore, consciously and
conscientiously rejected (that is the word, rejected),
either in whole or in part, the Protestant present-
ment of Christianity, and deliberately remain in
their rejection. The grandfathers were Calvinistic
Presbyterians, the fathers were Congregationalists,
the sons were Unitarians, the grandsons are Par-
kerites and infidels. The attempt to mend Protes-
tantism as a religious system ends in abandoning
it altogether as a hopeless case. The Rationalists
have a ground to stand on; the true Catholics
have a ground to stand on ; but Protestantism has
no loeus standi (if I may use such a phrase), and its
process of disappearing I have given above. The
men I speak of either do not think of or do not
care to accept Rome, and so they are left without
any distinctive religion, unless we can say, indeed,
that each has his own.
The two basis ideas of Protestantism are, first,
" the Bible, and the Bible only for Christians ; "
secondly, "each man practically his own infallible
interpreter of it." Now, the consequence of this
is, that Protestantism has not fostered humility,
but arrogance. It has not cast over the individual
mind the wholesome shadow of a distrust in its own
ignorance, or partial views, or unexamined preju-
dices; but it has spread broadcast the rampant
spirit of practical individual infallibility. And
1(5 THE FAILTJKE OF PKOTESTANTISM
so these men, nursed in that school, absorbing the
spirit from the very atmosphere about them, are
perfectly satisfied, unalarmed, and at peace, each
in his own partial or complete infidelity. Then,
again, they see how these two basis ideas have led
to the thousand conflicting sects of Protestantism,
the splitting up of denominations on little petty
points which their common sense tells them are
unimportant ; and so they gladly escape the maze
in disgust, and, with a self-complacent down-look-
ing upon the whole field of battling Protestant
sects, settle down themselves into the mere religion
of being good men. It is all very well, it is praise-
worthy, this being a good man ; but it isn't Chris-
tianity. And so far as all these men are concerned,
Jesus Christ was incarnate, died, rose, established
His Church and endowed it with His life-nurturing
Sacraments in vain. So far as these men are con-
cerned, God inspired the Bible in vain ; for they
reject it. They will take parts of the Bible and
say they are true; but it is because those parts
appeal to their minds as true. That is to say,
Protestantism has wrecked the community on the
rocks of individualism, and left each man to be a
Bible to himself. Some people say, " Any good
man is a Christian." But there were good men
and true and honest before Christ came, millions
of them. Ancient civilizations could not have ex-
isted ; indeed, no civilization can exist without an
enormous leaven of such elements. But the phrase
"any good man is a Christian," and the phrase
AS A EELIGIOUS SYSTEM. ]%
" a true Christian is a good man," are by no means
identical. A good man is not necessarily a Chris-
tian. A true Christian is a good man, of course ;
but he is a good man who accepts the Bible and
all its truths and commands, who accepts the in-
carnate Christ as his Saviour, and the Blessed
Sacraments as the instrumental means of salvation
appointed and commanded by Christ.
Now, what is it that has led to and is respon-
sible for the rise of these two enormous classes in
the community? My friends, it isn't Christianity
as presented by the One Holy Catholic and Apos-
tolic Church ; for She has not yet got the ear of
the people, and Her truths are moreover very much
hushed even in Her own pulpits. Nay, it is the
Protestant presentment of Christianity that has
had their ear for the last two centuries. By its
fruits shall ye know it. And this wholesale aban-
donment of it, that has been silently and steadily
spreading in the last century, till it has invaded
every family, is one of the indications of the failure
of Protestantism as a system ; and is arousing
many reluctant but determined souls to the sad
duty of dragging down that which has been quietly
sitting on a throne as a king, too sacred to be
touched, and solemnly arraigning it at the bar for
trial. Protestantism, give us back our fathers,
our children, our husbands, that are lost in the
forests of skepticism ! It is this that is arousing
and banding together a broad Catholic party in
the Church, which, if it will not close its eyes to
18 THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM
the Eoman failure of the fifteenth century (a fail-
ure made doubly disastrous by the Bull of 1854),
is determined no longer to close its eyes to the
Protestant failure of the nineteenth. A party
that is determined to maintain and spread all that
is truly Catholic that has come down from the
past, and combine with it all of the present that
has proved itself good, both in thought and in
appliance. It is this that has provoked the begin-
nings of a second reformation, that will be a
Reformation indeed ; Reformation, did I say ?
RESTORATION is the better word.
In this claim that Protestantism has failed, you
will not, of course, understand me as asserting that
there was nothing good in the upheaval of the six-
teenth century. This would be but mere extrava-
gance, foolish exaggeration, and not the result of
that calm, attentive out-look which the seriousness
of the times and its dangers demand. That up-
heaval was as much in the interest of true Catho-
licity as it was in the interest of Protestantism.
E"or will you understand me as meaning to say
that, with all the enormous evils of the Protestant
Heresy, there is nothing whatever that is good in
it. Catholics are not unmindful that the Meth-
odists, for instance, have struck something that is
in harmony with human nature ; and that that
something can be wielded on the naturally enthu-
siastic heart of man in a better w^ay, and on Chris-
tian rather than rationalistic plan. Make the man
one with Christ through the sacramental system,
AS A KELIGIOUS SYSTEM. 19
and then bring in the lever of enthusiasm, and you
have not substituted practical Immediation for
Mediation, nor struck a ruinous blow at the foun-
dation of Christianity. Catholics are not unmind-
ful of Baptist practice or Unitarian literature.
But I cannot pause upon this point.
I hasten to a second indication of the failure
of Protestantism as a system. And I do so by
asking the question : Protestantism, where are the
masses ? When we run our eye over the different
sects, we are struck with the fact that each is made
up of a peculiar type of man. There is, for in-
stance, the Methodist type, and the denomination
vary to greater or less extent around the type ;
then there is the Presbyterian type, and the Bap-
tist, and the Quaker. I am not speaking dispara-
gingly; far be it from me to do so. The whole
matter is too serious. But we all know that men
are constituted differently, and have different ap-
pearances. This is so nationally. !Nb one would
mistake a Frenchman for a Scotchman or for a
German. This is so, too, inside of our people.
So that, speaking generally, there are nice points
by which men may be classified. Now, as a fact,
Protestantism has been able in the past to draw
to itself, at least for a while, only certain classes
of men and women. And the patent fact remains
that it has failed to attract man in all his condi-
tions and kinds. Of course, I do not mean to
charge against it that it has not Christianized the
whole world. What I mean to say is, that it has
20 THE FAILUEE OF PKOTESTANTISM
failed to be a religion suited to every kind of even
the Aryan man. There are men of aesthetic
tastes ; its cold and mean appearance repels them.
There are men who want a positive faith ; its shift-
ing dogmas disgust them. There are holy women
and self-sacrificing men who would gladly live a
life of self-abnegation and high spirituality, who
would gladly give themselves up as laymen and
laywomen to a life of prayer and charity ; it
frowns upon Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods ; it
says to such, Get you gone from my doors, I have
no place nor need for such as you ; and it turns
them back either into the world or to Rome.
Christ's cause needs vast amounts of money all
the time ; it has fostered selfishness toward Christ,
so that when the offertory-plate passes down its
aisles it is considered that the act should be toler-
ated as an exception ; and, if it passes too often,
the offertory-plate is regarded as a positive intru-
sion. As a fact, after two hundred and forty years
of trial with a fair field, even where, as in this
country, it has been overwhelming^ in the as-
cendant, it has failed to reach the masses. It has
failed, even though it has preached, in very loud
tones too at times, all the terrors of hell-fire, and
pictured by contrast all the gross splendors of a
physical heaven. And it is this, too, that is stir-
ring earnest men. Where are the masses ? Why
do your appliances fail to make permanent harvests
among them ? God's man, for whom He sent
Christianity, includes not only the rich merchant,
AS A KELIGIOUS SYSTEM. 21
and the respectable retail dealer, and the well-
dressed, well-to-do and thrifty artisan, with whom
your meeting-houses are filled, but the great base
of the community also, the ragged laborer and the
squalid. Where are the latter in your pews and
at your meetings? Where is your control over
them ? Politics gathers in all indiscriminately at
its assemblages. How about Christianity ? WTiat
is the matter with you? How long will you
blindly hug your prejudices, and leave Rome to
be the only one that can reach down to and con-
trol the masses ? My friends, look at the Roman
and the Greek branches of the Church, and
contrast them with Protestantism in this respect.
Why is it that the Anglican branch of the one great
Catholic Church has no more succeeded with
the masses than has Protestantism ? Why is it
that there is an Episcopal type of man ? It is be-
cause we have run our Catholic and Apostolic
wheels in the Protestant, Calvinistic, and Lutheran
ruts, which they do not fit, never will, and never
can. But wherever we have returned to, as in
Holborn, London, and other places, and tried
fairly our own true Catholic plan, we have, glory
be to God, reached down to the masses, and
gathered in all grades of men from highest to low-
est. God is asking of Protestantism, Where are
the masses ? And God is saying to us, I gave you
the ten Catholic talents ; why have you hid them
in a napkin ?
It is not because the clergy and laity of Prot-
22 THE FAILUEE OF PKOTESTANTISM
estantism are unalive to the wants of the masses,
or to their own duty in the premises, that Protes-
tantism has made its signal failure. They are
earnest and godly men. Heaven knows, they
spare no efforts ; instant in season, out of season,
earnest in prayer and in work. But this only
makes the matter worse. The fault is not in
them. Men are often better than their systems,
and, without doubt, the Protestant clergy and
laity stand acquitted, while their system stands
condemned.
I have mentioned but two counts in the pre-
sentment ; time forbids me to go on with many
others. But these alone, viz., first, the wholesale
abandonment of Protestantism by large masses
of thinking and good men, and, secondly, its fail-
ure to reach the masses, are signs of the times
worthy of the thought of the churchman ; and the
two facts account, in some part, for a movement
among us, which has not had its equal in earnest-
ness and determination since the days of John
Wesley ; which is destined to lead to far more
important results than his ; a movement, my
friends, which is deeper than ritualism, of which
ritual is a mere fluttering red feather ; a restating
of the old Catholic and Apostolic grounds, free
from admixture with Romish error ; a return-
ing to the old Catholic modes and appliances
which belong to the Church as a reformed body,
but which were torn out of Her one hundred
years after She had reformed, and not by Her
AS A RELIGIOUS SYSTEM. 23
friends, but by Her enemies Oliver Cromwell
and his Koundheads, who broke into Her for that
purpose; the scattered fragments of which the
poor Church (when She rose from the prostrate and
stunned condition in which Cromwell left Her) did
not gather together for a while, and which have now
been so long disused that we scarce know what
they were. One thing we know : Our Church is
a Catholic Church which has been worked on
Protestant principles; and that something must
be done. The masses must be reached, and this
growing infidelity stopped by a more reasonable
presentment of Christianity than Protestantism
has succeeded in making, even by the widespread
presentment of our true Catholic Christianity.
There is a school of thought in the Church
which is " Broad " without the " Church." These
would plunge us into rationalism. There is a
school of thought that is " Church " without the
" Broad." These would stiffen the Church into a
fossil. But there is a school which is Catholic
enough to hold to and get back all that has proved
itself good in the past, and Broad enough not to
hesitate to adopt all that has proved itself good in
the present. This school is determined to hold
up the Catholic Church in Her continuous life as
God's Divine Institution, coming down with au-
thority, and adapted to the wants of every man
and of every century.
In a subsequent discourse I shall endeavor 'to
answer the question, "What is the Catholic Church ?
n.
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH NOT PROTES-
TANT.
" The Pillar and Ground of the Truth." 1 TIM. iii. 15.
IN accordance with the promise at the close
of last Sunday's sermon, I am to speak to you of
the Catholic Church. Two points are before me,
viz. : first, to show briefly what the Catholic
Church is ; and secondly, to show that we are a
part of that Church.
The word " Catholic " has its own, that is to
say, its proper meaning. It has been used, in
various languages, to convey this meaning, for
eighteen hundred' years. But there is an inclina-
tion among the sects to foist upon it a new mean-
ing, not its own ; to give it the meaning of " uni-
versal " in a certain vague sense, and then to say,
" Oh, we are all Catholics." The fact is, it really
expresses a large and glorious idea; Protestants
know it, and therefore desire the word for their
own. But it is doubtful whether the 270,000,000
of Catholics will permit the 74,000,000 of Protes-
ANGLICAN CHUKCH NOT PEOTESTANT.^ 25
tants to change its meaning for their own pur-
poses.* Depend upon it, that when a Protestant
utters the language of the Catholic creed, and
says, " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," he
does not mean what that phrase was written to
mean, and has meant for centuries, and honestly
means to-day. There is a mental reservation
within him. But there is this comfort, namely :
even though Protestants steal the name, they can
never wipe out that mighty thing of which, since
the opening of the Christian era, it has been the
title.
However, when we leave names and come to
things, we find persons even in the Church, who
glory in that which is known under the term
"Protestant." And such persons would trium-
phantly ask, " "What ! is not our Church c Protes-
tant ? ' Are we not the Protestant Episcopal
Church ? " In part reply to such I make this
preliminary remark, viz., that the term " Protes-
tant Episcopal " has never been formally adopted
as a title for our Church. It is barely possible
that I have overlooked the supposed fact of such
adoption, but I hardly think it can be so. As
nearly as I can find, the title stole in upon us like
a thief in the night. "What appears to be the
history of the case ? Why, the title of the Prayer-
Book of the Church of England was, " The Book
O 7
of Common Prayer, etc., of The Church, accord-
* The Roman Catholics number 170,000,000 ; the Greek Cath-
olics, 80,000,000 ; and the Anglican Catholics, 20,000,000.
2
26 THE FAILUEE OF PROTESTANTISM.
ing to the Use of the United Church of England
and Ireland." That is to say, " The Prayer-Book
of The Church of God's Church in England."
This title recognized that there was only One
Church. Yery well ; before the Revolution it
was the same in America. After the Revolution,
it became necessary for the Church for God's
Church to have a Prayer-Book suited to its wants
in America as an independent nation. A general
convention was held here. That convention ex-
pressly declared that, in whatever it did, it was
" far from intending to depart from the Church
of England in any essential point of doctrine."
Now, that convention was an exceedingly small
body ; for the Church in America almost died
during the Revolution. But, before the conven-
tion was held, several preliminary meetings of
churchmen convened. The calls for these meet-
ings Vere issued by irresponsible persons ; and in
those calls those private individuals those irre-
sponsible persons designated the Church as the
"Protestant Episcopal Church," as though God
had a dozen other different kinds of Churches.
It was their mere notion to call it so. Yery nat-
urally (considering the times) the same name, hav-
ing thus been brought out, was used in all the
subsequent letters that passed to and fro concern-
ing the movement; and was continued in the
summons for the first general convention. It was
used by the few individual members of that con-
vention in their speeches. It got into resolutions
ANGLICAN CHUECH NOT PEOTESTANT. 27
they offered, and into other documents that were
adopted by the convention. . It continued its
stealthy advance, and got on to the title-page of
the Ritual that was adopted. Who put it there ?
What printer, what private member of a commit-
tee, what unauthorized person ? In vain have I
searched the records of those early days, to find
that the convention ever adopted the title-page to
the Prayer-Book. Thus, it has secured a tacit
sanction as a title, or rather, I should perhaps be
more accurate in saying, a tacit acceptance as a
title ; but I repeat, it was never formally adopted
as such by the Church here in her corporate capa-
city. The fact is, the question concerning a proper
title for the Church never came up. The very ut-
most that can be said is, that the title has only
had a mere quasi adoption. But the question is
up now fairly and squarely ; and it is for us to
consider whether we ought longer tacitly to sanc-
tion the title by putting forth every new official
document in the name of the " Protestant Epis-
copal" Church.
The name has wrought us untold harm and
loss. It has falsified our position in the eyes of
the public. It has identified us with those who
hate our distinctive and vital peculiarities, our
Apostolic succession, our non-recognition of man-
made ministries, our non-reception of their " ordi-
nance " of the Lord's Supper at their hands, our
real presence of Christ in the Blessed Eucharist,
our baptismal regeneration, our natural sym-
28 THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
patMes with the Greek Church, which they re-
gard as only one step less vile and monstrous than
Rome. It has fostered within us a Puritan, a
strictly Protestant and un- Church sentiment,
which has at last come out in a pink-covered
pamphlet, asking whether there are not Catholic
(the writer calls it " Romanizing ") germs in the
Prayer-Book ; a pamphlet which admits that those
who hold sound Church sentiments among us
have, after all, been all along true to their Prayer-
Book (the " precious " Prayer-Book of the Evan-
gelicals), and true to their Church, and which
proves in a most masterly way that, if the Prayer-
Book is to suit the sentiments of the other, the so-
called "Evangelical" party, it must be altered
very materially.
!N~ow, what is Protestantism, and what is Ca-
tholicity? Then, we shall be able to tell very
easily whether our Church is Catholic or Protes-
tant. Of course, I cannot answer these great
questions in one discourse. I beg you to note,
moreover, that it is not my present purpose to
prove that the Catholic view is true ; this would
open up too wide a field ; but merely to give a
general idea of what Catholicity is as contrasted
with Protestantism. The clay is past for us longer
to talk about " High Church " and " Low Church."
The battle has widened out on to a larger field.
The real struggle has larger scope. We have got
to come up out of mere Anglicanism to the high
standard of Catholicism. As Protestantism is
ANGLICAN CHUKCH NOT PEOTESTANT. 29
mere incipient rationalism, the first duty of Catho-
licity is, to throttle it ; we must clear the field
first, that the grand, the only real struggle, may
be set between Catholicity and rationalism itself.
Now, I desire to say this first, viz. : there are
certain views held in the Koman Church which
are not Catholic, that is to say, are not held by
the Catholic Church ; and yet Rome is a Catholic
Church. This may seem a strange, perhaps a
self-contradictory statement to you ; but I hope to
make it clear by-and-by. And there are certain
views held in the Greek Church, and certain other
views held by our Church, which are not Cath-
olic; and yet the Greek and the Anglican are
both Catholic Churches.
I remark, first, then, Protestantism founds the
Church on the Bible, making the Bible prior. On
the other hand, Catholicity rests the Bible on the
Church, making the Church prior. Ask a Protes-
tant which he believes first, Church or Bible ? and
he will say, " Bible." Ask him which he believes
because of the other ? and he will say, " I believe
in a Church, because I believe in the Bible."
" You start, then, with the Bible ? " " Yes."
" But how do you know the Bible is the Word of
God 2 " " "Why, I know it because < All Scripture
is given by inspiration of God.' ' : " But, my
friend, the question is, what is Scripture ? how do
you know that these sixty-six books are the Scrip-
ture ? Why is * Solomon's Song ' Scripture, and
not the 'Book of Wisdom?' Why the ' Epistle
30 THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
of St. Jude,' and not the < Epistle of St. Clement? '
"Where do you find in the Bible an inspired list of
canonical books ? And, if there were such list,
how could you know that that list itself was in-
spired? If you fall back for aid on the holy
Apostles, you find them quoting the 'Book of
Enoch,' and displaying familiarity with i Wisdom '
and ' Ecclesiasticus,' and even quoting passages
from the heathen poets." The Protestant has no
answer ; or he may take refuge in the remark that
he believes the Bible on account of its evidences.
" But have you ever personally examined those
evidences to see if they are sound ? " " !N"o ; but
others have, and so, the Bible being generally
accepted, I accept it." And after a series of ques-
tions, my brethren, you find it all comes to this,
namely, that he believes the Bible to be the In-
fallible Word of God, on the testimony and
assurance of fallible men. As another has ex-
pressed it, the world is put very comfortably on
an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, but
the poor tortoise rests nowhere. My friends, you
may lay the Bible open, and you may scatter your
open Bible till it is in every household, hotel, and
steamboat ; but for all that, if it rests nowhere, it
will fall, as it has fallen in Germany, "New Eng-
land, and wherever Protestantism prevails. If
Rome has been in error for closing the Bible (and
there is no doubt but that She was in grievous er-
ror for so doing), did it ever strike you that She
has nevertheless somehow succeeded in preserving
ANGLICAN CHUECH NOT PKOTESTANT. 31
a hearty, unreserved belief in it, and a reverence
for it throughout her people, which Protestantism,
with its Strausses and Parkers and Martineaus
and Unitarians and hundreds of thousands of
skeptics, has lamentably failed to do ? An open
Bible is indispensable for the world's good (there
is no mistake about that), when your open Bible
is tenderly cared for, and not thrown away, till
people regard it as little worth. But many per-
sons suppose that Protestantism and an open Bible
are almost synonymous terms. Ah, but we must
couple something else with the phrase " open
Bible," if we would have it express the actual re-
sult of Protestantism round about us. That re-
sult is " an -open Bible " indeed, but it is " an
open Bible torn to pieces." "We thank Protes-
tantism for helping true Catholicity in England
to open the Bible ; we have no thanks for the rest
she has done, and we will not close our eyes
to it.
I do not mean to Imply that there is no in-
fidelity and no tampering with the Holy Bible in
Koman Catholic lands. But I assert that such in-
fidelity as there is in Roman lands has sprung out
of the extravagances and the errors which Rome
has superadded to her Catholic system. "We
equally oppose the Protestant heresy and the Ro-
man alterations of Catholicity. Both have wrought
vast evils upon* the world. But I am not now
treating Romanism, therefore I pass on.
Now, on the other hand, how is it with Catho-
32 THE FAILUEE OF PROTESTANTISM.
licity? It rests the Bible on the Church. The
Catholic knows the Bible is the Word of God, be-
cause the infallible Church tells him it is. But
how does he know that the Church is infallible ?
I find, he replies, all round about me as a matter
of notoriety, " a vast body existing in the world,
professing to be the keeper, guardian, and inter-
preter of a book called the Bible." This body is
not an abstract idea ; it is an actuality in visible
existence round about me. It has definite limits
and visible peculiarities, so that I may recognize
and know what and where it is. I trace this body
from the present down through past centuries. I
find it diminishing in size as I go back. 1 trace
it continuously down and into the first century.
I find it passing down deeper than the New Testa-
ment. I find- it (earlier than the date of the 'New
Testament) resting back into the holy apostles
and Christ. And I find that they, upon whom
the Church thus rests back as a basis, are sur-
rounded by a glory of miracles and other positive
attestations that they are from God, and act au-
thoritatively. I find, in fact, that God was with
them, nay, that God Himself came down and be-
came man, to be not the founder of something
different and distinct from Himself, but the very
Beginning and continuous Life of that Church,
just as the individuality that is in the infant con-
tinues through and pervades its ubsequent exist-
ence. I find that God, when He became man,
and thus created the Church in and on Himself,
ANGLICAN CHUKCH NOT PEOTESTANT. 33
and as an inseparable part of Himself, imparted
to It the Truth, gave It authority to teach that
Truth to all the world, and promised to continue
with It till the end of time, guiding It infallibly.
Thus I have the Church resting back, not on the
New Testament, but resting back behind the New
Testament, on no less than the Truth Incarnate
Himself. If Christ is in and through the Church
as Its very Life and Soul, then, of course, the
Church cannot err. And if, on the other hand,
the Church can err, then it cannot be that the In-
carnate Truth Himself pervades Her. So you
must either have an infallible Church, or a Church
without Christ. And Protestantism can take
either horn of the dilemma it likes. To have
an infallible Church, I must have that on which
She rests, and which ever after pervades Her,
to be no less and no other than the Truth In-
carnate. And, furthermore, I find myself forced
to believe that Jesus Christ, who founded the
Church, and promised to be with Her, was the
Truth Incarnate, because I find, behind Him in
time, a glorious series of prophecies that such a
Being should come, converging toward Him out
of long prior ages, and centring at last upon Him.
"We do not reason in a circle. We do not
prove the New Testament by the Church and
then the Church by the New Testament. The
Bible is a revelation of divine mysteries ; but this
visible Church running back with continuous
life behind the New Testament, and on to a basis
2* v
34: THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
which is itself surrounded by a glory of miracles,
that basis resting upon long prior prophecy as a
substructure is an historic fact ; and, if the Bible
were to-day wiped out of existence, could be
traced back like any other stupendous and patent
fact in the world's career.
Now, during the first hundred years or more
of the existence of this Church, many gospels and
epistles were written to Her. And she, already
in existence before them, and already having the
promise that the Incarnate Truth who was in Her
would guide Her infallibly, selects certain ones
out of the multitude of documents written to
Her, binds them into a New Testament, preserves
them and hands them on to me as the infallible
Word of God. Thus I have either an infallible
"Word of God, resting on an infallible Church,
which itself, as an historic fact, rests on the Truth
Incarnate, who surrounded Himself with a glory
of miracles when He came, to give me notice that
He had come, and to Whom a long series of prior
supernatural events in the world's history pointed,
or I have nothing under the sun that I can trust
in as a Bible. The very infallibility of the Bible
demands the infallibility of the Church ; the two
stand or fall together.
Now, beloved, the Church was to be the pillar
and ground of the truth, the keeper of the Word,
as an invaluable deposit for all time. Let us see,
then, whether Protestantism is trustworthy in this
respect; whether it has kept the Word. Are
ANGLICAN CHUECH NOT PEOTESTANT. 35
sacraments in the Bible, Baptism, the Holy Com-
munion, Orders ? Yes. Well, are Quakers Prot-
estants? Yes. But they have given up sacra-
ments. Protestantism has let a portion of the
"Word slip out, then, at that hole. Is Confirmation
in the Bible? Yes? Well, are Presbyterians
and Congregationalists and Baptists Protestants ?
Yes. But they do not believe in Confirmation,
and do not practise it. Protestantism has let an-
other portion slip out, then, at that hole. Is the
Old Testamenjb a part of the Bible ? Yes. Are
Unitarians Protestants? Yes. But Unitarians
as a body think very little of the Old Testament ;
they have dropped it to all intents and purposes
as an effete book ; some of them more, some of
them less of it. So Protestantism has let a por-
tion slip out at that hole. Are the Parkerite-
Unitarians Protestants? Yes. Well, are the
Epistles a portion of God's infallible Word to us ?
Yes. But Parkerites say they are not. So Prot-
estantism has let another portion slip out at that
hole. JSTow take the balance of the Bible, namely,
the four Gospels. Are they a part of God's Word
to us? Yes. But is the Church up here on
Fortieth Street Protestant ? Yes ; but its pastor
writes and teaches in last August's magazine that
the four Gospels are fables born of the heated and
hero-worshipping imagination of centuries subse-
quent to Jesus ; and that, as for the actual Jesus
that lived, a true record of Him is hopelessly lost
to history. So Protestantism has let a portion of
36 THE FAILUBE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
the Bible, and the balance of it, slip out at that
hole.
Now, on the other hand, does the Greek
Church hold to the whole Bible ? Yes. Does the
Roman? Yes. Does the Anglican? Yes; and-
when Colenso rises to say the Word of God is not
the Bible, but is somewhere scattered round in it,
nobody can tell where, the Anglican Church rises
in all its national parts and ejects him as a here-
tic. That, then, which is the pillar and ground
of the truth, the keeper of the Bible, is Catholicity
only. The Church, then, which the Protestant's
Bible speaks to him of, cannot be his Protestant-
ism, but must be that vast Organic Body he so
much hates, of which the Greek, the Anglican,
and the Roman are parts. That Church, accord-
ing to promise, has not erred as a whole, however
Its parts may each have errors of its own. And
all that we want in the great Catholic movement
of to-day is for the three parts mutually and lov-
ingly to point out each other's errors, as they are
beginning to do, and for each of the three to look
candidly at its own ; remembering that God has
not promised infallibility to any one part, how-
ever large, any more than He has to any one
individual, but only to the whole in their united,
corporate and historic capacity. And that, there-
fore, any part, whether the Roman, the Greek, or
the Anglican, when acting alone, is liable to err.
And that no part neither the Roman, the Greek
nor the Anglican has the right to set up its pecu-
ANGLICAN CHUKCH NOT PROTESTANT. 37
liar dogmas and impose them as Catholic truth on
its sister parts. When the whole Catholic Church
speaks again, then it will do for us to listen.
Then we must listen. Now, as a whole, She has
spoken in times past. She has spoken through
Her six General Councils and their creeds. She
stands in the past speaking to us through Her
consenting voice touching the Eucharist, the doc-
trine of Baptism, the " other sacraments," as our
Homily expresses it, and the glorious garments
and stately forms that befit their administration.
Protestantism cares nothing for all this she hates
it she cares not for those General Councils. But
see how the instinct of Catholicity bows humbly
to them. And if you would test whether our
Church is Protestant or Catholic, mark how She
accepts the creed of those Councils, guards it as
too sacred to be touched, makes her children re-
peat it often, and, when leaning over the death-
bed, tells them that She will rehearse to them the
articles of the Christian faith " that they may know
whether they do believe as Christian men should
or no."
I find that the subject is large, and that my
time is rapidly passing, while I have but skir-
mished on the borders of the great topic. Should
I take up a second point, it would prolong this
discourse unduly. I must therefore postpone the
second point, and beg to continue and close this
sermon with a thought suggested by what I have
said above. One of the ablest of our American
38 THE FAILUKE OF PROTESTANTISM.
clergy said, not long since (he did not express his
thought in the same language, but it is substan-
tially the same idea), that we have all of us been
saying for years, " I believe in the Holy Catholic
Church." But what have we been meaning all
along ? "We have been meaning something very
like this, viz. : I believe in the Holy Catholic
Church that is to say, from the year 33 to the
year 100, entirely. I believe in the Holy Catho-
lic Church from the year 100 to the year 600, to a
certain degree. I believe in the Holy Catholic
Church from the year 600 to the year 1500, not at
all. I believe in the Holy Catholic Church from
the year 1500 to the present time that is to say,
in my portion of it. But, beloved, that is not the
Holy Catholic Church of your creed. We belong
to a local Church ; and we have been in the habit
of calling the Anglican the Church, as though it
were the whole. Just so Rome has called herself
the Church, as though She were the whole ; and
the Greeks have called themselves the Church, as
though they were the whole. But what is all this
but the spirit of mere sectarianism broken out in
the great Church Catholic, not the Catholic spirit ?
Let us combine with our friends, who are rising
in Rome and in the East, for a great Catholic
reformation, under which local errors shall be
eliminated from each and every part. "We have
called each other hard names long enough. A
family is an organic unit still, though the brothers
are at sword's point ; for God made the unity, and
ANGLICAN CHURCH NOT PBOTESTANT. 39
human passion cannot break it. We have tried
hate for each other long enough. How much
have we gained by calling Rome Anti-Christ, and
how much has she gained by calling us heretics ?
It is high time we tried something else. Silence
in the household, and peace ! and let us see
calmly what the matter is. The Catholic Nation-
al Churches have a common basis of unity. Prot-
estantism has none. And surely we have none
with Protestantism. Of all places the Catholic
Church is the last for the narrow, bigoted spirit
of sectarianism. "We, I say, belong to a local
Church ; but go up upon the hill-top and look
out. Enlarge your view. There you shall see
others two hundred and fifty millions differing
with us, alas ! in some things (but by no means
hopelessly differing), but one with us substantially
in the acceptance of that great creed, that great
view of Christianity as a system, which is so dif-
ferent from the Protestant, and which has been set
forth by the whole Catholic Church ; one with us
in owning allegiance to the same apostolically
descended ministry ; one with us in admitting the
same idea of the Church as an organic Body uni-
ted to the Lord, Her Head, by the same baptism,
and fed with Him at the same altar. Remember
that " Catholic " does not mean any part. That
ministry only is Catholic which we all agree is the
only authoritative, namely, the Apostolic; that
faith only is Catholic which we all agree upon in
common ; every thing over and above is partial,
40 THE FAILUEE OF PBOTESTANTISM.
local, and not Catholic. Those sacraments only
are Catholic which all agree upon. Remember,
then, that Rome, though a Catholic Church, is
not the Catholic Church ; and that we, though a
Catholic, are not the Catholic Church. Remem-
ber that we must go deeper and broader to find
the Catholic Church, down on to the great foun-
dation where we all three stand ; down out of the
differences between the brothers and on to the
unity of the family. Brethren, just there is the
ground upon which we stand as Catholics ; not as
Romanists, not as Greeks, no longer as mere An-
glicans, still less as local " Episcopalians," but in
harmony with our great fundamentals, our minis-
try, our faith, and our sacraments, as Catholics.
Remember that there is something more vast,
longer in time, and larger in space, than the
" Episcopal Church " so called ; that our Church
as a national body must be in subordination to
the great authoritative Catholic Church its views
in subordination to Her greater views. Remem-
ber that only that doctrine is binding upon us all
which the whole Church, with which the Lord
promised to be, has set forth ; and those practices
and that ritual which are sympathetic, not with
those who hate our fundamental principles, but,
on the other hand, with whatever has been uni-
versal in the Church Catholic; and are sym-
pathetic not with that mere intellectual presence
of Christ which Protestantism upholds, but with
ANGLICAN CHURCH NOT PEOTESTANT. ^.\
that real and actual presence of Christ, which the
Church has" claimed and set forth to the world
through all ages, and which the Lord Christ
promised to His Church, and gave when He said,
" This is my body."
III.
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH FUNDAMEN-
TALLY DIFFERENT FROM THE PROT-
ESTANT SECTS.
" The Church of the Living God." 1 TIM. iii. 15.
IT is the popular impression that the Anglican
Church took Her rise about three hundred years
ago, in the days of King Henry the Eighth. She
is believed to have been a creature of the Refor-
mation, and is therefore regarded as one of the
great sisterhood of the Protestant sects. She is
looked upon as agreeing with those sects in all
fundamental respects, and differing merely on
subordinate points. It is supposed that, to a.
Protestant foundation, She merely superadds such
matters of taste as written prayers instead of ex-
temporaneous, the observance of certain festivals
and fasts, the use of clerical garments, a preference
for Gothic architecture, and for a ministry in the
three orders of Bishop, Priest, and Deacon. To
the inquiry, How the Church differs from the
Protestant denominations about her ? such points
as the above-mentioned would be specified in re-
COMPKOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 43
ply. It is not at all imagined that fundamentally
we are not with the Protestant, but with the great
Catholic world. It is not at all imagined that the
difference between us and all Protestant bodies is
not superficial, but radical and irreconcilable.
But, Brethren, there are certain, signs of the
times that are very noteworthy. Why is it that, as
the Protestant denominations are mutually draw-
ing together, and seeking coalescence in union
meetings and the interchange of pulpits, our
Church stands aloof from the movement ? "Why
is it, that if any of our Clergy, however few,
coquet with the movement, the great body of our
communicants, both lay and clerical, rise in in-
dignation ? Why is it, too, that, as this mutual
gravitation is taking place among the systems of
Protestantism, there is, on the other hand, a
counter-movement springing up in each of the
three great parts of the Catholic world Greek,
Anglican, and Roman under which they are
looking with kindlier eye upon each other, if not
actually drawing into closer sympathy? That
there are these two mighty clusterings it were
folly to ignore. How shall we account for them ?
Is it not possible that, as the storm of the Refor-
mation is subsiding, natural sympathies, springing
out of fundamental agreement, are rising to re-
sume their sway ?
At any rate, here are two popular misappre-
hensions touching our Church, viz. : first, as to
Her origin, and secondly, as to Her position rela-
44 THE FA1LUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
tively to the Protestant denominations. It is to
these two points that I shall direct my remarks
this evening. In all fundamental respects our
Church is neither recent, nor is She Protestant in
the popular acceptation of that term. I do not,
of course, deny that She protests against certain
errors that have grown up in a territorial portion
of the great Catholic body of which She is a part ;
but what I mainly propose to show is, not in what
respect She differs from Rome, but in what respect
She differs from all the Protestant denominations
taken together: and, furthermore, to show that
the difference between Her and them is so radical,
that any compromise between the two is a logical
impossibility.
In the last three hundred years theological
matters have become confused by a mass of doc-
trinal detail ; and it is not at all strange that, in
the confusion, the ordinary mind should lose sight
of the few main points that, after all, really cause
us to part asunder. It is well, therefore, to with-
draw at times into a calm distance where the de-
tails shall disappear from the vision, and the main
distinctions come boldly out to view. Permit me,
Beloved, for the sake of brevity, to call the system
to which we adhere by the name under which it
is known among us, viz., " The Church ; " and to
call the bodies collectively, who agree with us in
so far as we protest against Romish errors, but
who differ with us in so far as we Churchmen
hold with Rome to the great underlying truths of
COMPROMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 4.5
the Catholic Church, by the title of " The De-
nominations," or " The Protestant Sects."
Before I proceed to our first head, namely,
The Origin of the Church, let me ask you to re-
call sundry matters which are patent to the eye,
in which the Church differs from the Denomina-
tions ; for instance, the internal structure of our
houses of worship, the arrangement of our chan-
cels, so different from the ordinary Protestant
plan of pulpit, with sofa behind and Commun-
ion-Table below, the constitution of our ministry
in three orders, the fact that we have no revivals,
etc. And to ask you whether all this, and more,
ought not at least to raise a suspicion, before we
commence, that there must be, underneath, some
radical variance between the two systems. Can
it be that two systems, so differing to the eye, are
fundamentally at one with each other ? Let us
see. I proceed, then, to strike the clear, distin-
guishing note of the Church.
I. "When did the Church arise ? In order to
see that She did not take Her origin at the same
time with the sects, in the days of King Henry
VIII. , permit me to give a brief history of the
Church Catholic from the first.
The Holy Apostles did not separate and go
forth to plant the Church in all the world imme-
diately after the Ascension of our Lord. The
popular impression is that they did. But if you
will turn to your 'New Testament, you will find
that the Twelve remained residing at Jerusalem
46 THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM.
for twenty years after that event. During this
period they preached to Jews, not to Gentiles.
The Grecians spoken of in the sixth chapter of
the Acts, were not Gentiles ; they were Jews who
spoke the Greek tongue. During this long period
of twenty years, the adherents of Christ continued
to be members of the Jewish Church, superadding
Christian observances in their own gatherings.
Meantime, a model form of the Christian Church
grew up in Jerusalem under the combined hands
of the Apostles, with Ministry, the Sacraments,
the Faith, and a regular Form of "Worship. The
Liturgy was not committed to writing, but was
memorized.
Some years after the Ascension, the conver-
sion of St. Paul occurred ; and it was toward the
latter part of the above-mentioned period of twen-
ty years, that he went forth into Asia Minor, and
preached not only to Jews resident there, but also
to Gentiles. This gathering of Gentiles as well
as Jews into Christianity, precipitated a crisis,
both in the action of the Apostles and in the
career of the Church ; for, in the new bodies of
converts which St. Paul gathered, there speedily
arose a contention. The Jewish converts insisted
that the Gentile converts, in addition to their
Christian duties, should comply with the require-
ments of the Mosaic ritual law. It was held that
that law had been given in all its minutiae by God
Himself, and that all who believed in the true God
must, of course, obey it. At last St. Paul goes
COMPEOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 47
down to Jerusalem, where tlie other Apostles
were living, that this question (which, you will
observe, w^as one of the gravest importance) might
be settled by them. The Council of Jerusalem,
an account of which is in the fifteenth chapter of
the Acts, met, and decided the matter. The vir-
tual conclusion reached was this, viz. : that the
whole Jewish form of the Church had, after all,
been fulfilled by the Life, Death, Resurrection,
and Ascension of our Lord ; that it no longer had
any real existence ; and that the Christian form
of the Church had taken its place. This occurred
about the year 50 or 52. Thus, it was not till
twenty years after the Ascension that the Apostles,
arousing to their newly-seen responsibilities, sepa-
rated, and went forth to their great work of plant-
ing the Church Catholic in all the world.
The Church which they planted was identical
everywhere, from Spain and England in the West,
to Syria in the East ; identical in its Ministry, its
Form of Government, its Sacraments, its Faith,
and Liturgical mode of Worship. It is to be
borne in mind that the Apostles, having once
separated to this work, never afterward met to-
gether again for consultation. And yet such was
the Church they planted. At the end of the first
century, and in the beginning of the second, it
rears itself everywhere before us as a vast visible
body. Everywhere it has its Bishops, Priests,
and Deacons ; its Liturgies,* its Creed, its Chan-
* It should be noted that the Apostles did not leave only one
48 THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM.
eels, its Altars, its Festivals and Fasts, and its
Sacraments. Everywhere its Bishops are the
only persons empowered to ordain to the Minis-
try. How happens it that the Apostles, who
never afterward met together, should yet have
planted a Church identical in every main point
all over Europe, Civilized Asia, and Africa ?
The fact is, they each and all carried away in
their minds the model form which had during
the twenty years grown up under their combined
hands in Jerusalem ; and that they, each and all,
planted the Church Catholic everywhere in gen-
eral accordance with that model form.
But what, furthermore, was the condition of
this Church Catholic ? Everywhere it was One ;
but the Church in each nation was independent
of the Church in any other nation ; could ordain
or discipline Her own clergy ; could make Her
own Canon Laws and arrange Her Liturgy in the
vernacular of Her own people. When a man
moved from Italy to Spain, or from Egypt to
Greece or to England, he only moved out of one
National Branch into another of the same Church
Catholic. Thus like some vast banyan-tree the
Church was one organism, but with an indepen-
form of Liturgy behind them in the Universal Church, nor yet
twelve different forms ; but, strange to say, four forms. These
forms contained nearly identical parts, but differed in the arrange-
ment of those parts ; one arrangement prevailing in Syria and the
East, the second in Egypt and Northeastern Africa, the third in
Italy and Northwestern Africa, and the fourth in Asia Minor,
Gaul, and Britain.
COMPEOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 49
dent trunk in each country. Her condition was
analogous, indeed, to that of the United States.
Rhode Island, for instance, is independent of New
York. It can make its own laws and elect its
own officers without dictation from the Governor
and Legislature of New York ; and yet both
States are a part of one Country. There are local
peculiarities in each, but the same general charac-
teristics.
Now, Apostles and apostolic men planted the
Church Catholic in Rome, in Thessaly, in Gaul,
in Egypt, in Britain. The National Branch of
the Catholic Church planted in Britain in the
first century was, in a certain sense, independent
of the National Branch of the Church Catholic
that was in Rome, and was its ,peer ; less in
wealth, less in influence, less in the mental ability
of its Clergy perhaps, but endowed with the self-
same rights.* This mutual independence of the
National parts of the Catholic Church lasted for
centuries after the Apostolic days. But at last,
about the seventh century, the National Branch
* When Gregory I, Bishop of Rome A. D. 596, sent Augustine
to England, the latter sought to bring the British Bishops into
subjection to the Bishop of Rome. A Conference was at length
held, at which Dunod, a Bishop, speaking in behalf of his brethren,
returned the following reply to St. Augustine, viz. : " We are bound
to serve the Church of God ; and the Bishop of Rome, and every
godly Christian, as far as helping them in offices of love and
charity ; this service we are ready to pay ; but more than this I do
not know to be due to him or any other. We have a Primate of
our own, who is to oversee us under God, and to keep us in the
way of spiritual life."
3
50 THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM.
of the Church in Rome began to usurp power over
its neighbors in the West of Europe, to take away
their independence, to fix its own laws, worship,
customs, and officers upon them. Novel doctrines
began also to grow up in Rome, superadding them-
selves to Her Catholic system. And in due time
She spread those doctrines also through the Na-
tional Branches She had subjugated. She threw
Pier yoke upon the Catholic Church in England.
She tried to throw Her yoke also upon the numer-
ous National Branches in the Eastern part of
Europe ; but never succeeded in this attempt. In
England, however, as I have said, after a brave
struggle on the part of the British Bishops, She
succeeded ; and for several centuries the Catholic
Church in England, though of right independent,
autonomic, was in the same position under Rome
that Rhode Island would be, if for a while its
large, wealthy, and powerful neighbor, New York,
should reduce it to dependency, give it its laws,
its judges, and other officers.
But in Henry the Eighth's time the National
Branch of the Catholic Church in England suc-
ceeded in throwing off the yoke of Rome, and
stood once more independent, reinstated in Her
original position, rehabilitated with the rights
which, a few centuries before, She had lost. It is
immaterial whether the motives of Henry were
conscientious or not ; God rnaketh the wrath of
the wicked to praise Him, and Henry's quarrel
COMPEOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 5^
with Clement was the subjugated Church's oppor-
tunity in England.
Using Her regained rights, Her clergy and
laity pruned and translated Her liturgy, reformed
Her customs, and abolished from Her the novel
and Romish doctrines that had been temporarily
added to Her Catholic system. She remained
still the same old National Branch of the Church
that had come down in England from the Apostles'
days ; She had simply removed from Her Catholic
structure the incrustations of Romish errors. Sup-
pose a free man had, at one period of his life, been
enslaved by a powerful neighbor, and had subse-
quently thrown off the yoke, why one might as
well say that that man is not the same individual
through it all, but that he only began to exist
from the moment he regained his freedom, as to
say that the Catholic Church in England took the
origin of Her existence at the time of Henry the
Eighth.
Understand, that it is one thing utterly to
destroy the National Branch of the Church Catho-
lic in a country and construct a new Christian or-
ganism in its place ; but it is another and a very
different thing to take the same old Church Cath-
olic that is found in a nation, and merely remove
from it such novel doctrines and improper customs
as may have grown up within it, or been forced
upon it. The former is what was done on the
Continent ; the latter is what was done in Eng-
land. Thus the Continental and the English Ret-
52 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
ormations were conducted on a different prin-
ciple each from the other. The one was destruc-
tive of Catholic truth and the Catholic Church,
the other was preservative of both.
In the old colonial times of our country, the
English branch of the old Catholic Church, act-
*ing according to the law of Catholic growth, put
forth a branch into this country. And when, as
the result of the American Revolution, England
and America became independent nations, the
Church in this country became, ipso facto, a na-
tional and independent trunk of the one Catholic
Church in all the world.
Alas, that the fifteen or twenty gentlemen
who met in the general convention immediately
after the Revolution, and at the opening of the
independence of the American Catholic Church,
should have left us as a heritage that unfortunate
title " Protestant Episcopal." For, what does the
word " Protestant " indicate to the popular mind ?
Why, in general terms, a violent opposition to all
that is Catholic. The word does not express,
therefore, our attitude. For we adhere to, we
cherish with undying fondness, much that is in
the Romish Church which Protestantism hates
and has abolished. We simply protest against
certain of Her features, so that the title " Protes-
tant," as applied to us, does not mean the same
as when applied to the Denominations, and the
popular mind is misled in regard to us. Again,
the term " Episcopal " simply refers to our Church
COMPROMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 53
Government. Thus the whole title, " Protestant
Episcopal," selects only two out of very many of
our characteristics (and those two by no means the
most important), and elevates them into the prom-
inence of an exhaustive designation for the whole.
"Why, brethren, you might as well call New York
an "Anti-Mormon Gubernatorial State," and
fancy that you have thoroughly denned your Com-
monwealth, as to dream for an instant that the
title " Protestant Episcopal " is, ever was, or ever
could be, a befitting name for the great American
fraction of the One Holy Catholic Church in all
the world. But, thank God, the fifteen or twenty
wise gentlemen who, in the eighteenth century,
took such action as has resulted in foisting this
heritage of " Protestant Episcopal " as a title upon
nearly forty vast dioceses in the nineteenth cen-
tury, were not permitted by the Catholic Church
elsewhere to carry out their intentions of laying
violent hands upon the Creed itself. Thank God
that that Creed does not read, "I believe in the
Holy P. E. Church of the U. S. A." Thank God
that it still reads as of old, " I believe One Catho-
lic and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one
Baptism for the remission of sins ; and I look for
the Resurrection of' the dead, and the Life of the
world to come."
Thus the English Catholic Church, known as
the Church of England, did not with the sects
take Her origin in the Reformation. She merely
succeeded in disenthralling herself at that stormy
54: THE FAILURE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
period. She is an ancient Branch of the Church
Catholic, having a continuous life running down
from the apostolic days to the present time ; pre-
serving, all along, Catholic features of the Apos-
tolic Church visible, Her Ministry, Her Faith,
Her Sacraments, Her Seasons, Her Liturgical Wor-
ship ; free during the first six centuries, then en-
slaved by Rome for a while, then striking for and
regaining her freedom again, which She has en-
joyed now for the last three centuries. She still
agrees with the Roman, the Greek, the Armenian,
and other parts of the Church in all fundamental
Catholic respects, and differs from the Roman part
in respect of certain errors, which added them-
selves to Her Catholic system in the latter part of
the middle ages and in the year 1854.
Thus the Church, instead of being fundamen-
tally Protestant, that is to say, constructed on
Protestant notions, and merely bearing a little
about Her on Her surface that looks like the " visi-
ble," the " priestly," the " Sacramental," and the
" Catholic," is, on the other hand, fundamen-
tally, and has been continuously, Catholic, while
such Protestantism as She has is a temporary ex-
pression, which She has been forced to put on at
this period of Her long career, in censure of errors
into which a portion (numerically a half, perhaps)
of the great Body of which She is a part has fallen,
as She trusts only temporarily. Thus you will
see that, after all, the cause and the main object
of Her existence is not to protest against those
COMPROMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 55
temporary errors (although she does that by the
way), but it is the rather to continue to hold and
to spread, as formerly, so now and to all future
time, the great principles of the Church Yisible,
of Catholic Truth and Apostolic Order.
She belongs to the great Catholic Sisterhood.
One erring sister has brought grief to the house-
hold. But She looks upon that sister, and, as She
marks the familiar lineaments of the family, She
cannot hate her; She grieves over the errors.
She looks within herself, and finds that all is not
perfect even there ; She prays for her prodigal
Sister, and She is beginning to pray for herself
also. Far be it from Her ever to abandon the
family of which She is a member, and take up
Her portion beneath the fleeting tents of a hard,
a hostile, and a wayward tribe ! God speed the
day when all the fair Sisters, Greek, Roman, Ar-
menian, English, Russian, and American, shall
abandon such mistakes as either may have fallen
into, shall learn that no fraction can be the whole
body, and shall stand, with arms intertwined, a
one harmonious Catholic family once more !
When the two great clusterings, Protestant
and Catholic, shall have completed themselves,
the one organic like an army, the other disin-
tegrated like a mob, and the shock between the
two shall take place, can any one doubt the issue ?
II. I come now to the second point, viz. : The
Anglican Church being regarded by the popular
56 THE FAILUKE OF PROTESTANTISM.
mind as fundamentally one of the Protestant
sects. Let me recall to you what I said above,
namely : that it is my object to set forth wherein
it is that the Church differs in fundamental doc-
trine from all the Denominations taken together.
Is there the radical difference I speak of? If so,
does it lie in the mere question of written or ex-
temporaneous prayers, of baptism by pouring or
by submersion, of whether or not it is Scriptural
to baptize infants, of Church Government ? Oh
no. These are all questions of some importance,
but they are superficial in the comparison. Can
we or can we not go down beneath these to some
one point where, to start with, the difference be-
tween the Church and the sects is so radical, that,
after all, any subsequent compromise between the
two is a delusion and a snare to both ? If there
be such a point, the plain man, who has little or
no time to study into numerous and nice super-
ficial theological distinctions, would like, of course,
to know what it is, that he may be settled in his
main religious position. All these differences be-
tween the Church and the Denominations which
are apparent to the eye, for instance, as to Church
Government, forms of worship, observance or non-
observance of Feasts and Fasts, Infant Baptism,
etc., are, if I may so express it, bewildering
branches and twigs, in which the plain man finds
himself entangled. My point is, that these branch-
es and twigs, in fact all the peculiarities of the
Church, spring out of the answer to a prior ques-
COMPEOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 57
tion. If that question be decided one way, we
are carried into the entire Churchl y set of branch-
es in doctrine and practice ; if the other way, we
are carried into the Protestant set of branches.
Surely it is an important point gained toward
clearing up the complicated matter to our minds,
and virtually disposing of a hundred-and-one sub-
ordinate questions, if we can go down from the
branches to the two great trunks, the Churchly
and the Protestant, and then get back to the root,
and see, if possible, exactly where and why it is
that the two great trunks themselves part com-
pany.
Now, the great question, which in itself alone
divides us from all Protestant sects, is the all-im-
portant question, What is Election? This lies
down under the surface ; but this is it. And as
we give one or the other answer to this question,
What is Election? so do we consistently decide
one or the other way on all subsequent questions.
Now, the Protestant idea is that Election is
of individuals directly to life eternal. Thus with
Protestants " the elect are identical with the
finally saved." Protestant Denominations may
differ among themselves as to the extent of Elec-
tion, as to the limitation or universality of the
Atonement as a potential means of salvation ;
they may differ as to the distinctness of the
boundaries between the elect and all others ; they
may differ very much as to the causality of Elec-
tion in the Divine Mind, that is to say, whether
3*
58 THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
persons are elected by God's absolute and irre-
spective sovereignty, or whether (as the Method-
ists say) their election was, so to speak, influ-
enced in the Divine Mind by their foreseen
personal actions as free beings (God's Foreknowl-
edge not affecting their acts, any more than one
man's observing another's falling causes his fall) ;
they may differ as to whether God has reprobated
the non-elect or not; but they all agree as to
the ideality of election ; that is to say, that it is
of individuals, and that its immediate design is
eternal life. And if you would test this, ask any
Methodist, or Calvinistic Baptist, or Free-Will
Baptist, or Orthodox Congregationalist, or Pres-
byterian (New School or Old School, Supra-lap-
sarian or Sub-lapsarian), ".Will any of the elect
be lost and damned?" And, unless I mistake
very much, they will one and all say, " ~No ! It
were dreadful to imagine such a thing for an in-
stant ! "
But the view of the Church, as expressed in
Her prayers and offices, and homilies, and in Her
XYIIth Article, is radically different from all
this. And Her view gives to Her whole theology
a different character. By reflex light it shines
back upon Christ and upon God, and shows Them
under a very different aspect to the world. It
gives to Her whole presentment of Christianity a
different cast, and it leads Her into a vastly dif-
ferent treatment of the sinner. Do you ask why it
is that we have no revivals ? The answer is, be-
COMPEOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 59
cause of our view of Election ; they are foreign to
our whole system; nay, destructive of it. Do
you ask, "Why we baptize infants? The answer
is, because of our view of Election. Do you ask,
Why we have a ministry in three orders, Why we
have a ritualistic form of worship, Why our Altars
and not our pulpits are the prominent objects in
our churches? The answer is, because of our
view of Election. What is that view? I will
give it to you.
The Church holds that " Christ came to intro-
duce a new state of things on earth, a Kingdom
of G-od ; that He came not merely to found a re-
ligion.; not merely to make an Atonement for
individual sinners, but to establish a Kingdom of
which He was to be the King. And it was to be
more than a Kingdom. It was to be the Church ;
a company of men not only believing in Him but
also baptized into His Body. And these persons,
so blessed, were not merely to be under Him as
their King, or instructed by Him as their Prophet,
or reconciled through Him as their Priest, or in-
dividually to apprehend Him as their Sacrifice ;
but over and above all these things they were to
be supernaturally joined to Him by a union so
intimate, so entire and real, that it could only be
illustrated by the union that subsists between the
limbs of a human body and its head, or between
a vine and the branches that form a part of it ;" *
* The writer has taken liberties with the above extract from
Sadler, in the way of adding to the language for greater fulness
of expression, not in the way of altering the sense.
(JO THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
a union, I say, which, though supernatural, is
yet real and not merely abstract; a union not
like that which subsists between two consent-
ing friends, but rather analogous to that which
subsists between Adam and all who have de-
rived their nature from him. So that Christ's
Body Natural grows out, as it were, by the addi-
tion of those who are thus made one with Him,
and becomes His Body Mystical. Christ, and His
Church Catholic are all one ; we are the branches
and He is the whole Yine. Christ is that Stone,
spoken of by Daniel, " Cut out without hands
. that became a great mountain and
filled the whole earth." The Church holds that
the means by which God unites separate men to
this great Body Mystical of Christ, so that they
are buried in Christ, is Baptism.* Baptism is
with Her no mere form, but an amazing reality.
She holds, therefore, that Election is into the Body
Mystical, is into high ecclesiastical privileges on
earth, which, if they are used rightly, will enable
a man to reach life eternal hereafter ; but which,
* The Holy Spirit, on the Day of Pentecost, fell not on indi-
viduals as such, but on the Body of the Church. This indwelling
presence of the Holy Spirit makes the Church something different
from a mere company of men ; makes It to be an object of faith.
" We do not simply believe that there are persons who call them-
selves Christians; this is a fact which even the heathen know.
We believe beyond this that all members of the Holy Catholic
Church are joined together in one unseen Body by the Presence
of the Holy Ghost," this Body being one with Christ, being His
own Body Mystical.
COMPKOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 1
on the other hand, if they are not used rightly,
will not insure him salvation. While, therefore,
the Protestant idea is that the elect are identical
with the finally saved, the Church's idea is that
"the elect are identical with the baptized;" that
Election has, therefore, only mediate and not im-
mediate reference to everlasting salvation, since
some of the Baptized will be saved and some will
not.
For we claim that God's great Church is one
and continuous, not merely from Christ, but from
the Fall itself down to the present time ; that it
was first Patriarchal in form, then Jewish, and
finally Christian ; that the scheme of Election (if
I may be permitted to use such a phrase) was
adopted at the Call of Abraham ; that the Jews
were God's elect people, some of them making
their calling and election sure by using their high
ecclesiastical privileges and helps aright, while
others failed to do so, and failed, therefore, of the
ultimate though not immediate end of their elec-
tion. We claim that, when God changed the form
of His Church visible, from Jewish to Christian,
from National to Catholic, He did not change
His idea of Election. The Aaronic ministry was
changed to the Apostolic ; the bloody features of
the Church's Altar were stricken out, leaving only
the bread and wine,* " the meat-offering and the
* The altar became a new power under the hand of Christ, for
He gave to it His Real Presence, with which it had never been
endowed before.
62 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM
drink-offering ; " circumcision was changed to bap-
tism ; but God's Elect were still the members of
His Church, good, bad, and indifferent. We claim
that, as in Jewish times, so now, God calls upon
His Elect, each and all, to make their Election
sure by using their privileges and divinely-given
helps in the Church aright ; we claim that as the
Jews, good, bad, and indifferent, were addressed
as the Elect, so likewise the Apostles addressed
all the members of the Ephesian, the Corinthian,
the Roman, the Philippian and the Colossian
Church, good, bad, and indifferent, as the Elect ;
and furthermore, that the Bible warns us, that
every individual branch in Christ that beareth
not fruit, although in Christ, although baptized
into His Body, although of the Elect, will be cut
off eventually and not attain to salvation. "We
claim, therefore, that the Church, the great Catho-
lic Body Mystical, the divinely-given means of as-
sistance, is a most important factor, bearing upon
the salvation of souls ; important because to be
grafted into it by baptism is to be grafted into
Christ ; important, from the aids it renders the
sinner by its Rites, Ordinances, Ministry, and
Sacraments, as he toils along his hard way toward
salvation. With us, therefore, Election is gen-
eric;* the Election is the body of the Churcli
* " Furthermore," says the XVIIth Article, " we must receive
God's promises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in
Holy Scripture." Generally, \. e. not, "For the most part," but,
as opposed to particularly or individually ; not usually, but uni-
COMPKOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. #3
Catholic. With the Protestant sects, Election is
individual.
You sometimes hear the phrase, " E"o church
without a Bishop." I do not mean to deny this.
But I would direct your attention away from this
as a superficial point, and beneath it to this ques-
tion of Election, as after all the Articulus Eccle-
sioB stantis vel cadentis.
Now, whichever side is right and I do not
propose to discuss this point you cannot fail to
perceive at once that here is a very radical differ-
ence between the two ; a difference in accordance
with which a hundred and one subsequent ques-
tions are decided the question of the ministry,
the question of the sacraments, the entire question
of the Church Visible. For, if Election be of sep-
arate individuals to life eternal, irrespective of
any ecclesiastical means, what do you want of a
great Visible Church Catholic on earth, with its
regular Apostolic Ministry, with its Kites, with
its identical Life running all the way through
time, God-given and Divine ? That Church dis-
appears at once from your necessities. She is no
longer needed with Her baptism as a medium of
union between the Sinner and Christ, and Her
Eucharist as a life-nourisher. But, on the con-
trary, the idea of a Church invisible, consisting
of all holy persons in all denominations, and even
vcrsally, or better, genetically ; that is to say, as concerning classes
of persons. The word employed in the Latin form of the Article
is generaliter, not plerumquc.
(54: THE FAILURE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
out of them, takes Her place. I say " out of
them ; " for Holy Baptism is either what I have
designated it, an amazing reality, or else it is
nothing. Under the Protestant idea of Elec-
tion it becomes immaterial to the individual, ex-
cept from policy or taste's sake, what form of
Church organization he adopts. For, at any rate,
he is elected, aside from any earthly appliances,
directly to salvation. If the Methodists deny
this, then with them Election amounts to nothing
at all ; there is no such thing as Election. But
alas for this ; the whole Bible, Old and New Tes-
tament, is full of an Election, a selection of some
kind. While to us the whole earthly appliance
of the Church is no mere matter of taste, but is
divinely given as the best possible means for
man's assistance and is therefore sacred ; to the
Protestant a visible form of the Church becomes
a matter of mere human propriety. In his in-
tense individualism, all organizations as Protes-
tant corporate bodies are logically unnecessary.
It becomes immaterial whether he has the Apos-
tolic line of ministerial succession or not. All
that is really wanted is for some one, whether or-
dained at all or not makes no difference, to tell
the sinner " to come to Christ " in some indefinite
way. If he is elect, he will be saved ; if he is not
elect, all the Church Catholics, and all the di-
vinely-given Ministries and Sacraments in the
world will not mend the matter a whit for him.
Thus the whole Protestant system of individual-
COMPEOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. (35
ism, with its destruction of the Church and Her
Ministry and Rites and Ways, takes the place of
the great Catholic idea of the organic Church, as
a part of God's plan wrought out in Christ to
help the sinner in making his calling and election
sure. With us the Church comes in as a medium
of union with Christ ; with the Protestant as an
interference.
For fifteen hundred years after Christ there
had been four factors in the scheme of salvation,
viz. : God, the God-man Christ, His Body Mys-
tical or Church, and the sinner. The sinner
was, by baptism, grafted into the Body Mystical
or Church, and thus made one with Christ;
and by the Holy Eucharist fed with Him; and
being one with the Son, was made one with the
Father also. For first, Father and Son are one ;
second, God and Man are one in Christ ; third,
Christ and His Church are one ; and lastly, the
Sinner becomes one with the whole by the uni-
ting element of baptism. But at the Reforma-
tion, Protestantism, consistent with its idea of
individual Election to eternal life, struck out the
Church; and this was exactly what our Church
did not do. With that third factor gone, there
was at once a gap between the sinner and Christ.
How, now, was the sinner to be made one with
Christ ? Why, Protestantism substituted the pro-
cess of individual experiencing of religion with
the whole revival system ; and so sought to bridge
the gap between each separate individual and
QQ THE FAILUKE OF PROTESTANTISM.
Christ. And when, without the actual sacra-
mental bands, he falls away, they are forced to
bring to bear the machinery again for " a revival
of religion in his heart."
Now, the question is not before us, whether
the sinner can gain, by that process, the real, the
actual, though supernatural, union with Christ,
whereby " the twain become one flesh ; " or
whether it is only that abstract union of consent,
which exists between friend and friend. Better
the latter, than nothing at all. But there is an-
other very important point which is before us,
and that is the logical effect of this system upon
sacraments. For, if the individual can either
make himself, or become one with Christ under
that process, you will see that the importance of
baptism at once sinks away ; because the main
work of uniting the sinner to Christ has all been
done without it, and prior to it ; and baptism, as
a subsequent rite, sinks to a mere form, simply
to mark distinction between one set of men and
another ; a form, which the highly logical society
of Quakers get along very well without. Again,
if the individual can bridge the gap and become
one with Christ, regardless of the I>ody Mystical,
what does he want of the Holy Communion as a
visible means to supply him with the strengthen-
ing sustenance of Christ's nature ? He can feed
directly upon Christ, all in the way of immedia-
lion, all in the way of nature, not of mediation ;
all in the way of nationalism, not of Christianity.
COMPBOMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. (37
For I do not desire, in these solemn and vital
questions, to disguise what I mean. Strike out
the Sacraments, strike out the Church Catholic as
Christ's Body Mystical, as the Outward Means of
conveying Inward Graces; strike out the Apos-
tolic Ministry, and you have struck a fatal blow
at the whole doctrine of Mediation between man
and God. You have sounded the trumpet for
Immediation. You do not, as some excellent
people fancy, start an issue between Catholic
Christianity and a merely spiritual kind of Chris-
tianity. Your issue is nothing short of the life or
eventual death of Christianity itself. "What does
the man want, I repeat, of the Holy Eucharist,
except as a mere memorial to quicken a memory
of a past tragedy on Calvary? A result which
preaching, or even his own meditations before a
picture, or better, a crucifix, could do as well.
The fact is, with the striking out of the Church,
you have even such relics of what is Churchly as
are retained by Protestantism, to wit, its sacra-
ments, reduced to mere ordinances to forms of
not very much importance after all, and you have
any specified line of ministry to administer those
sacraments, a mere impertinence between the sin-
ner and God. Away with your Apostolic Minis-
try then ! says Protestantism ; it is no more valid
than any other ! And Protestantism is entirely
logical, too, when it says so. Away with your
altars, says the great preacher of Brooklyn ; the
private Christian layman can set up bread and
(38 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
wine before him in his closet, and gazing upon it
can make as valid a Eucharist! and the great
preacher is logical and loyal to the principles of
Protestantism when he says so. Away with min-
isterial baptism, say the Se-Baptists ; let the lay-
man apply the water to himself, and it is as valid
a baptism !
But, did Christ solemnly ordain rites of com-
parative unimportance, and found a ministry,
promising to be with it to the end of the world,
the breaking up or continuance of which was a
matter of small moment ? If not, then there must
be something wrong in the point that lies behind
and below, that involves all such subsequent
destruction. Once restore, however, the lost fac-
tor of the Church Catholic, as God's appointed
Outward Means of inward graces, and sacraments
and ministry all naturally take their places as
valuable, nay, as indispensable gifts to mankind.
Now, simply in itself considered, what indeed
is the difference whether we have a ministry in
three orders or in one ? It would seem to be a
very small affair either way. And the Church,
which stands stiffly for Her Bishops, and refuses
to recognize other lines of ministry, would appear
to be making a vast deal out of a very unessential
matter. But when we consider that there is some-
thing beneath this question of the Ministry, which
is really, in itself, of vast importance, and that out
of it the question of the Apostolic Ministry grows,
then the fact, whether or not we are to preserve
COMPROMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. (59
that ministry, mounts logically into vast impor-
tance. Election, and whether it is of the individ-
ual to eternal life, or whether it is of the individ-
ual into a great system arranged by God Himself,
to be, on the whole, the best possible aid to free
mortals in struggling toward salvation, is a matter
of the utmost importance to dying souls. It is
nothing short of two different modes of salvation
O
through Christ, which are presented to the world ;
the one the individual mode, leaping over the
Church, the other the churchly mode ; two dif-
ferent modes, each logically destructive of the
other. It is nothing short of two different Christs,
one with a Body Mystical on earth, the other
without it ; and finally, two different Gods that
are presented to the world. For in its last result
the Protestant God is essentially the God of the
Sabellian Heresy.
Thus the Apostolic Ministry, as a vital part of
that system arranged by God, to be the best help for
the sinner in striving to make his calling and elec-
tion sure, is grounded and rooted in the doctrine
of Election. You cannot pull up a tree without
tearing up the earth all around it. The ministry,
considered merely in itself, may be nothing ; the
sacraments, and whether they are administered by
a divinely authorized set of men or not, may be
nothing in themselves ; but in their vital connec-
tion with Election, with that subject which gives
a differing aspect to the whole Christianity which
is preached, the Ministry and Sacraments mount,
70 THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
I repeat, into questions of the gravest importance.
It is not strange, it is entirely logical and consist-
ent, that the Protestant sects, with their view of
individual Election, should set lightly by any
given line of ministry, and be perfectly willing to
interchange pulpits indiscriminately. But those
among us who tamper with the Ministry and
Sacraments of the Church, who set lightly by
them, are tampering with, nay, they are upheav-
ing and tearing to pieces the whole ground, and
altering the entire aspect of Christianity as pre-
sented to the sinner and to the w r orld, by the
Church.
You will perceive, then, my friends, that
whichever view is right, the Protestant view of
Election is, at any rate, absolutely destructive of
the whole Church system to which we hold ; that
as we hold to the other view, it naturally carries
us into different conclusions from the Protestant,
touching the Ministry, the Sacraments, all the
rites and ways, nay the very existence itself of the
Church Yisible; and that, while all the sects,
however differing among themselves on unessen-
tial points, are fundamentally at one among them-
selves, we are separated from them all at the very
start by a gulf, not only enormously wide, but
enormously deep, and logically incapable of being
bridged.
However we may agree with the sects in pro-
testing against certain errors peculiar to Rome, we
hold that, at any rate, that fact is not the test by
COMPROMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 71
which we should be classified. For we still main-
tain, that notwithstanding the unfortunate name
of " Protestant Episcopal," fixed upon us as an
incubus by the notion of a dozen or two gentle-
men (to whom, indeed, we are indebted, under
God, for very much, for which we are thankful),
about the beginning of this century, when the
Church in America was marvellously small, we
still maintain, I say, that notwithstanding this, we
are not one of the sects, that we never have left
the great body of the Catholic Church, and that,
God helping us, we never will. But that ever, as
in the past so in the future, the voice of the
Churchman shall be raised in the Creed, " I BE-
LIEVE ONE CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH."
Even at the risk of exhausting your patience,
I ask a few more moments of your attention for a
word of warning and of counsel.
It takes no prophetic eye to see that the long
night which closed upon the world at the sixteenth
century, the long night of mere religious negation,
is about over, and that the dawn of religious
affirmation, of positive assertion, is breaking again
upon the world. Earnest men, tired of being
longer told what they shall protest against, what
they shall not believe, are rising by thousands
with the demand upon their lips, " Tell me what
I shall believe ! " "We have reached the opening
of a tremendous religious crisis in America. A
new type of man is coming up with demands
other than those born of the mountains of
72 THE FAILUKE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
Switzerland and Scotland. "We are beginning
to feel all round beneath us, as a people, tlie
ripplings of a mighty tidal wave, which, lifting
us, is about to tear our anchors up from the
ground of Protestantism, and, if we are not care-
ful, to sweep us en 'masse into Komanism. The
reaction has already begun in Boston. How
kindly they are beginning to look upon Rome at
the spot where all great movements of American
mind begin ! If you would know which way the
storm is going to blow, look at the straws in Bos-
ton. The fact is, the position of Protestantism is
thoroughly undermined all round about us, and
the wary old man of the Vatican knows it. Those
two articles in the Atlantic Monthly breathe un-
consciously the spirit of prophecy. How has all
this come to pass 2 Thus : for nearly a century,
now, the cry that has been going up from the
laity of all denominations to the pulpit is, " Give
us no doctrinal sermons ; we simply want practi-
cal sermons, sermons that will touch the heart."
And what has been the result ? Why, through-
out this broad land the people everywhere are left
to-day without a positive faith of any kind. Sev-
enty years ago, men still believed something ; you
would not have found, then, an orthodox Con-
gregationalist exchanging pulpits with a Unita-
rian, nor a Presbyterian with a Methodist. Fifty
years ago you would not have found a Baptist
coquetting with a Unitarian. Nay, twenty years
ago the high Unitarian even shut his pulpit-door
against the Parkerite. But tempora mutantur.
COMPROMISE WITH SECTS IMPOSSIBLE. 73
For the want of positive doctrinal teaching (and
Protestantism is in its essence destructive of it, it
has all come naturally to pass), positive Christian
faith is banished from the land. The faith of
America to-day is summed up in this one article,
" I believe it is not necessary to believe any thing
definite." Now, you may hold the mind of man
in the mass at that point for a while, but not
long. It is, after all, the nature of the human
mind to crave something positive. It will at last
react, with a violence of oscillation proportioned
to the distance and height to which you have
drawn it away.
How stands, then, our beloved country to-day ?
Why, thus : first, without any definite faith, and
unequipped with an argument why it should not
believe this theological point, and why it should
believe that ; and, secondly, with simply a violent
prejudice against any thing that is Romish. Now,
when Rome makes a convert, she teaches that
convert what to believe and why to believe it.
And when against American Protestantism, thus
emptied of positive faith, unsupplied with theo-
logical arguments, and shielded only with brittle
prejudices, you bring to bear the positive faith
and arguments of Rome, it is like smiting a hol-
low globe of glass with a boulder of rock. It is
the easiest of all things to break down mere un-
informed prejudice.
Now, this land, I take it, ' does not want
Romish errors ; but it is rising hungry for a posi-
4
74 THE FAILUEE OF PBOTESTANTISM.
tive faith. Christian union meetings, to make
headway against Rome, are not the cure of the
great disease of the day. That disease can only
be met by a positive faith.
Our Church, as a national branch of the great
Church Catholic, is not founded upon negations.
She is founded upon affirmations. She, as well
as Rome, has a positive faith, and not only posi-
tive, but clear of any Romish errors. And, un-
less we rouse to the danger of the day, and with
our positive faith go forth to take this land, noth-
ing will save it from Roman Catholicism. Said
that remarkable seer, De Tocqueville, years ago,
of us, " America will, sooner or later, lie prostrate,
the easy captive of Rome ; because regulars al-
ways beat the militia."
Our duty as loyal children of the Church is
plain. "We have no need, as we move among the
denominations, to apologize for our Fair Mother.
Too much of this, alas, already ! Too much of
the obsequious to our inferiors ! " He who ex-
cuses, accuses," and. but confirms disesteem, in-
stead of commanding respect. "We are not almost
like the denominations, and, therefore, to be tol-
erated by them in our peculiarities of written
prayers and vested clergy. We are Catholic, and
fundamentally different. As you go forth, then,
into the world as sons and daughters of the
Church, sound no uncertain trumpet, but let your
motto be, I BELIEVE IN ONE, HOLT, CATHOLIC
AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH.
IV.
PROTESTANTISM LOGICALLY DESTRUC-
TIVE OF CHRISTIANITY.
And many false Prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. -
ST. MATT. xxiv. 11.
THE New Testament is full of warnings against
subtle attacks that were to be made in subsequent
times upon Christianity. We are not only told
that some of these attacks would be made by open
enemies, but that there would be others made by
avowed friends. And we are forewarned that
the latter would be of such nature as to deceive
even the elect were it possible. It is our distinct
charge that Protestantism is one of the latter class
of attacks. Its adherents are, of course, friends
of Christ; but they are mistaken friends; they
know not what they do. It is our warning that
the sons and daughters of the Church avoid all
Protestant religious systems.
We bring forward an additional charge to-day,
viz., that wherever you meet with a region of coun-
try that has been burned over and over again with
the fires of " Revivalism," there an almost utter
76 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
and very general indifference to religion eventual-
ly supervenes. We look not so much at the im-
mediate results of the revival system in making
this additional charge ; they are deceptive. But
we look to the final fruits. The whole system is
a stupendous blunder. But even the immediate
results are not to be passed over lightly.
Take the great revival of 1859-'60 in Ireland.
What is the testimony of the Rev. Isaac Nelson, a
Presbyterian minister in Belfast ? He frankly says,
" The revival was made to rest for its reality on cer-
tain extraordinary conversions, which have since
proved false and wicked ; the consequence being an
immensely increased immorality in Ulster. Now,"
he says, " will Dr. McCorle meet us on this asser-
tion, or put it to the test of statistics ? We know he
will not ; he dare not. The morality of the Pres-
byterian people has been ruined by the Revival."
Such, my brethren, was the immediate result, one
of the Revivalists himself being the judge.
Let me give you another extract concerning
that same Revival ; it is this, viz., " Many of the
earlier Revivalists, whose mental calibre could not
withstand the excitement of the movement, have
found a permanent home in lunatic asylums ;
while multitudes of others, puffed up with spirit-
ual pride, have fallen into worse diseases than that
of the mind. Many who, three years ago, were
distinguished as Revivalist preachers of the purest
and most sanctified kind, are now drunkards,
thieves, and immoral livers ; and one to our cer-
PKOTESTANTISM DESTEOYS CHEISTIANITY. 77-
tain knowledge is now lying in prison, charged
with being concerned in a late cowardly and bar-
barous murder. Since the Eevival began seduc-
tion has prevailed to an extent never known be-
fore, as the large increase in the number of ille-
gitimate children fully proves. Has drunkenness
or immorality decreased in the district where it
chiefly prevailed ? The very contrary is the fact.
Judged therefore by its results, the Revival move-
ment of 1859-'60 must be considered not as ' a re-
freshing stream of God's grace,' as some have not
hesitated profanely to call it, but as a withering
blight which has parched the ground which it
seemed to refresh, and has left behind it fruits
the full bitterness of which will never be truly
known till the day of doom."
But I do not intend in this sermon to dwell at
all upon this point of the searing effect of Protes-
tant Revivals. I merely allude to it, and return
to one of the main charges, viz. : that wherever
the fundamental principles of Protestantism have
taken deep root in the mind of a thoughtful peo-
ple, there, after a number of generations, infidelity
prevails to a very general to an alarming extent.
The charge is, that the logical conclusion of the
fundamental principles of Protestantism is Ration-
alism, and that the historical issue in the case of
Germany, Switzerland, America, and other Prot-
estant lands, substantiates the logical anticipa-
tion.
You perceive at once the seriousness of this
Y8 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
indictment. If it is true, then Protestantism is
what I have charged it to be, a heresy. If it is
true, it is not a subject to be provoked about ; it
is 'a matter to be grieved over ; for multitudes of
good men are identified with Protestantism. If
it is true, Protestantism should be avoided by every
one who loves his brother-man, and the cause of
our Blessed Saviour. Its houses of worship should
never be entered by the sons and daughters of the
Church. If it is not true, then it is for Protes-
tants to let us know why, which they have es-
sayed but failed to do hitherto. If it is true, it is
something you ought to know and not to turn
aside from. If it is true, it is criminal for the
Christian to ignore it. It is too important a
charge to be prejudged, and too important to be
pushed aside because it is an unpleasant subject.
If individuals will not hear, the world is hearing,
and will hear, and will decide the issue.
There are two counts, then, in the indictment,
which I dwell on this morning : First, that, as a
t fact, infidelity prevails very widely in lands which
once were Protestant. Secondly, that this is be-
cause the logical issue of the Protestant dogma is
nationalism.
Let us consider the first count. Permit me to
read to you a little " Account of Religion in G-e-
neva, Switzerland." It is written by a Protestant
minister, and is as follows, viz. :
"The statements made by Mr. J. Wright, a
Unitarian, are, alas, too true ! viz., that the sue-
PROTESTANTISM DESTROYS CHRISTIANITY. 79
cessors of the very magistrates wh.0 condemned
Servetus, of the pastors who excommunicated him
as the denier of the Trinity, now themselves unite
in rejecting that doctrine ! The faith of the great
churches of Geneva is Unitarianism. The system
of John Calvin is almost extinct in the town where
he was once the spiritual tyrant. There are be-
lievers in the divinity of our blessed Lord Jesus
existing in Geneva, it is true, who are divided into
several parties, but the national church of Geneva
is Unitarian. The number of inhabitants in Ge-
neva amounts to about 64,000 ; among them are
about 40,000 Unitarians, 18,000 Roman Catho-
lics, and the 'miserable balance only are left to
Protestant Trinitarianisin"
"We all know how things have turned out af-
ter three centuries of Protestantism in Germany.
There is no need of testimony on that point.
We all know how it is in New England, and
wherever New England emigration has spread.
But let me read you an extract in illustration.
Not many months since, the Hartford Courant
informed us that "the Congregational ministers
of Connecticut have thoroughly canvassed their
parishes to ascertain the actual religious condition
of the State. The result was unexpected. In one
hundred 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 dis-
tance from the centre of the towns. It prevails
more in sparsely-settled farming districts than in
80 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
the manufacturing; villages. The Committee on
O O
Home Evangelization say in their published re-
port:
" ' 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
abandon some thought of God, and some respect
for their own religious observances. Uniformly
the districts most utterly given over to desolation
are districts occupied by a population purely na-
tive American. A similar state of things is re-
ported to exist in some parts of Massachusetts.' "
Now, brethren, I am not, of course, defending
Roman Catholicism. But it is at least singular to
notice that of the two evils in Connecticut, Ro-
manism and Protestantism, that which with all its
errors is still Catholic, is, according to the official
testimony of Protestants themselves, the lesser evil.
Now, let us see what is going on among the
Presbyterians. Some years ago there was a long
article in the New York Observer (Old School) in
eulogy of an excellent " Elect Lady," who was es-
pecially commended for knowing the Westminster
Catechism by heart, and teaching it carefully to
her descendants. The Observer then went on to
say : " There are few among us now, fewer in pro-
portion than in previous years, of whom such a
fact can be affirmed ! What is the reason ? Is
the catechism obsolete? Is it a bad instruction
for our children 1 " Now, brethren, this is a very
PROTESTANTISM DESTROYS CHRISTIANITY, gl
important confession, showing the downward ten-
dency of Protestantism in the Presbyterian ranks.
Nor is this confined to Presbyterianism in the
United States. At the antipodes it is as bad or
worse. Permit me to read to you the following
item from a dissenting paper in England :
"From some proceedings before the Presby-
tery of Tasmania on the 22d of April, it appears
that one of their number, the Rev. Mr. Robert-
son, is charged with entertaining unsound views
on Baptism and the Lord's Supper, having a ten-
dency to Unitarianism. The Presbytery declined
by a majority to file a libel on Mr. Robertson.
The Rev. Mr. J. Stone then said that he and
those who thought with him had determined, in
case a majority of the Presbytery acquitted Mr.
Robertson, to apply to the Home Government to
withhold the grant from the Church of Scotland in
this colony, on the ground that the majority of the
Presbytery had apostatized from the faith of their
fathers. The Rev. Dr. Turnbull and the Rev. J.
"Walker concurred in the statement of Mr. Storie ;
and Mr. "Walker remarked that the Presbytery
must either ~be purified or swept away altogether"
Look at Harvard University, once Trinitarian,
but descending, after a while, into Unitarianism.
Yale College was established, if I mistake not,
owing to the Unitarianism of Harvard. But, at
any rate, years ago, President Clap, on entering
upon his duties at Yale, " publicly acknowledged
not only the "Westminster Catechism and Confes-
4*
82 THE FAILUKE OF PROTEST ANTISM.
sion of Faith and the Saybrook Platform, but also
the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds as
agreeing with the word of God." The gradual
but steady degeneracy of the Protestant system
would, however, work out its own results. And so
we find that President Stiles differed from his
predecessor. Dr. Stiles would not accept the
office of President until the corporation had abro-
gated the tests instituted by President Clap, with
the exception of the Saybrook Platform. The
Saybrook Platform held its own till 1822, when all
tests were abrogated. " Thus in regard to the
formal teaching of theology in the ' Church of
Christ in Yale College,' as required by statute, it
began with full, definite, established formulas of
Faith, and ended in nothing." But the evi-
dences of the inevitable descent of Protestantism
from the high standards of faith and practice,
which it carried with it out of the Church, are
varied as well as numerous. Time was, for in-
stance, when the vast majority of Protestants held
it to be right to baptize their infants. The decay
of infant baptism among them is another token
that they are sinking from the faith of their
fathers. The annual report (1860) of the Congre-
gational General Association of Connecticut in-
forms us that there were " many instances of Con-
gregational societies, numbering their members
by hundreds, but having not one infant baptism
through the year." But I might fill this sermon
with similar extracts.
PKOTESTANTISM DESTROYS CHRISTIANITY. 83
I pass on to lay before you reasons, addi-
tional to those presented in previous sermons,
why the logical result of Protestantism is Kational-
ism.
It is patent that, in Massachusetts and else
where, whole orthodox Congregational Societies
have gone down as bodies into Unitarianism.
Now, if individuals only had gone, they might be
considered as eccentric cases. But where societies
have gone as bodies, pastor and the majority of
his people, it shows that there was some logical
necessity about it.
If, too, this descent of Presbyterianism into
Congregationalism, and of Trinitarian Congrega-
tionalism into old-fashioned Unitarianism, and of
old high Unitarianism into Parkerism, was only
to be found in isolated cases, or in one section of
a country, or even in one country, or in one cen-
tury only, we might think it had happened from
individual peculiarity, or from local causes, or
from national idiosyncrasy. But when the evi-
dences of the grand descent are everywhere where
Protestantism has been, and not even confined to
one century, there must be some logical necessity
about it to account for it. Why, look at England
in 1656. Protestantism was at first Presbyterian
there. But the English mind was a logical mind,
and Presbyterianism was not long in giving birth
to Congregationalism (or Independentism), which
grew in Cromwell's day into far larger propor-
tions than those of the mother that bore it.
84: THE EAILUEE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
Everywhere we find every thing indicating the
downward movement.
I proceed, then, to give a reason, additional to
those set forth in previous sermons, for this
gravity.
The great truths which distinguish Christian-
ity are the Mediation, the Priesthood, the Royal-
ty, and the Sacrifice of Christ. These truths have
their natural, visible expressions in the Church
Apostolic and Catholic. "What are those expres-
sions? First, how does the spiritual fact of
Christ's Mediation find its corresponding expres-
sion in the Church? Why, in all those peculiari-
ties which come in between the sinner and God,
and which are intermediate, not for the purpose
of sundering but of uniting the two. There are,
for instance, the sacraments and ordinances of the
Church ; the separation of the holy altar from the
nave by a railing ; the fact that the layman ap-
proaches to the rail and no farther ; and, in fact,
all the intermediate rites and ceremonies of the
Church. Secondly, how does the spiritual fact
of Christ's Priesthood find its visible expression
in the Church ? Why, in the apostolic clergy on
earth, who act for the laity ; who alone can con-
secrate and administer the Blessed Eucharist.
Thirdly, where, in the Church, do we find the
visible expression of Christ's Royalty, His au-
thority as King ? We find it in the government
that God hath set over His Church Militant ; in
the Rector as the governor of the Parish, and the
PEOTESTANTISM DESTEOYS CHEISTIANITY. 5
Bishop as the governor of the Rectors and laity.
Then, fourthly, the Sacrifice of Christ finds its
visible expression in the Blessed Eucharist.
ISTow, in every family the children are in a
natural school ; as from earliest infancy they look
up to their earthly father, they are gaining impres-
sions touching what God must be as their Heav-
enly Father ; they are learning to look up to, rev-
erence, and obey Him. Just so God would set
us all in the school of the Church ; that, trained
in that school, and under the constant influence
of the four visible expressions I have mentioned,
we may not lose our hold of the prime facts of
the Mediation, the Priesthood, the Royalty, and
the Sacrifice of Christ.
Now, Protestantism has striven to turn the
world out of that school ; and what wonder if, in
the end, its adherents lose knowledge of, and be-
lief in, those prime facts !
For let us try the effect of the destruction of
any one of the four visible expressions. The cry
of the Protestant is, " I want no visible Church ;
I want nothing of the kind to come in between
me and God ; I want no rails at chancels ; I want
no communion-table shut up in an apartment by
itself ; bring it down into the congregation ; your
whole visible scheme of intermediation is in the
way ; it is impertinent ; I can and will go direct
to God myself without your cumbersome church-
ly machinery ; I want no set lessons from Scrip-
ture selected for my contemplation on set days ;
86 . THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
I can select for myself ; I want no days set apart
by the Church in which I must meditate on cer-
tain truths ; I can think of any of those truths at
any time." And so Protestantism, borne on by its
spirit of liberty, so called, clears away the whole.
You can go direct to God, indeed, Mr. Protes-
tant? Our scheme of visible intermediation in
the way and impertinent ? Ah, brethren, do you
not see that this strikes at the principle of any
mediation whatever f By such assertions Protes-
tantism yields the vital principle itself to Ration-
alism. And it is not at all strange that, in the
hands of such giants as Beecher, Channing, and
Parker, the Protestant mind should slowly sink
into avowed Rationalism. Here is the explana-
tion of the fact, that thousands of young and
middle-aged men, sons and grandsons of the old-
fashioned Protestants, are either secret doubters
or avowed skeptics ; and that our very churches
are crowded with semi-Deists, who chafe under
any preaching save the preaching of glittering
generalities about morality and natural goodness.
The fact is, in abandoning God's Yisible Church
Catholic, Protestants have abandoned the vital
outwork of the doctrine of Mediation the sole
defence of that doctrine ; and with the outwork
gone, the city itself falls. It is fatal to touch that
in the Church Yisible which is harmonious with,
and which expresses and conserves the great truth
of, the Mediation.
Try now the effect of the destruction of the
PEOTESTANTISM DESTEOYS CHRISTIANITY. 37
outwork or bulwark of the Priesthood of Christ,
the second great spiritual fact of Christianity.
Strike down the Apostolic ministry of the Yisible
Church Catholic, and you equally expose the
spiritual fact of the Priesthood of Christ. And
thus laid bare and unprotected, it also falls before
the attacks of Kationalism. Let us look at this a
little :
The Protestant cry is, " There is no such thing
as a visible Priesthood on earth; the ministry
need not originate from the apostles alone, and
come down in , the regular succession which the
Catholics claim; it originates as well from the
people, in whom primarily its powers are lodged."
In other words, as a recent writer says, " The
people and not the apostles are the true ultimate
source of ecclesiastical and ministerial power;"
the Christian ministry, according to the Protes-
tant cry, " are not a distinct order of men ; and
hence there is no such thing as a Christian Priest-
hood in distinction from the people at large."
" Every man his own priest to God," is the popu-
lar cry.
Every man his own priest to God, indeed, Mr.
Protestant? Nothing between God and man?
Ah, beloved, do you not perceive that Protestant-
ism, though it may not yield all at once the naked
fact of the spiritual priesthood of Christ, has,
after all, by this fatal step, yielded the principle
of any priesthood whatever ? Do you not see
that, with the vital principle gone, with the
88 THE FAILUKE OF PROTESTANTISM.
practical denial of the principle rooted in their
minds, the mere intellectual notion of Christ's
Priesthood, which they still retain for a while, has
been undermined, and will sooner or later fall, if
not in the first generation, then in the second,
third, or fourth ? It must logically fall, and, alas,
it does fall practically ! It will not do to tamper
with that fundamental feature of God's Church,
namely, the Apostolic ministry. It will not do to
raise to a level with it a ministry whose ultimate
source of authority is laymen or unauthorized
presbyters, instead of the Holy Apostles ; for, as
the fountain cannot rise higher than its spring, the
rearing of such a man-made ministry is the break-
ing down of all ministry to a level with laymen ;
and this is simply and solely and logically a blow
at the cherished Priesthood of Christ Itself.
A similar course of remark might be made on
the government of the Church, which is the vis-
ible expression on earth of the spiritual truth of
the Royalty of Christ, and which is the school in
which God in His wisdom has set us, that we
may learn and not lose the knowledge of that
prime fact. And a similar course of remark might
be made on the Blessed Eucharist as the conserver
of the fact of the Sacrifice of Christ. But enough
has been said to show how Protestantism is logi-
cally destructive of Christianity.
Think of the millions it has drawn away from
Christ ; think how it has sapped the foundations
of Christianity ! My friends, these are words not
PEOTESTANTISM DESTEOYS CHEISTIANITY. 89
calculated to be popular ; but they are words that
need to be spoken. When some poor bewildered
mind goes over to Home, some Churchmen roll up
eyes of holy horror ; but they forget the vastly
more serious events that are taking place in the
opposite direction. "We are not so much in dan-
ger of superstition as we are of skepticism. I
would have you mark this, my beloved, I would
have you meditate upon it, I would have you re-
peat it to your friends, viz., that those exceptional
cases that have gone to Rome are as a single star
to all the myriads of stars in comparison with the
thousands who have fallen innocently and uncon-
sciously into the fatal drift of Protestantism, and
been sucked down at last into the rushing swirl
of Unitarianism and the dreadful vortex of In-
fidelity.
As I make this assertion, you will not under-
stand me as saying that it is the first generation
which passes out of the Church into Protestantism
that runs this entire career into Rationalism. It
is only here and there that you find a person with
brain enough to pass the entire distance from the
top to the bottom of the logical slope. I could
point you to one, whom we all know by reputa-
tion, that started as a high Presbyterian, and has
now reached the point of low Congregationalism,
which is but a shade above high Unitarianism.
And then I could point you to another, now
dead, whose fame was world-wide, that started as
a young man at the point of high Unitarianism,
90 THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM.
and ran the rest of the logical career into Ea-
tionalism. Such, I say, are rare cases. Nay, it
is, in general, only successive generations that run
the full career. The mass of mind moves slowly
down a logical slope. But man is logical, and
the mass of mind moves surely and inevitably.
The Methodists, as a body, have already in one
hundred years moved too far down the slope, and
gathered too much momentum, ever to come back
to the Catholic summit of the hill. Individuals
may get back, but, as a body, Methodism is
doomed.
When^ beloved, a mother, leaving our Church,
goes to Presbyterianism, she thinks she is merely
exchanging one form of Christianity for another ;
that it is, to all intents and purposes, a venial, a
harmless change. She has no idea that she has
leaped the immense gulf that lies between Chris-
tianity and incipient Rationalism. But when she
has taken the step, what has she done ? She has
done all she can to give her children a heritage
of Congregationalism, her grandchildren a heri-
tage of Unitarianism, and her great-grandchildren
a heritage of Infidelity.
There are great warnings against Rome. Well,
Rome is an evil. But it is time the solemn word
was spoken, and spoken boldly, of warning against
the far worse evil of Protestantism. It is time
men understood that Protestantism is an awful
and most dangerous heresy.
V.
PROTESTANTISM THE SECOND GREAT
HERESY OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA.
" But there were false prophets also among the people, even
as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring
in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them,
and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall
follow their pernicious ways ; by reason of whom the way of
truth shall be evil spoken of." 2 PETER ii. 1, 2.
IN fulfilment of this prophecy, many heresies
have arisen and swarmed around Christianity.
Each has had its venomous sting. But there are
three monstrous forms of the brood, before which
all the others are quite insignificant. The first of
these was Arianism ; the second was Protestant-
ism ; and the third is modern " Criticism," repre-
sented by Strauss, Renan, Colenso, and others.
All other forms of heresy struck at the super-
structure and pinnacles of Christianity, but these
three enormous heresies have their bad preemi-
nence because they struck or strike at Her very
foundations. For if, as I showed in the. second
discourse, the Bible rests on the Church, it is no
less true that Christianity rests on the double sup-
92 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
port of the Church and the Bible. Touch either
of the two, and Her position becomes more than
critical, for She must fall. Permit me to change
the figure. Christianity stands secure behind two
allied armies, viz., the Church and the Bible. As
long as these armies mutually support each other,
and neither of them is broken, Christianity is
safe.
Now, so far as human ingenuity can conceive
at present, there are only three ways by which
Christianity can be exposed from behind Her pro-
tection, rendered helpless, and slain: First, the
Church may be directly attacked; second, the
two allied bodies, viz., the Church and the Bible,
may be set in antagonism with each other; or
third, the Bible may be directly attacked.
Take the first case. The Church, as a visible
organic body, as the Body Mystical of Christ, de-
pends for Her very life upon Christ. Destroy the
God-man within Her, and you have struck down
Her life ; you have reduced Her to a dead body,
and Christianity will fall. This attack was made
by the heresiarch Arius. This attack was the
boldest of the three against Christianity. Suffice
it to say, though Christianity was, humanly speak-
ing, in critical position for years, the attack failed.
Arius did not intend to take the life of Christian-
ity ; but he was none the less an heresiarch for
all his good intentions.
Now take the second case. As Christianity
stood secure behind her two mutually supporting
PKOTESTANTISM A HEEESY. 93
armies, viz., the Church and the Bible, instead of
a direct attack on either army, the two armies
could be set fighting each other ; and so Chris-
tianity become exposed. This was done by Prot-
estantism. This was the meanest mode of attack.
I do not say that Calvin and Luther and Zwinglius
and the rest of them intended to destroy Chris-
tianity any more than Arius did. Yery far from
it. But they were none the less heresiarchs for
that. For, brethren, we are looking at the whole
movement from a stand-point where we can take
in both worlds at once this world and the world
beneath. And we must judge such movements
by their logical and historical results, and not
merely by the good motives of the men who were
engaged in them. It was none the less disastrous
to the patient whose eye was put out, that the
bungling oculist only sought to remove an irri-
tating particle. We must consider the disastrous
effects of the Continental Reformation on the
souls of men to-day, if we would get at the other
cause that was operating in it besides the men
who trod the earth. Protestantism made an ally
of the Bible, and with it flew at the Church to
destroy Her. I do not deny that the Church
needed reforming. But a call for reformation is
very different from a call for destruction. Satan,
however, saw his advantage, and picked his men.
I do not acquit the obstinacy of the Ultra-mon-
tanism of the day. It was maddening to the
other party ; and doubtless Satan had something
94 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
to do with. it. But it was in order that he might
use it to fire up Protestantism as his main engine
of evil. Suffice it to say, Protestantism, making
an ally of the Bible, succeeded, not in reforming
the Church, but in attacking and destroying Her
in many lands. And so we have the sad spectacle
of a prostrate Christianity in those lands.
The Evening Post, in its last evening's issue,
in speaking of the " Aspects of Religious Life in
Germany," says: "A letter on this subject ap-
pears in the Methodist, written by Rev. Abel
Stevens, a leading scholar of his denomination,
who has taken great pains to become familiarly
acquainted with the domestic and inner life of the
people of Germany. He confesses that, after five
visits, and much careful observation, living in
many families, and travelling on foot among the
villages, he does not yet fairly understand their
religious condition." But, brethren, the rest of
the world are beginning to understand it, and to
brand its cause with the mark it deserves. I con-
tinue the quotation : " Their country," says this
reverend gentleman, " is studded with antique
churches; their history is full of religious achieve-
ments ; their traditions full of religious legends ;
their universities rife with religious polemics ; but
there is apparently no religious life in the heart
of the race, if you except the peculiar little parties
of pietists, Moravians, and Methodists, who really
are exceptional to the whole modern genius of the
people. Indifference to all vital religion seems to
PEOTESTANTISM A HERESY. 95
be a characteristic of the mass of the Germanic
race. They appear to have exhausted their old
interest in it, after so many struggles and revolu-
tions of opinion and criticism, and now turn away
froni it as if tired of it, and waiting for something
new as a substitute." He thinks that " religious
indifference is the leading characteristic of the
masses, as free-thinking and materialism are of
the cultivated classes, and that between them re-
ligious life has mostly died out. Few of the men
ever go to church, and few religious forms remain
in families, while Sunday has become a holiday,
on which the bier-garten is the chief place of re-
sort."
Brethren, add Switzerland to Germany, and
call to mind, as a type-fact of the state of things
there, that Calvin's own parish is in the very dregs
of Unitarianism, and that the very pulpit from
which that violent man thundered is now occu-
pied by a Rationalist. Add New England, and
count the " Orthodox Congregational " Societies
that have gone over as bodies to Unitarianism in
the past century, and then count the Unitarian
parishes that have gone down to Ultra-Parkerism.
There are fossil Unitarians in New England ; there
are reactionary Unitarians ; but the real thinkers
and the great body of the laymen are going where
logic points, and are to-day out-Parkering Parker
himself in their denial of Christianity. The latter
class command, at least, our respect for their con-
sistency. The reactionary class may inspire us
96 THE FAILUEE OF PROTESTANTISM.
with hope ; but the fossils are unworthy of men-
tion.
Now, brethren, if Unitarianisrn started simply
with the view of teaching a better idea of God
than had been taught, but without the slightest
design of destroying the Bible, and if it has re-
sulted (as indeed it has) in logically producing a
Theodore Parker school of thought destructive of
the Bible, then it is very evident that Unitarian-
ism, considered as a preserver of the Bible, is a
failure. So, equally, if Protestantism started with
the view of preserving Christianity, but only of
teaching a better system of Christianity than that
taught by the Church Catholic, and if it ends logi-
cally in destroying fundamental Christian truth,
and historically in plunging the vast majority of
thinking men, in the lands where it has had sway,
into skepticism and mere natural religion, then
surely Protestantism as a system for the preserva-
tion of Christianity is a consummate failure, an
awful cheat, a delusion for souls. By all sound
logic Protestantism ought to go down into Uni-
tarianism, and then Unitarian ism die out in Par-
kerism and bald Rationalism. Now, if this logical
anticipation stood alone, unfortified by historical
fact, persons might be justified in feeling that,
however fair the logic looked, there might be
some flaw in it somewhere. If, on the other hand,
regardless of any logical anticipation, it had his-
torically happened that peoples, once Protestant,
had each somehow or other become Rationalistic,
PROTESTANTISM A HERESY. 97
then we might be justified in saying that perhaps
it ought not to have been so logically, but that
some other cause came in to send them down and
out of Christianity. But where logic anticipates
the historical issue, and the historical fact con-
firms the logical anticipation, the case is about
closed. If Protestantism has not signally failed
in preserving Christianity, then pray where has
it succeeded ?
Don't point me to advance in science, and edu-
cation, and invention ; all that isn't Protestant-
ism. Electricity, and the needle-gun, and the
education of the masses, and such like, are as con-
sistent with the spirit and prevalence of Catholi-
city as they are with the spirit and prevalence of
Protestantism. Nor do I assert that Protestant-
ism was an unmitigated evil. Satan is always
ready to give away a sixpence worth of good, if
under the cover of such generosity he can gain a
dollar's worth of evil. Then, again, do not re-
gard me as condemning persons. There is a dif-
ference between condemning persons and con-
demning their systems. Persons are to be judged
by their motives ; systems by their results. To
stab Christianity to the heart was the very last
thing Calvin and Luther intended to do. But
that the result of their principles is logically, and
has been historically, what I state, is patent.
That there will be some mere creatures of pre-
judice, and blind as bats ; and that there will be
others moved by social and public position, who
5
98 THE FAILUKE OF PROTESTANTISM.
will not see all this, and who will be either pro
voked at the assertion that Protestantism has
failed, or will for a time pass the matter over
with a supercilious smile, is to be expected. They
are to be pitied. They do not know the earth-
quake forces that are working under them. For I
am stating to you, brethren, simply what thou-
sands upon thousands (I do not exaggerate),
here and across the water, have been feeling for a
long time namely, that Protestantism is Satan
clothed in the garments of light. Brethren, you
are going to see Unitarianism grow into a large
body ; for it is destined to fatten and grow huge
for a time on the carcass of dying Trinitarian
Protestantism. The mission of Unitarianism as a
destroyer is not yet closed on earth.
Thus Arianism attacked one of the foundations
of Christianity, viz., the Church. Protestantism
set the two foundations, viz., Bible and Church,
a-knocking against each other. I repeat, so far
as human ingenuity can at present conceive, only
one more really great heretical antagonist to
Christianity is possible, namely, an antagonist
that shall make a direct assault on the Bible.
This last assault has now been commenced by the
Critical School of France, Germany, and England.
If the first was the boldest attack, and the second
the meanest, this third and last is the most intel-
lectual and respectable. Arianism is dead (for
modern Unitarians are not Arians) ; Protestantism
is dying by inches, and " Criticism " is rising to
PEOTESTANTISM A ELEKESY.- 99
be our real, robust, and dangerous foe. The rise
of the " Critical School " is not strange. Alas,
poor Protestantism, that very Private Judgment,
which she summoned up to rush at and destroy
the Church, now made strong by exercise, and
bold by petting and encouragement, turns to tear
her Bible with its talons, and prey upon her own
bosom. The very rise of these two determined
and already large schools, viz. : the Catholic and
the Infidel Free Thinking, and their common re-
coil away from Protestantism, the former in the
direction of the old defences, where Church and
Bible can stand together and impregnable, and
the latter in the direction -of an earnest, honest,
but blind clutching after truth, is an additional
evidence of the failure of Protestantism as a sys-
tem. Permit me here to quote the language of a
late English article which I read day before yes-
terday, and which is in exact accord with what I
have said in this course of sermons. " There can
be," the writer says, " only Catholic Christianity
and nationalism; only those who fall back on
that point of Church authority abandoned at the
Reformation, or those who seek out a new basis
for the reconstruction of religion. That a few
will hold on still to what is demonstrably unten-
able is only what is to be expected. But it will
be only those mentally incapacitated for realizing
the weakness of their position, or those who allow
their reason to be distorted by their prejudice.
The vast majority of intelligent persons are al-
100 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
ready convinced that Christianity must have some
other hold-fast than Scripture alone, if the Faith
is not to be swept away into the ocean of unbe-
lief."
One of the most noteworthy signs of the times
is a wide-spread yearning for unity. Catholics
both in England and America are holding out the
olive-branch to the Methodists ; and other analo-
gous movements are taking place both in Rome
and in the Greek Church. I have already called
your attention to the fact that while Protestant-
ism has no common creed, the Catholic Church,
however her parts may differ from each other, has,
underneath those differences, a common Creed, a
common Ministry, and common Sacraments. For
our Church does not assert that there are " only
two Sacraments;" but that there are two only
which are generically necessary to salvation. She
gives to the other five the title of " Sacraments "
also. Now, here, in this common Ministry, faith
and Sacraments, is the sole basis of any unity that
is possible in Christendom. It is not necessary
that all the parts, Greek, Roman, and Anglican,
should shape themselves after one precise pattern.
This would be a unity of simplicity, not the larger,
more developed unity of multiplexity. This would
be the unity of the seed, not the great complex
unity of the tree. It is not necessary that there
be one ritual for all. Men are of different races.
There is the ardent Slavonic, the less warm Latin,
and the comparatively cold Anglican. Each has
PEOTESTANTISM A HERESY.
liis own tastes and instincts, and religious de-
mands. A ritual which, to us, would be glorious
with ceremonial, would chill an Eastern, or Greek,
to 'death with its apparent coldness. He needs
more to express the same thing than we do. "Why
should one race of men impose its ritual on an-
other? Our truths are deeper than our rituals.
We want no rigid uniformity either in manner or
thought in the Catholic Church. Our faith, Min-
O
istry, and Sacraments, are one already. All that
we lack is such modification in doctrine, in each
of the parts, as will enable a restoration of inter-
communion to take place between the three, a
mutual recognition again between the brothers of
the same one family, and common organic action
against the common enemy, the world. "We want
a recognition of the unity between the parts ; not
an absorption of either part into another. Exces-
sive legislation on small points, the miserable de-
sire to be perpetually tinkering, and over-sensitive-
ness on minor differences, have been the vices of
the Church Catholic. "We forget that there is a
great body of general health in Her, which will in
time throw off poisonous secretions if the latter
are let quietly alone.
But all this brings me to another point. I
showed in the second sermon of this course, that
while Protestantism gets the Church from the
Bible, Catholicity gets the Bible from the Church.
But their ideas are radically different as to what
the Church is. The Protestant notion is, that
102 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
" a Cliurcli is an aggregation of individuals who
hold in common a certain theological system
gathered out of the Scripture." Thus the basis
of their unity is intellect. With them Sacraments
are not, as we are taught by our Prayer Book, in-
struments by which God doth work invisibly in
us ; but they are rather " seals and pledges of a
grace that has already been given." Protestant-
ism makes " an intellectual process called faith,
and a mental conviction called apprehension of
Christ by faith, to be the means of effecting
a union between ' the individual and Christ."
Therefore it were a mere form to baptize in-
fants. But with Catholicism, on the other hand,
the Church is not a mere aggregation of intellec-
tually-consenting individuals, each of whom has
passed through this intellectual process and had
this mental conviction. But the Church is a Liv-
ing Body, having a corporate Head ; a Visible
Body with an Invisible Life. That Life, that
Soul of the Church, is Christ. He moves over the
earth in His Body mystical, and is as really pres-
ent, and acting, and speaking, to-day in that Body,
as He was eighteen hundred years ago, when He
was on earth in His Body natural. We call you
to no merely intellectual accord with a Being
of long ago. We call you to no mere memory of
a Being who passed away eighteen hundred years
ago. Catholicity has not dropped Christ into the
past, and lost Him as a real existence, retaining
simply a memory and an intellectual conception
PKOTESTANTISM A HEEESY. 1Q3
of Him. She still has Him. She gives you the
very Being at whose feet St. Mary sat. He is
here now in His Body Mystical, still going forth
to you, still ready to feed you. With Catholicity
the members of the Body Mystical are grafted into
Its divine life by the Sacrament of Baptism, which
was divinely appointed to that end ; and they par-
take of Its divine life unto their spiritual develop-
ment, through Its means of grace, and especially
Its Blessed Eucharist. Catholicity holds that the
union with Christ thus supernaturally effected by
God in baptism is " irrespective of any exercise
of the intellect, but is a free gift of God," where
there is no bar ; and that, therefore, infants may
and should be baptized. Thus the Catholic is a
spiritual not an intellectual system. Its basis of
unity is Christ, and not man's intellect. The
Catholic, I say, holds that Christ is really within
the Church, and that life and truth are to spread
from Him through His Body Mystical on earth.
Furthermore, the Catholic holds that, " in order to
the extension and communication of this spiritual
life and grace, our Lord appointed a ministry in
His Church, whose office is to administer the means
of grace to its members ; and that He appointed
the Apostles to this office with power to transmit
their commission to others in an orderly way, as
the needs of the Body required," and so on till the
end of time. This is another distinction between
Catholicity and Protestantism. I take it I need
do no other than simply refer you to your Prayer
104 THE FAILUEE OF PROTESTANTISM.
Book, and leave you to decide whether our Church
is Protestant or Catholic.
In conclusion, " The Church has authority in
matters of faith," says the Prayer Book. " Nay,"
says Protestantism, " the individual judgment hath
authority in matters of faith ; and, if one of ' our
churches ' does not harmonize in its faith with my
notions, I have a perfect right to shake off the
dust from my feet at its doors, and go forth and
organize another 'Church.'" And so he has,
brethren ; so he has ; we don't deny that. One
human institution is as good as another, and
all together, so far as the salvation of souls five
hundred years hence is concerned, are not worth
the paper their constitutions and long declara-
tions of doctrine are written upon. It doesn't
take many centuries for the whole pack of them
to tumble over each other down into the valley of
oblivion.* So he has, I repeat, a perfect right to
* Below is a list of sects (by no means a complete list) which
have buzzed about the Catholic Church. Some of them grew to
enormous size in their day, and lasted several centuries ; but their
names even sound strangely to modern ears. The numbers indi-
cate the centuries in which the sects arose :
1 Dpcithians. 2 Abelites.
1 Nicolaitans. 2 Colarbasians.
1 Saturninians. 2 Cerdonians.
2 Millennarians. 2 Ossenians.
2 Basilides. 2 Marcionites.
2 Epiphanians. 2 Proclianites.
2 Hydroparasites. 2 Serpentinians.
2 Melitonians. ' 2 Cainites.
2 Saccophori. 2 Valentinians.
2 Severians. 2 Cerinthians.
Ophites. 2 Nazareans.
Up
Ale
!ogi. 2 Apotactics.
PKOTESTANTISM A HEEESY.
105
go forth and organize another " Church." And
thus we have a " Church " organized by LUTHEK,
and another " Church " organized by CALVIN, and
another " Church " organized by CAMPBELL, and
2 Montanists.
2 Adamites.
2 Materialists.
2 Arcbontics.
2- Ebionites.
2 Marcites.
2 Antitactae.
2 Elxaites.
2 Alogians.
2 Hermogenians.
2 Ascodrogites.
2 Ascodrutes.
2 Encratites.
2 Carpocratians.
2 Bardesamites.
2 Artemonites.
2 Artotyrites.
2 Marcellans.
2 Ascetics.
2 Setbians.
2 Lucianists.
2 Quintilians.
2 Florinians.
2 Elcesaites.
2 Patripassians.
3 Novatians.
3 Passaloryncbites.
3 Eternals.
3 Asclepidoteans.
3 Noetians.
3 Paulianists.
3 Athocians.
3 Apocarites.
3 Beryllians.
3 Manichseans.
3 Hieracites. .
3 Adelphians.
3 Aquijinians.
3 Arabians.
3 Valetians.
3 Solitaries.
4 Eusebians.
4 Psathyrians.
4 Heloidans.
4 Vigilantians.
4 Luciferians.
4 Jovinianists.
5*
4 Heracleonites.
4 Macedonians.
4 Incorruptible s.
4 Collutluans.
4 Arians.
4 Pneumato-Macliists.
4 Apollinarians.
4 Accacians.
4 Serai-Arians.
4 Meletians.
4 Priscillianists.
4 Tascodrugitas.
4 Messalians or Enchites.
4 Photinians.
4 Donatists.
4 Anthropomorphites.
4 Docetae.
4 Psaltyrians.
4 Anomoeans.
4 Audseans.
4 Eudoxians.
4 Eunomians.
4 Assuritans.
4 Satamans.
4 Collyridians.
4 Eustathians.
4 Abelonians.
4 Euphratesians.
4 Aerians.
4 Sabellians.
4 -iEtians.
5 Nestorians.
5 Coelicolae.
5 Angelites.
5 Patricians.
5 Theopaschites.
5 Pelagians.
5 Eutychians.
5 Monopbysites.
6 Serai-Pelagians.
5 Mopsuetians.
5 Acepbali.
5 Armenians.
5 Predestinarians.
6 Acoemetse. I
6 Agnoites.
6 Barsanians.
106
THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
another " Church " organized by GEORGE Fox, and a
great many others, organized by I know not whom.
But in the language of a venerable presbyter of
Massachusetts, " I have somewhere read that the
6 Tritheites.
6 Corrupticolae.
6 Gaiamtse.
6 Paulicians.
6 Damianists.
6 Cononites.
7 Chazinzarians.
7 Ethnophrones.
7 Agynians.
7 Maronites.
7 Agonyclitse.
7 Monothelites.
8 Albanenses.
8 Adoptionists.
9 Abrahamites.
10 Paterines.
11 Berengarians.
12 Pasagmians.
12 Albigenses.
12 Waldenses.
12 Tanguelinians.
12 Gazares.
12 Henricians.
12 Leucopetrians.
12 Bogomiles.
12 Apostles.
12 Circumcelliones.
13 Wilhelminians.
13 Almericians.
13 Flagellants.
13 Carthari.
13 Bethlehemites.
13 Brethren and Sisters of the
Free Spirit.
14 Wickliffites.
14 Dulcinists.
14 Barlaamites.
14 Dancers.
14 Albati.
14 Quietists.
15 Adiaphorists.
15 Hussites.
15 Calixtines.
15 Orevites.
15 Orphans.
15 Taberites.
15 Bchemian Brethren.
15 White Brethren.
16 Brownists.
16 Flemingians.
16 Erastians.
16 Budnseans.
16 Davidists.
16 Effronites.
16 Socinians.
16 Interimists.
16 Libertines.
16 Farnovians.
16 Erquinians.
16 Schwenkfeldians.
16 Petro-brussians.
16 Stancarists.
16 Flacians.
16 Carolostadians.
16 Philipists.
16 Petro-ioannites.
16 Osiandrians.
16 Alascani.
16 Arminians.
16 Synergists.
16 ubiquitarians.
16 Autosiandrians.
16 Zwinglians.
16 Sub-Lapsarians.
16 Supra-Lapsarians.
16 Amsdorfians.
16 Galenists.
16 Majorists.
16 Lutherans.
16 Gomerists.
16 Hoffmanians.
16 Illuminati.
16 Independents.
16 Anabaptists.
16 Presbyterians.
16 Imperfect Mennonites.
16 Perfect Mennonites.
17 Antinomians.
17 Eosicrucians.
17 Eanters.
17 Beddelians.
General Baptist.
Particular "
17 Anti-Mission "
PROTESTANTISM A HERESY.
107
Church was organized by Christ." Such persons
overlook the very gist of the whole matter. Christ
Jesus is still on earth in His Body Mystical.
Private judgment is all very well and proper so
17 Free-Will Baptist.
nil-Day
6-Principle "
Scottish
River Brethren.
Christian Connection.
Campbellites.
Winnebrenarians.
17 Borrelists.
17 Collegiants.
17 5th Monarchyrnen.
17 Drabicians.
17 Seekers.
17 Cocceians.
17 Se Baptists.
17 Muggfetonians.
17 Bourignonists.
17 Crypto Calvinists.
17 Amyraldists.
17 Apostoolians.
17 Rogerines.
17 Cornarists.
17 Waterlandians.
17 Anti-Burghers.
17 Cameronians.
17 Haldanites.
17 Labadists.
17 Keithians.
17 Gortonians.
17 Lampetians.
17 Quakers.
Moravians.
Nicolites.
18 Inghamites.
18 Leadlyans.
18 Allemtes.
18 Lifters, or New Lights.
18 Anti-Lifters, or Old Lights.
18 Reanointers.
18 Southcottians.
18 Hopkinsians.
18 Shaking Quakers.
18 Hattemists.
Scotch Presbyterian Seceders.
Original Seceders.
Old Light Seceders.
18 The Three Denominations.
18 Destructionists.
18 Free Thinkers.
18 Baxterians.
18 Sandemanians.
18 Dissidents.
18 Ellerians.
18 Separates.
18 Wilkinsonians.
18 Bereans.
18 Ayig_nonists.
18 Disciplinarians.
18 Dunkers.
18 Daleites.
18 Calvinistic Methodists.
18 Wesleyan Methodists.
18 Swedenborgians.
18 New Connection Methodists.
RECENT.
Millerites.
Carbonari.
Hicksites.
Gurneyites.
Wilberites.
New School Presbyterians.
Old School Presbyterians.
United Presbyterians.
Associate Eeformed Presbyte-
rians.
Methodist Church, South, Black.
Methodist Church, South, White.
Cumberland Presbyterian.
United Synod of Presbyterian
Church.
Mormons.
Methodist Reformers.
Primitive Methodist.
Central
Independent
Free-
Protestant
Evang. Asso.
Bryanites.
Whitefield Methodist, Taber-
nacle Connection.
Whitefield Methodist, Lady
Huntington Connection.
108
THE FAILUKE OF PROTESTANTISM.
long as God keeps silence. Let it have full reign.
But when Jesus Himself speaks through His Body
Mystical, it is time for private judgment to yield
and be a little humble.
Whitefield Methodist,~Welsh Cal-
vinistic Connection.
Parkerites (?).
Irvingites.
Associate Synod of North Amer-
ica.
Associate Eeform Synod of the
South.
Free Presbyterian Synod.
Second Adventists.
BESIDES THE ABOVE.
Dutch Eefonned.
Marcosians.
German Eeformed Church.
Eellyan Universalists.
Monarchians.
Strigolniks.
Anti-Sabbatarians.
Unitarians.
Appstolics.
Universalists.
Eestorationists.
Christians.
Halcyons.
Bonosians.
Caputiati.
Harmonists.
Lollards.
Ebadians.
Epefanoftschins.
Ortlibenses.
German Evang. Union.
Diaconoftschins.
Bezpopoftschins.
And others too numerous to
mention.
Surely Sectarianism has tried
often enough to found a last-
ing form oi the Church.
VI.
CATHOLICITY AND ITS PRESENTMENT
OF CHRISTIANITY, AS OPPOSED TO
THE PRESENTMENT MADE BY PROTES-
TANTISM.
" Hold fast the form of sound words." 2 TIM. i. 13.
I RESUME the consideration of our main topic.
The next step for us to take is to begin to develop
what should be urged on the attention both of
the masses and of the cultivated intellect of the
day instead of Protestantism. What the world
needs is neither Protestantism nor Rome, but
Catholicity, the reasonable Catholic faith, the
beautiful Catholic system, the warm, devoted,
self-sacrificing Catholic spirit. What we want is
less blind and foolish prejudice against Rome,
that we may go to Her and learn why it is, and
by what Catholic means it is, that She succeeds
in all that in which She does succeed ; and less
prejudice in Rome against the real and legitimate
advance of the nineteenth century (pardon the
vagueness of this phrase), in order that She may
learn why it is that She fails in some respects.
We need more of the Catholic spirit of our Church
HO THE FAILUBE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
brought out; Rome needs the errors which are
merely accidental to Her system abolished, that
we may both together move with crushing mo-
mentum, first upon the Protestant outworks, and
then upon the infidel citadel itself. If Protes-
tantism has lost its hold on the masses, Romanism
has equally lost its hold on the intellect of the
day. "We want less preaching of generalities,
about what is, after all, mere natural goodness,
and more of positive, dogmatic teaching that shall
be distinctively Christian.
Now, first, what is this Catholic faith that I
speak of ? The word " Catholic " means uni-
versal. Where am I to find that Catholic faith,
then ? Suppose I go to the Methodists and ask
them for their "Faith" and its concomitants.
They would tell me of the foreknowledge of
God; they would point me to their class-meet-
ings and their class-leaders. But I should look in
vain for all this in Italy, in Russia, in Spain, in
South America, in Austria. And I should soon
discover that the Methodists were a mere local
body. Suppose, then, I should go to the Presby-
terians. They would tell me of Fore-ordination
and Absolute Decree; they would point me to
their ruling Elders and their Presbyteries. I
should find all this different from Methodism-
And, moreover, I should find that the Presby
terian was merely a local body also. Suppose 1
should go to the Quakers. They would point me
to their want of sacraments and of an ordained
THE CATHOLIC CHUECH AND FAITH.
ministry, and to their silent meetings. Here is
something different still. Well, leaving all such,
suppose I should come to our Church. She would
point me, among other things, to her Thirty-nine
Articles. I find that these are different from the
Baptist or Congregational or Methodist declara-
tions of faith. I should, moreover, look in vain
for the Anglican Church per se in Sweden, in
Brazil, or in Hungary. Suppose, then, I should
go to the Roman Church. She would point me,
among other things, to her Tridentine decrees
and her Papal supremacy. But I should look in
vain for all this through Eussia or Siberia. I
should find her also local as a body. It is clear I
have gone the round world over and have not
reached yet any faith that is Catholic. I find
divisions in Christendom schism. The complete
set of dogmas and of corresponding practice, as
presented by any one of these bodies, is not ac-
cepted by all the rest.
But now suppose it should happen that all
Christendom to-day could agree in one faith,
would you not call that the Catholic faith ? I
suppose you would. But, beloved, suppose that
faith should happen to be different from the faith
as held in mediseval times, or as held in the fourth
or the first century, then it would not be the
Catholic faith. For there are two kinds of schism,
viz., the schism of space and the schism of time.
In the Church of to-day one body of Christians
may be cut off by schism from another. But
THE FAILUKE OF PKOTESTANTISH.
schism may at least be conceived as equally ex-
isting between the entire body of Christians to-
day, and the entire body in the eighth century,
whereby the former body are cut off -from the
latter. And all schism is sin.
Thus you will see our faith may be local in
time as well as in space. That only which has
been held everywhere, always, and by all, is the
Catholic faith. Here, then, we have reached our
first approximation toward what we seek; that
is to say, the Catholic faith is that which is held
everywhere, always, and by all.
Now let us start on our second approximation.
Is there any point, in Faith, Doctrine, or Practice,
that has been agreed upon everywhere, always,
and by all who call themselves Christians ? Noth-
ing under the sun. Justification? Churchmen
differ from Lutherans. Election ? Calvinists
differ from Methodists. The Ministry ? Baptists
differ from Catholics. Sacraments? The Qua-
kers do not have them. The Bible ? Some hold
to the whole, others only to a part. God Him-
self ? Unitarians hold to one, Trinitarians hold
to another. We would seem to be as far from
what we want as ever. But not so far as it seems.
For there is either a Catholic faith, or there is not ;
that is to say, there is something for man to rest
in, or there is absolutely nothing. It were a most
unreasonable supposition that God, after working
out that splendid series of supernatural events
which began in Abraham, continued through the
THE CATHOLIC CHUKCH AND FAITH.
acts of Moses, the organization of the typical
Jewish Church, the foretellings of the prophets,
the incarnation of His Son, His death and resur-
rection, the establishment of His Chnrch, the de-
scent of the Holy Ghost upon It, the continued
existence of His Church, and all the magnificent
events the latter involves I say it would be a
most unreasonable supposition that God, after all
this, should have left man utterly at sea, with
nothing definite to believe concerning it all. And,
furthermore, it were equally unreasonable to sup-
pose that, after God had thus acted definitely
through a long series of centuries, and consistent-
ly unto some definite end, there would not be
men all along through time, who, in their falli-
bility, their blindness, their ignorance, arrogance,
or wilfulness, would fail to understand it all, and
would misrepresent it either in its parts or as a
whole. All men must be infallible in order for
this not to happen. In the structure of affairs we
are to anticipate that some men can be found,
either in the past or present, who will deny any
given part you please of the whole Divine move-
ment. This only proves man's fallibility, not
that there is no Catholic faith. !Nay, God has not
cast the most solemn and vital interests of man
upon the rock of fallible private judgment. It is
Satan that hath impaled them upon the sharp
point of that rock and wrecked them. It were
the wildest extravagance, therefore, were we not
to limit the phrase " Everywhere, always, and by
THE FAILUKE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
all," in some way, and so take our second legiti-
mate approximation toward what we seek, name-
ly the Catholic faith. It were absurd, then, to
look to all who call themselves Christians, if we
would find the Catholic faith. The Catholic
faith, then, is not the Christian faith as it may
be held by this, that, or the other fallible man ;
but it is the faith as it has been held by the infal-
lible Catholic Church.
We are forced, then, into the preliminary ques-
tion, what is the Catholic Church ? In answering
this we shall be making our third and last approx-
imation toward the Catholic faith. Where, then,
shall I find the Catholic Church ? Now, a church
is an organism. The Catholic Church must be an
organism universal over space and universal back
through time to Christ. Suppose, now, I go to the
Methodists again. I find there an organism ; but
in looking back I find it was arranged about the
time of JOHN WESLEY, one hundred years ago.
Before his day there was no such church organ-
ism. I pass then to the Presbyterians. There I
find a different organism. But in looking back I
find it dates its origin only about three hundred
years ago. That will not answer, then. Yery
well, I try the Congregationalists, and, in fact,
each and all of the modern Protestant organiza-
tions. Avowedly, they do not any of them run
back into the dreadful mediaeval times those
dark ages. Whatever these Protestant organisms
may be, then, they must each and all be set aside
THE CATHOLIC CHUKCH AND FAITH. H5
as, at any rate, not Catholic organisms either in
space or in time, and therefore not Catholic at all.
Well, suppose I come to our Church. I find it, as
an organism, with its bishops, priests, and deacons,
its ritual form of worship, its altars and sacra-
ments, its Conventions and Synods, its dioceses and
parishes, running back in the history of England
into mediaeval times; yea, still farther back
through the early days of old Britain and up even
to the Apostles. I seem to strike something
Catholic here. But be not in haste. Suppose I
go to the Roman Church. I find that I can trace
its life back also uninterruptedly to the Apostles.
Suppose I go to the Greek Church. I find the
same peculiarity of continued existence back to
the Apostles there. Here, then, in the Roman,
Greek, and Anglican Churches, we have reached
something which it will do at least to pause upon
for further investigation.
But have a care. When we look a little more
closely into the Anglican organization as a whole,
and consider it part by part, and when we ex-
amine the Roman organization in like manner,
O 7
and the Greek, we find that each of the three dif-
fers from the other two in certain respects. Rome
has a Pope and a cultus of St. Mary the ever-Yir-
gin ; these are not parts of the Greek or of the An-
glican organisms. Though we have paused here,
then, though the Catholic Church must be here-
abouts somewhere, nevertheless, when we have
reached our Church, we have not yet readied the
THE FAILURE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
Catholic Church which we are in search of; when
we go to Rome we have not yet reached that
Catholic Church. And equally when we go to the
Greeks we have not reached the object of our
search. For we find that neither of these three or-
ganisms, when taken as a whole, and in all its mi-
nutiae, is accepted by the other two. Shall we go
elsewhere then? There is nowhere else to go.
Let us look, then, more closely still here.
As we examine, we find that although the
three, Anglican, Greek, and Roman, thus differ in
some respects, they are marvellously alike in all
others. All three have a hierarchy of Bishops,
priests, and deacons. All have the Holy Altar
of the. Tremendous Sacrifice as the central object
in their churches. All have robed clergy. All
have Saints' days and identical Ecclesiastical
Seasons. All .have a ritual form of worship. All
have parishes, dioceses, and provinces. All date
their life back into the first century. All have
stately ceremonials and processions; the Greeks
the most glorious, the Romans less, and the An-
glicans the least. All acknowledge the authority
of General Councils. All have the same Apostolic
Succession and the same Sacraments. Here, then,
I begin to find the Catholic Church. Those few
peculiarities in which the Greek, the Anglican,
and the Roman differ from each other, are merely
local ; all those many peculiarities in which the
three are at one, shape out for me visibly, solidly,
and sharply the great Catholic Church; one in
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND FAITH.
space as in organism, and one in time ; to be found
equally in Russia, and Italy, and England, and
America, and Mexico, and Germany, and Brazil
everywhere ; to be found, too, in the Nineteenth
Century and equally in mediaeval time, and also
in the earliest days, unchanged and unchangeable.
And every thing in the Anglican, Greek, and
Roman bodies, which the three hold in common,
and which has been held in them everywhere, al-
ways, and by all, is Catholic. Any thing else,
any peculiarity which we have that Rome and the
Easterns have not, or which Rome has but the
Greeks and we have not, or which the Greeks have
but Rome and we have not, is merely local, par-
tial, and not Catholic.
I repeat, for years we have been talking about
our Church as the Church ; but what is that but
mere high-and dry Anglicanism ? It is not Catho-
licity. Equally so Rome has been calling herself
the Church. Pars pro toto. But what is that but
mere Romanism, not Catholicism? Just so the
Greeks have called themselves tJie Church. As
well might New York or New Jersey call itself
the Middle States. There is a popular saying,
" Home or Reason." This is simply because peo-
ple have identified Rome with Catholicity. But a
part was never yet the whole. Christ never prom-
ised to be with a part of the Catholic Church to
guide it into all truth, any more than He has prom-
ised to be with a single individual ; it was only
the whole Church Catholic He promised thus to be
THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
with. Rome's dicta, therefore, come to us with,
no binding authority. When the Whole Church
speaks then will we yield, and then only, because
then it will be Christ Jesus speaking. " Rome or
Reason" is a snare to unwary souls. ISTo, my
friends; we deny that we must accept either
Rome or Reason. But substitute in your alterna-
tive the word " Catholicity " for the word " Rome,"
and make it " Divine Catholicity," or "Human
Reason," and we will take Our stand just there,
and join issue with you to the end.
Permit me to close this part of my discourse
by an illustration of the Catholic Church. We
will take, for the sake of simplicity, a tree. For
eicrht feet above the soil its trunk stands one and
O
entire. Somewhere along the ninth foot the trunk
branches into two main limbs. We will call the
Eastern the Greek limb, and the Western we will
call the Latin. Six feet farther out on the Latin
limb, that is to say, fifteen feet from the ground,
that Western limb subdivides into two vast
branches. The outmost of the two we will call
the Anglican branch, the other we will call the
Roman. These two branches and the Greek limb
run up to a height of nineteen and a half feet from
the ground. There they are, the three great
boughs, each with its foliage, Anglican at the
West, Roman in the centre, Greek at the East.
If now you shield your vision from all but the top
of the tree, there will appear to you to be three
disconnected tufts of vegetation, but lo ! the foliage
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND FAITH.
and the flowers are the same. But remove now
the shield from before your eyes, and behold in
the whole tree a symbol of the Catholic Church
one organism from root to summit. A Church
that is one like the trunk of that tree for the first
nine centuries that branches then into Eastern
and Western ; the Western subdividing at the fif-
teenth century into Anglican and Roman. As a
fact the unity of the organism is not broken ; in-
tercommunion between its three parts is simply
suspended for a time suspended until that differ-
entiation shall take place in God's One Church,
which, as Herbert Spencer so admirably shows, is
the law of all growth; a differentiation which
means in its last issue, not a complete sundering
of the parts, but the eventual unity of multiplex-
ity, the harmony of coordinate parts. Did it not
mix the metaphor somewhat, I would go on and
complete the illustration by supposing sundry
branches of this tree to be cut off from time to
time, and inserted into vases of water standino-
' ' O
round about the ore at tree. Beiiiff without root,
o O /
those cut longest ago are all dead ; while only the
the most recently cut are green with a deceptive
life, themselves soon to wither and die. These
cut branches, standing trunkless and rootless about
the living tree, would be apt symbols of the
Protestant sects.
We have found, then, what the Catholic Church
is. Now, the Catholic faith is the faith as held
by that Catholic Church. " Faith " is different
120 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
from " Doctrine." That wliich any one of the
three limbs has as a peculiarity of its own, is not
the Catholic faith. But all that which the three
limbs have in common with each other, and in
common with the trunk below even down to the
roots, that is Catholic. What faith is it, then, that
they all hold in common? Not the Thirty-nine
Articles, for they are merely Anglican ; not the
Tridentine Decrees, for they are merely Roman ;
not the decrees of the Synod of Bethlehem, for
they are merely Greek. But the faith as set forth
by those great Councils wherein all three took
part, wherein the whole Church spoke. The
faith, namely, known as the Niceno-Constantino-
politan Creed, which all three to-day accept, and
which the whole Church has from the first ac-
cepted, even before those councils set that faith in
its present framework of words. Now, then, we
are ready to answer the question, what is this
faith ? It is the Catholic presentment of Chris-
tianity involving a Church visible as a vital part
of Christianity. It is fundamentally different
from the Protestant presentment of Christianity.
It is not a heterogeneous list of articles about jus-
tification, and the Bible as the rule of faith, and
sanctification and election. It is organic as a
whole ; that is to say, each statement in it grows
out of the preceding, and, in turn, opens the way
for the one following. It is not a list of discon-
nected theological conclusions, hard to understand
as Spinoza or Ralph W. Emerson. It is, on the
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND FAITH.
other hand, a plain record of historic and other
fact. It is simply the consecutive history of what
God has done to save man, in order that every
man may know what it is and freely take advan-
tage of it. It is, in brief, a very clear description
of the course which, in the Divine purpose, Grace
takes as it starts from God the Father, and reaches
at last the individual sinner.
Now let us examine and analyze it. It begins
by giving us God the Father Almighty, Maker
of all that is visible and invisible. Its second
step is to give us God the Son, and the perfect
unity subsisting between Father and Son in God.
For the Son is " God of God, and of One Sub-
stance with the Father." Its third step is the
statement that the Son came down to earth and
became man, took our nature upon Him ; and it
gives us the perfect unity of Godhead and man-
hood in Jesus Christ ; " came down from heaven,
was incarnate, was made man." Its fourth step
gives us the gradual perfecting of Christ's man-
hood by suffering : " He suffered, was crucified,
was buried." Its fifth step gives us the resurrec-
tion and ascension of the perfected manhood, and
the giving of the Holy Ghost to His Church. Its
sixth step gives us the Holy Catholic and Apos-
tolic Church. Its seventh gives us baptism into
that Church. Its eighth gives us the remission of
sins consequent upon that baptism. Its ninth,
our resurrection. And its tenth and last, our life
everlasting.
6
122 THE FAILUEE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
Now, what is all this, beloved ? It is all a
very awful matter ; but it is all a very plain and
easily understood matter nevertheless. It is sim-
ply Christianity as distinguished from Rational-
ism. Any thing less than or outside of it is Ration-
alism, even though it may surround itself with
pulpits, and build meeting-houses, and have min-
isters, and services on Sundays, and read the
Bible, and preach sermons to its votaries. It is
simply and solely the history of what God has
done to save you. It is, in short, the Gospel. It
is simply and solely a consecutive record, a de-
scription of the course that is to say, of the chan-
nel which, in the Divine purpose, grace takes as
it starts from God the Father, and at last reaches
any individual sinner for his salvation.
For, first we have God the Father, the source
of all things the source, therefore, of that grace.
Then, second, we have the Son and the Father,
one in God ; so that the grace in the Father flows
out uninterruptedly and fills the Son, owing to
their unity. This is the first step the grace
reaches in its journey toward you and me.
Then, third, Godhead and manhood in Jesus
Christ are one ; and after Christ's manliood is per-
fected through suffering, the grace in His God-
head flows out and fills His manhood owino* to
o
their unity : that manhood rising, ascending, and
receiving the gifts for us. This is the second
stage which the grace reaches in its journey from
God the Father toward you and me, viz., into
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND FAITH. 123
the man's nature, i. e., the Soul and Body Natural
of Christ. Then comes the Holy Catholic Church,
the Body Mystical of Christ, which is one with
His Body Natural. Scripture exhausts all met-
aphor to make us realize how entirely one are
Christ and His Body Mystical, the Church. At
Pentecost, the grace which filled His Body Natu-
ral in Heaven now flowed out and filled His Body
Mystical, the Church, owing to their unity ; it did
not descend on individuals, as such, but on the
Body of the Church. This is the third stage
which the grace reaches in its journey from God
the Father toward you and me. The Church on
earth, the One, Holy, visible, organic, perpetual,
Apostolic and Catholic Church is its great Reser-
voir ; not any one part of it alone ; not Rome
alone, but the whole Church. Who tells me, then,
that I must go to Rome, when, as an Anglican, I
am already in the Catholic Church! Why, I
simply laugh at his want of comprehension. The
Catholic Church is the Reservoir on earth. But
how is that grace to reach and fill you, poor sin-
ner? The Catholic creed goes on to tell you:
You, as an individual, must become as one with
that Church, or Body Mystical of Christ, as It is
with His Body Natural, as the latter is with His
Godhead, which is one with the Father. This is
the last unity in the Gospel of salvation. How is
this last unity to be effected ? The very next step
in the creed tells you. You must acknowledge
the one baptism, and take advantage of it for your-
THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM.
self and for your children with hallelujahs, for the
grace will now have reached its last designed
stage, viz., the individual, to work spiritual health
in him.
This is the plain history of the whole matter.
This alone gives any sanction to baptism. This
alone lifts it from the status of a mere empty
form. The Catholic Faith then goes on to tell
you of the Communion of all the Saints together
in the grace, who are thus made one by baptism
with the Church, with Christ, with God. Then
the Creed proceeds as a consequence to tell you
of the forgiveness of their sins. And as death is
by sin, death being the sundering of body from
soul, the Creed gives next, what is consequent
upon the remission of sin, namely, the resurrection
of the body ; and closes, coming to its climax, by
stating the object of all this, namely, your life
everlasting.
Now, this is the Catholic faith. This is the
presentment made to the world by the Catholic
Church, everywhere, always, and by all, of Chris-
tianity as a mediatorial system. God the Father
and the sinner are put wide apart by sin. They
are to be reconciled are to be brought to an at-
one-ment. Something comes in between to do
this. That is what mediation means ; something
coming in between ; and that, not to sunder, but
to unite. That which comes in between the sin-
ner and God the Father must be real and opera-
tive, and not a mere intellectual conception. It
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND FAITH. 125
must be something that literally grasps hold of us,
not a mere idea which we grasp and contemplate.
Now, what is this mediatorial operation, that, in
God's purposes, comes in between and lays hold
of us that we may be saved ? Why, who is the
great Mediator? It is Jesus Christ. But Jesus
Christ must not be a mere intellectual idea which
we can be thankful for. As a Mediator He must
be operative. And how does Christ operate as a
Mediator ? Why, through His Body Mystical and
its extensions (its arms, so to speak), which are one
with Himself, just as I operate through my body
natural which is one with me. At the very first,
in Palestine, Christ came and operated in His
body Natural ; He walked and spoke in it ; but
ever since then, and out over the earth, and down
through the centuries, He walketh and speaketh
and doth operate through His Body Mystical.
The extensions of that Body Mystical are the
Ministry and the Sacraments. All this (that is to
say, Christ Jesus, not as a mere intellectual idea,
but Christ and all of Him) is the Mediator;
which speaks to the sinner to-day and every day,
" I pray you be reconciled to God ; " and which
then lays hold of the willing but helpless sinner
by Baptism, and makes him one with the Divine
Life, setting him in It like a graft into a tree, and
then feeds him with the Divine Life through the
Blessed Eucharist. All this, I say, is what the
Catholic Faith declares to be "Christianity, the
Doctrine of Mediation." Now, all other systems,
126 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
which deprive Christ of His Body Mystical, which
preach a half-Christ and not the whole Christ,
which preach a broken, bruised, mutilated Christ,
which cut off from Him the Apostolic Ministry
and Sacraments, that are the very arms by which
through the centuries and all over the earth He
mercifully lays hold of and folds sinners into at-
one-ment with Himself and the Father, and feeds
them with His Life, all other, that is to say, all
Protestant schemes, are but schemes of incipient
Rationalism, which have so wounded the Gospel
truth and fact of Mediation, that it soon dies of
the wounds it has received even in the house of
its Protestant friends. All the nursing, all the
anxiety, all the watchings of Protestant, Calvinist
and Armenian, will not save the doctrine of Chris-
tian Mediation, after it is thus mutilated, from
sinking into the death of Unitarianism. The
Catholic Gospel of salvation is simple. Be bap-
tized into the Church, for that Church Catholic is
one with Christ, and Christ is one with the Father.
Of course, I need not qualify this statement by
saying, that it supposes the baptized man will
faithfully use the Means of Grace made over to
him by God through the Church. The whole is
summed up in this, viz. : " The union of God and
man, begun in the person of Christ, is continued
and extended in the Church, which is the Body
of Christ ; the Church acting through its Ministry
and Sacraments."
I have but time to contrast in a word the
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND FAITH. 127
Protestant Gospel of salvation with all this. The
Protestant is told to stand outside of this really
operative work of Mediation, and to agonize as an
individual until an " ictus falls from behind the
stars," until grace comes in the fashion of an in-
visible streak of lightning out of the far Heaven,
and pierces his individual breast. But is this
Mediation f Is this Christianity f What is it,
after all, but the sheerest Immediation between
the individual and God? And, brethren, no sub-
jective intellectual notion which the individual
may, at the same time, hold in his brain about
Christ as some historic and distant being, who did
something to make Himself somehow a Mediator,
will save it from its Immediation. "When you set
a hard practical fact against a mere intellectual
idea, the fact is always too much for the idea, and
eventually drives it off, and holds the whole field
to itself. And this is one reason why Protestantism
invariably gravitates down into Unitarianism and
avowed Rationalism. Now, these people have the
supposed fact of a practical system of Immedia-
tion between God and the individual working all
the time ; what wonder if their mere notion of
mediation vanishes at last before the stern reality,
and they all sink, victims of Satan, into a denial
at last of every thing distinctively Christian?
What is Protestantism, then, but Rationalism
the system of Immediation, concealed in a Chris-
tian cloak. It is my part, as your pastor, watch-
128 TIIE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
ing for your souls, to strip off that cloak and show
the demon within.
I have spoken of the Catholic Faith as being
the Faith as held by the Catholic Church. I have
described to you what that Faith is. It is per-
haps not from the purpose of my subject to re-
mind you that, besides the Faith as set down in
the Creed, there is much else that is common to
the Catholic Church. Her universal yearning for
the faithful dead ; Her universal prayers for their
joyful resurrection that they "may have their
perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and
soul, in God's eternal and everlasting glory;"
" Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the of-
fences of our forefathers ; " " Most humbly be-
seeching Thee to grant that, by the merits and
death of Thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith
in His Blood, we and all Thy whole Church may
obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits
of His Passion ; " Her universal love for the
Saints ; Her universal realization of the presence
of Angels, not only round about Her altars at the
Eucharist, but round about us as guardians, to
" be our succor and defence on earth ; " Her uni-
versal tenderness for the confessing penitent ; Her
universal declarations of absolution "Receive
ye the Holy Ghost," the Anglican Church says to
each of Her priests at ordination, " whose sins
thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose
sins thou dost retain, they are retained ; " the
separateness that marks and the glory that sur-
THE CATHOLIC CHUECH AND FAITH. 129
rounds universally Her altars. People sometimes
say, when they enter one of our churches, " Why,
it looks like a Roman Catholic church I " As a
matter of course, beloved ; why should it not ?
It is not intended that two brothers should not
look at least like each other. It were very strange
if they did not. Still, brethren, do not identify a
gorgeous ritual, befitting the presence of our tre-
mendous Sacrifice Christ Jesus, with a Roman
ritual. The Anglican is not the Roman Church,
though both are Catholic. Two brothers, though
they may be alike, are by no means the swine.
There are points in Rome which She has added
to the Catholic system, but which we, as Angli-
cans, and which equally the Greeks, are uncom-
promisingly opposed to, which belong not to this
age, and which must be abolished before inter-
communion can take place. But, nevertheless, a
gorgeous ritual is in itself Catholic, and, so long
as it symbolizes the Catholic verities, and no Ro-
man errors, is surely in harmony with our Church
as a visible and symbolic Body. "While we do
not propose to be Roman, we do not hesitate, not
only to be, but even to seem to be,* Catholic.
Like Lazarus, our Church has been bound in the
grave-clothes of Protestantism and prejudice ; but
the Lord, Her loving Master, hath come, and, as
Her Marys and Her Marthas stand weeping, He
calls Her forth, and utters the glad mandate,
" Loose Her, and let Her go ! "
Before I close, perhaps I may be pardoned if
6*
130 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
I "say a word or two touching the able leading
article in the Daily World, the ingenious com-
munication in the same journal signed " Roman
Catholic," and the leading article in the Christian
Observer. Long-settled prejudices and cherished
feelings are never touched by hostile hand with-
out danger of exciting passion and vituperation.
And I desire to express in some public way my
obligations for the calm and manly spirit shown
by each of the three writers. Of course, it is not
my purpose, during the delivery of these sermons,
to answer editorial articles and anonymous news-
paper correspondence. There would be no end to
the discussion. Still, with your permission, I will
reserve to myself the privilege of lingering a
moment for a brief remark on each of the articles
mentioned above.
The World admits the first main charge in the
first sermon, namely, that Protestantism has failed
to reach the masses. It declines, perhaps very
properly, to take the responsibility of deciding
one way or the other as to whether Protestantism
leads logically to infidelity, which was our second
main charge. It says, however, that, if Protes-
tantism " be not in the condition of the Church
of Sardis and the Church of the Laodiceans," as
those Churches are depicted in the third chapter
of Eevelation, " it is time they proved it ; " and
that " silence and inaction are no longer safe for
them." The only remedy which the World sug-
gests for the evils charged is, for each large parish
THE CATHOLIC CHUECH AND FAITH.
to sell its church and land, and, with the proceeds,
build several inexpensive churches, one of which
shall be for its own use, and the others to be free
to all comers. I have only to remark on this,
that it is an admirable and Catholic suggestion,
full of common sense ; but that, nevertheless, I
fail to see how it would touch the real difficulty.
For, after all, it would be the self-same old Prot-
estantism that would be preached in those free
churches, which, as a concealed Rationalism, has
been abandoned for the genuine article by the In-
tellect of the Age, and which has disgusted the
masses for many reasons besides its abominable
system of " hired pews."
The writer signing himself "Roman Cath-
olic " also admits the gravity of the charges. But
he claims that the Rationalism of the day is not
the logical result of Protestantism^/ 1 se, but only
of its Lutheranism and its Calvinism; and the
cure he suggests is, for Protestantism to discharge
Lutheranism and Calvinism out of itself. This is
just precisely what I claim the Intellect of the
Age has been doing ; and lo, the phenomenon
with Lutheranism and Calvinism emptied out,
you have no Protestantism left ! Thus, it seems
to me, the cure kindly suggested by " Roman
Catholic " is, to kill the patient. Terrible satirist,
he sees the point !
The editor of the Christian Observer first de-
nies the charge that German, English, Swiss, and
New-England Rationalism is the outgrowth of
132 THE FAILUKE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
Protestantism. He then attempts to prove this
denial by asserting that Romanism also has made
infidels in Italy and France. I do not deny the
latter fact ; indeed, I have expressly stated it.
But I fail to see how Romanism leading to in-
fidelity proves that Protestantism does not. Sup-
pose that I should assert that sugar-coated strych-
nine kills, and you attempt to prove that it will
not by asserting that something else will why,
I should simply have nothing to say in reply.
As for the balance of this paragraph of the article
under notice, I am not disposed to take an undue
advantage : it was evidently written in haste. I
simply leave the writer to the tender mercies of
his sarcastic friend, " Roman Catholic." If " Ro-
man Catholic" can prove that the Observer is
wrong, then so much the worse for the Observer ;
if not, then so much the better for me and the
Anglican Catholic Church. The editor of the
Observer then goes on to deny that the Roman
Catholic Church reaches the masses. I might
leave him to settle this point with the Daily
World. But I will at least say that he has, per-
haps, forgotten that when the mob raged through
our streets, defying all the power of police" and
soldiery, the lifted finger of the Archbishop
calmed and dispersed it in an hour. He has, per-
haps, forgotten that every one of the six, eight, or
ten Masses said at every Roman Catholic Church
of a Sunday morning is thronged with worship-
pers, and every mass with a different congrega-
THE CATHOLIC CHUKCH AND FAITH. 133
tion. " But," the editor goes on to say, " how
much better are the crowds for it ? " That's not
for me to say. If his insinuation be correct, then
that is a difficulty between " Roman Catholic "
and him. I've got nothing to do with it. My
point is, that, whether for good or for evil, Rome
gets at the masses, and Protestantism does not,
and cannot, either in Romish or in Protestant
lands. And precisely for this reason, namely,
that Rome presents to the masses the real Christ,
and so goes to them with authority, while Protes-
tantism presents them with a mere intellectual
notion about Christ ; and the " authority," instead
of being on the side of Protestantism as she ap-
proaches the masses, is avowedly on the side of
the private judgment of the masses, which may
reject that intellectual notion or not. " How
much better are the masses for all Rome ? " cries
the Observer. It never suggested itself to the
Observer to ask, how much worse the masses
might be but for Rome. The editor then pro-
ceeds to show how Protestantism gets at the
masses. " Look at all your organized benevo-
lence," cries he ; " the organized benevolence of
New York is a fruit of Protestantism." The
coolness of this statement is somewhat admirable.
" Private Judgment," and " Every man his own
Priest, " and " Divine Foreknowledge, " and
" Final Perseverance," and " Infant Damnation,"
the cause of all the organized benevolence of JSTew
York ! Perhaps there are no human hearts un-
134: THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
derneath doubting heads in the city of New York ;
perhaps there are no natural tender sympathies ;
perhaps there are not hundreds and hundreds of
merchants who never enter a church from one
month's end to another, but who yet put their
hands in their pockets constantly, and pour out
thousands at the call of want. Perhaps, for-
sooth, Protestantism is responsible too for all the
deeds of charity that were done in ancient
Greece and Rome. And then again, perhaps,
there are no vast hospitals, and asylums, and
homes in this city belonging to the Roman
Church. "The organized benevolence of New
York is how Protestantism goes down to the
masses," cries the Observer. Even should I admit
that Protestantism, per se, is the mother of any
organized benevolence, there is still the heavy
charge behind, that, while it is mending legs, it
is losing souls. The Observer comprehends my
position, and I respect the ability it has displayed
in fighting for a losing cause ; but I do not know
that I have any thing in particular to say con-
cerning the Baltimore Episcopal Methodist, or
the Protestant Churchman, the New- York Meth-
odist, or the Philadelphia Roman Catholic Uni-
verse, and so I pass on. I trust you will not fall
into the popular error of thinking that electricity
or the sewing-machine is Protestantism.
What the world needs, I repeat, is neither the
sugar-coated strychnine of Protestantism, nor the
strychnine-coated sugar of Romanism, but Cath-
THE CATHOLIC CHUECH AND FAITH. 135
olicity, the Catholic faith, and the Catholic sys-
tem, and the Catholic spirit.
All this opposition to a return to this Catholic
faith and spirit and customs, all this struggle, for
instance, against one of the mere symptoms of
returning health, namely, the clothing of worship
with its fitting splendor, is but the old story of Mrs.
Partington and her broom. Some persons are anx-
ious that canons be passed to stop ritual. If such
canons be passed, of course they will be obeyed.
But it is quite immaterial whether they are passed
or not. If not, then the stream with its ever-
gathering waters will flow. If passed, then such
canons will only be a dam in the .way, and
there will be a gathering of the floods behind it,
which, in God's good time, will sweep off and
utterly away both the dam and they that guard
it. So futile is it to attempt to stem the pur-
poses of Almighty God.
VII.
REPLY TO STRICTURES IN THE RELIG-
IOUS PRESS AND FROM THE PULPIT.
" And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive
many." MATT. xxiv. 11.
THE articles and sermons purporting to be re-
plies, either direct or indirect, to the charges made
from this place against Protestantism, are so ex-
traordinary as to demand at least brief notice.
Six weeks have now passed, but, although there
has been a very manifest uneasiness among the
Puritans, and a good deal written and said, it is
almost needless to remark, not a solitary charge
has been met, nor a solitary argument answered.
The first canon which reviewers should observe is,
to understand that which they are attempting to
criticise.
Three distinct charges have been made, viz. :
As a religious system, Protestantism fails to get
at the masses ; nay, there were vast regions of
country where its fundamental principles (to wit,
private judgment, and the dogma of a church in-
visible only) took deep and general root ; but in
EEPLY TO PEOTESTANT STKICTUKES.
those countries it has absolutely lost its hold on
the masses it once swayed ; therefore it is a fail-
ure. Secondly The logical issue of Protestant-
ism is Rationalism, i. e., Protestantism logically
destroys Christianity ; therefore it is a failure,
and, worse, it is a delusion, a snare to souls, a
heresy. Thirdly In the lands where it has pre-
vailed, as in Germany, parts of Switzerland, New
England, and elsewhere, the historical event has
substantiated the logical anticipation ; for those
lands are to-day honeycombed with infidelity ;
therefore Protestantism is a failure, and people
should wake up to the fact, abandon it, and look
for something better. To these charges I have
added the subordinate statement that Home also
has failed in some respects ; but I assert that Her
failures are .not on account of Her Catholicity,
since they can be traced directly to those very
points where She has perverted the ancient Catho-
licity, or overlaid it with foreign and incongruous
peculiarities. Catholicity is divine; and expe-
rience shows us that it suits all centuries, that it
is adapted to and can co-exist harmoniously with
every form of political government, from the ab-
solute monarchy to the republic, and with every
degree of enlightenment, from the lowest to the
highest. Romanism, on the other hand, is human
in its origin ; it sprang in some of its features out
of the necessities of the Middle Ages and their
feudalism, and is not in harmony with modern
conditions and our advancing intelligence.
138 THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
Now, these three charges against Protestant-
ism have not been met ; and, if I am to judge by
letters from perfect strangers, of which I am daily
in receipt, the public are beginning to see that
they have not been met, and to inquire what the
matter is. Protestants cannot turn this impor-
tant subject aside with a mere wave of the hand,
and a vain attempt to prove that electricity is
Protestantism. The subject is one of too deep
moment for this. It is squarely up before the
public, and unprejudiced people are thinking
about it. Silence is dangerous ; and these pre-
tended replies, whether direct or indirect, that do
not touch the real matter at issue, are fatal.
They only exhibit the weakness of the cause.
Here, then, are the three distinct^ charges.
How do these answerers and defenders of Protes-
tantism meet the solemn issue? Why, all of
them in one way. First, by showing that Rome
has failed. Of course She has failed. But what
has that to do with the charges ? That is a diffi-
culty between Rome and them ; not between us
and them. We have stated that the Roman Cath-
olic Church is a failure in so far as She is Roman,
and there we leave Her. "We set up Catholicity
for the cure, not Rome. But the difficulty with
these men is, that they do not seem to compre-
hend that there is any other kind of Christianity
except Protestantism and Romanism; and they
think that, if we say Protestantism fails, we
mean, of course, that everybody should take to
EEPLY TO PEOTESTANT STKICTUKES. 139
Borne. They do not comprehend that there is a
third presentment of Christianity, viz., Catholi-
city, with nothing distinctively Roman in it, and
nothing .distinctively "Protestant" either. The
fact is, that, what with Rome and what with
Protestantism, Grod's old Catholicity has been un-
der a cloud, and has not gained the general ear
of the people in America. But they are begin-
ning at last to arouse to it, and to understand it,
if their leaders do not. This agitation is start-
ing inquiry among new thousands, and the day
is not distant when many more even than now
will say to these answerers, " Your tirades against
Romanism will not do ; you do not meet the
point ; you must give us something different from
that, if you expect to command our respect, to say
nothing of our convictions." I will tell you,
brethren, what the matter is : The difficulty is,
the solemn charges cannot be met ; they are too
patent for denial, hence all this anger and floun-
dering.
Then, secondly, attempt is made to identify
Protestantism with the Nineteenth Century, and
to palm that identification off as an answer.
" Look at all the light of to-day," say they ; " the
commerce, the arts, the arms, the battle of Sado-
wa, the Spanish Revolution ! Why, here is a man
that calls all that a failure ! " But, brethren, it
will not do. Nobody has charged that the Nine-
teenth Century is a failure. Protestantism is not
the Nineteenth Century. No one has charged
140 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
that the needle-gun is a failure, or the sewing-
machine, or the steamboat. The charge is not
that the Nineteenth Century is a failure, but that
something that exists in the Nineteenth Century
has failed. ~No one has charged that freedom is a
failure. On the contrary, the distinct assertion
is made that true Catholicity, in the days of
Henry YIIL, rose against Rome in the interest
of freedom, struck down Her Papal tyranny over
political government, and Her tyranny over the
intellect. And, by the way, the Anglican Church
is to-day declaring its independence also of Prot-
estant tyranny ; and in England the tyrant Prot-
estantism is mobbing Her for it. The liberty of
Puritanism is to-day just what it was in Roger
Williams's time, viz., perfect liberty for every one
to believe just as the Puritan believes, or take the
consequences. I tell you, my friends, we have
liberty in spite of, and not because of, Protestant-
ism. A man is at liberty to break down Chris-
tianity so long as he does so on the Protestant
principle of private judgment, but a man is not
at liberty to defend Christianity on Catholic prin-
ciples. If he dares to, it is in the midst of angry
scowls, social excision, and Protestant mobs.
But, to return the distinction is, that in the
Sixteenth Century true Catholicity struck for a
true and guarded freedom in religion, while Prot-
estantism struck for a ruinous license in religion.
The charge is, that that license is a failure ; that
it hath wrecked the Bible, the Church, the Min-
KEPLY TO PEOTESTANT STEICTUEES.
istry, the Sacraments, and the Apostolic Faith.
Within the wide, unalterable walls of that Faith
there is a vast, almost a fearful, freedom touching
doctrine allowed by God's Catholicity. Freedom
in government, in thought, in action, is as dear to
Catholicity as it is to any one. But the charge
is, that that rampant license of Scripture inter-
pretation, whereby the most ignorant are egged
on to rush in where angels dare not tread, is an
awful mistake, and has ended in the ruin of thou-
sands of souls. This identification of the Nine-
teenth Century with Protestantism, which came
out of the less-enlightened Sixteenth, and which
is one of the mere accompaniments of modern
times, will not do ; and the public are seeing it,
and saying it. Why, do these men really mean
to assert that not only modern times, but every
thing in modern times, is a success ? that there
have been no mistakes made in religion, in philos-
ophy, in any thing ? that modern times, forsooth,
are immaculate ? that our fathers and we are in-
fallible ? that Protestantism, because it belongs to
modern times, is a success ? Their fallacy proves
too much ; for then is the Comtean School of
Positivism a success ; then is Emersonian Panthe-
ism a success ; then is Spiritualism, and Parker-
ism, and Fourierism, and Mormonism, and Agra-
rianism, a success.
But, thirdly, these answerers, still avoiding
the charges, attempt to cloud the matter by lead-
ing the public to suppose that Protestantism is
142 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
the cause of all the glories of the Nineteenth
Century. What ! the religious 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, or whether
there is any Bible at all," that fatal religious dog-
ma the cause, forsooth, of all this science and
modern light ? My brethren, it will not do ; and
people are seeing that, too, and saying it. But,
if Protestantism be not the cause, do you ask me,
what is ? The real cause of the light and advance
of modern times is not a theological dogma. But
it is a general awakening of mind, which began
far back in the middle ages, four hundred years
before the Protestant dogma was ever thought of
an awakening of mind, of taste, of the genius
of invention, which, abandoning the rude struc-
tures of the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth
Centuries, brought out, long before the Conti-
nental Reformation, the most ornate specimens of
architecture the world ever saw; which, in the
Eleventh Century, invented paper, and, before
John Calvin and Martin Luther ever saw the
light, produced the art of printing paper and
printing, the two conservers of human intelli-
gence ; which, in the Twelfth Century, devised
banks of exchange and discount, and not long
after invented gunpowder, conceived the idea of
the post-office, and discovered and applied the
principle of magnetism in the mariner's compass
EEPLY TO PKOTESTANT STEICTUEES. 143
thus giving such a start to commerce and mag
nificent geographical discovery as they had never
had before; which, in the Tenth Century, con-
trived clocks; which invented painting in oil-
colors before Luther was born ; which, in the
Thirteenth Century, introduced astronomy and
geometry into Europe, and not long after brought
in algebra, and fostered all three sciences ; which
discovered America a quarter of a century before
the Continental " Reformation," so called, opened ;
which, centuries before Luther, produced a Dante,
and a Petrarch, and a Chaucer, and a Boccaccio,
and a Roger Bacon Roger Bacon, who, three
centuries before his successor, Lord Francis Ba-
con, announced to the world the very method of
legitimate investigation in accordance with which
all modern science is pursued, and upon which
Lord Bacon afterward built his fame Roger Ba-
con of the so-called dark ages, who had this im-
mense advantage over the Bacon of the Sixteenth
Century, in that he personally put his method
into practice.
But I will pause. The cause of the light and
advance of modern times was a general awaken-
ing of mind in Western Europe, which began clear
back in the Tenth Century ; which brought out all
this that I have mentioned and more ; which has
been bringing out new blessings to man ever since ;
which has rolled out and up a thousand things
most of them good, some of them bad ; which
rolled up, .after a while, the Protestant dogma for
14A THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
one of its many and varied productions ; and which
is rolling up to-day the solemn presentment of
that dogma and of its fruits at the bar of this en-
lightened century, that they may be put on their
trial.
And now these answerers are trying to make
people think that this Protestantism is not one of
the heterogeneous mixture of things that awaken-
ing mind, in its power but also in its fallibility,
turned up (and that, four hundred years after
awakening mind had begun to produce its marvel-
lous fruits), but that it is, forsooth, the underlying
cause of all the good of modern times gunpowder,
glass, paper, printing, painting, telescopes, astron-
omy, algebra, Magna Charta, and every thing else ;
a mother producing children before she was
born ! Protestantism was but one of the eifects
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 sought to destroy Catholic
truth also. Why, brethren, awakening mind
must have been infallible not to have made at
least some few mistakes. Let these gentlemen
meet the charge, and not try to escape by raising
a cloud of issues, which are so clearly false and
foreign to the subject, that they are beginning to
be remarked as such.
"Where Protestantism prevails, there every
thing prevails which blesses mankind," it is said.
Nay, it should have been said, that where awak-
EEPLY TO PEOTESTANT STEICTURES. 14.5
ened mind prevails, tliere thousands of tilings
prevail which bless mankind, and some things
which are not blessings. "Where Protestantism
prevails, indeed! "Why, you might as well say
where Spiritualism prevails, or Unitarianism, there
every thing prevails which blesses mankind, and
think that you have proved thereby that Spiritual-
ism is a success ; you might as well say where in-
fidelity prevails, every thing prevails that blesses
mankind, and think you have proved that infideli-
ty is a success. For infidelity prevails throughout
lands that once were Protestant, and in those lands
the skeptics very much outnumber the believers.
And now for a very subordinate point in the
connection. It is charged that Rome has opposed
the advance of science ; that Copernicus was ex-
communicated, and Galileo imprisoned. That is
all true, and so much the worse for Rome, say we.
That is something she must settle. But the infer-
ence intended to be drawn is, that Protestant
religionists have been great friends of science. I
do not say that true Catholics have been blame-
less in the premises either. But at any rate, it
would be a little queer if those who hurl this mis-
sive at Rome should be found dwelling in houses
of glass in this very year 1808. Ask Herbert Spen-
cer, and Max Miiller, and John Stuart Mill, and
Darwin, and Lyell, and Huxley, and Professor
Tyndall, and they will tell you (some of them,
indeed, have said, to an acquaintance of mine),
7
146 THE FAILUKE OF PROTESTANTISM.
that they get from Protestant religionists nothing
but opposition in their efforts to unearth new
scientific truth ; and that their only sympathizers
in the religious world are minds that have been
trained ,in the Anglo-Catholic Church. When it
was announced that the " world was round and
like a ball," Rome resisted. When it was an-
nounced that "the earth moved round the sun,"
Rome resisted. When it was announced that
" the world was not made in six natural days,"
Protestantism resisted, and said it was an infidel
statement. When it was announced that " the
flood could not have covered the whole earth,"
where was Protestantism ? Why, her divines were
resisting. She didn't shut the bold scientists up
in prison, for that had gone out of fashion. But
she did the nearest thing to it that she could.
And now, to-day, when Darwin tells us that
" Creation was and is by development," where are
the overwhelming majority of Protestant divines ?
Why, in the opposition, denouncing Darwin.
When Lyell and De Perthes tell us " man has ex-
isted one or two hundred thousand years," where
are these Protestant divines that are such friends
of science? Protestant religionists stand to-day
in the attitude of open resistance to the advance
of science, and centuries hence the finger of Histo-
ry will be pointed at them, as they to-day justly
point the finger at Rome. It is even so, friends ;
we have liberty in spite of and not because of the
spirit of Protestant religionists. Liberty in reli-
EEPLY TO PEOTESTANT STKICTUEES. 147
gion, liberty in government, liberty in speech, in
thought, in the press, we have it because of awak-
ening mind and not because of that spirit which
Protestantism seems to create among men. Rome
and Protestantism are equally tyrants. It is
awakening mind that* has been fighting for its
rights on the domain both of doctrine and of
science ; yes, and of political government too,
ever since the Tenth Century. All the way along
from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century it fought
Rome, and all the way down from the Fifteenth
to the Nineteenth it has been fighting Protestant-
ism. When Protestantism threw off Roman ty-
ranny, she only brought in another tyranny a
doctrinal tyranny. You must believe thus and
thus as to the atonement, and justification, and
regeneration, and election, or you are out of the
pale of the Gospel. As I have sat by the dying-
bed of a sweet spirit that had, for years, been filled
with the love of God and the love of man, but
had known little of theology, and as I have heard,
from those standing around, the metaphysical Prot-
estant doctrine and the rigid notion pressed, and
as I have seen the dying man turning his eyes
from one to another, annoyed made timorous at
the edge of life anxious to do right striving to
apprehend in accordance with the iron dogma, I
have felt how cutting and galling were the chains
of all this doctrinal tyranny which Protestantism
brought in.
The Continental Reformation, with all its
148 THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM.
claimed liberty, was born with the spirit of intol-
erance in it, and that spirit has marked its career
ever since. Its intolerance began in that violent
man Luther, a man who uttered such language
concerning most sacred things as cannot be re-
peated to ears polite. I lhow that Reformers are
made out of rugged material ; that they are always
tough men to meet. But that is neither here nor
there so far as our point is concerned. Thus its
intolerance began. It continued in Calvin, than
whom a more tyrannical spirit can hardly be con-
ceived. It slew Mary Queen of Scots, Strafford,
and Laud, and martyred Charles the First. It
went in the Puritans to Holland, and was so cross-
grained there that when it sailed away the Dutch-
men praised God for the merciful deliverance.
It took ship and threatened to come to New York,
and would have landed here had not the citizens
found means to bribe the captain of the Mayflower
to land his uncomfortable freight by mistake
somewhere else. In Cromwell it would not be
content to enjoy its own Congregationalism qui-
etly ; no, but it broke into the Church of England ;
it stripped off the garments from our clergy ; with
axes and hammers it broke down our carved work.
It hanged witches. It drove out Roger "Williams
from its settlements into the inhospitable forests
of Rhode Island for the liberty of belief which he
claimed. In the Quakers it would not be content
to enjoy silent meetings, but must go in and dis-
turb the Puritan meetings with not only violent
EEPLY TO PEOTESTANT STEICTURES.
but even indecent behavior. And then, turning
round, in the Puritans it hanged the Quakers. In
the eighteenth century it pelted John Wesley
through the streets and broke up his meetings.
In the nineteenth century it mobs our priests
while at their solemn services in the east of Lon-
don ; and as for our Sisters of Mercy, for the crime
those gentle women have been guilty of in de-
voting themselves to lives of charity and prayer,
to watchings in pestilential hospitals, it attacks
them in the streets with missiles till they fly for
their lives. Every mail from England brings us
accounts of the tyranny and intolerance of Prot-
estantism ; while in America, not content with
staying in its own houses of worship, it goes out
of its way into one of ours, and as the priest stands
performing his function at the altar, it speaks out
in feminine tone of voice, so loud as to be heard for
four or five pews around, " I would like to bang that
man's back with my parasol." I tell you, my
friends, we have liberty, and always have had it,
in spite of and not because of Protestantism.
Some of my beloved brethren, who entirely
agree with me, regret that I have used the word
"Protestantism." They would have preferred
" Sectarianism." But we never can cure that word
" Protestant " of the general meaning it conveys
to nine minds out of ten ; that is to say, opposi-
tion not only to all that is Roman in Roman
Catholicism, but also to all that is distinctively
Catholic, both in the Roman and Anglican
150 THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
Churches. The vast majority use the word " Prot-
estant" in that sense, and so its meaning is fixed.
When, therefore, we apply the word to ourselves,
we apply it in a non-natural sense. And what is
the use of our perpetually using it for ourselves
and perpetually explaining our peculiar meaning
of it to persons who will not understand ? The
word is a hopeless case. Let the sects have it
particularly as we are a Catholic Church.
Some of my brethren regret that I have spoken
so plainly. "We want peace, say they. Ah, what
we want is not peace but truth. " But," say they,
" you will frighten away some." My friends, we
have pursued this timid policy too long. While
we have been trying to lure the few easily-fright-
ened ones into the Church by reticence, that reti-
cence has been standing by and allowing thou-
sands to go down en masse into infidelity. Be-
sides, let the lines be drawn. Let the world
understand that we are not with the Protestant
sects. Until we do this frankly, our sister Churches
of the Catholic world cannot be expected to look
upon us with other than a suspicious eye ; nor
(what is of vast importance) will we be in position
to command their attention and respect, as we
stand our ground, and demand of them to modify
their local systems to cast off their errors to such
extent as will enable a restoration of intercom-
munion. "We are twenty millions ; let us be true
to ourselves, and we shall, if not in this century,
perhaps in the next, be the means of reforming the
whole Catholic Church.
VIII.
THE LATH PRACTICAL ADMISSIONS OF
THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM, BY
PROTESTANTS THEMSELVES.
FJBOM what has been said and printed during
the past week,* some of it having been written
with direct reference, and some of it having been
publicly said, without any reference (at least any
avowed reference) to what has been laid before
you from this place, I suppose there are many of
you who regard the first campaign of the war as
about closed. Still it may not be without interest
to look a little at the results.
During the week a National Christian Con-
vention of Protestant divines and laymen assem-
bled in this city, and were in session several days.
Some of their proceedings are of interest to us in
this connection. In noticing these proceedings, I
will not recapitulate the charges that have been
* These Discourses were preached in Christ Church, New York,
during October and November, 1868. This closing Sermon was
delivered on the evening of the last Sunday after Trinity (Novem-
ber 22), 1868.
152 THE FAILURE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
made against Protestantism. I trust to your mem-
ories. But with regard to those charges, it seems
that, whatever may have been urged in the past
few weeks against our position, Protestants them-
selves have already been arousing to the sad truth
of what we have charged. For, why was this
Convention held? It was to discuss ways and
means for the cure of evils. What were some of
those evils ? "We will see anon. The Convention
presented the melancholy spectacle of a body of
people guilty of a mistake, awakening to the re-
sults of that mistake, but utterly oblivious that
those results were directly traceable to funda-
mental errors inherent in the system to which
they still cling ; utterly oblivious to the fact that
the evils, to discuss which they met, have not re-
sulted from the bad application of a good system,
but from the untiring application of a bad system.
Let us see what their circular letter conven-
ing the body says. I will not read it all, only
extracts. The object of the Convention was, it
seems, to consider, among other things, " the in-
difference of the multitudes to the claims of the
Gospel ; " " the organized forms of attack on the
authority of God's word ; " " the inroads of an
infidel philosophy reared upon the foundation of
universal slcepticism" And the circular goes on
to say that the utmost energy is demanded, "lest
the high vantage-ground God has so graciously
given His people in this country ~be stolen from
them."
PEACTICAL ADMISSIONS OF ITS FAILUKE. 153
Well, there it is ; what more, pray, can we
ask ? Whether with any reference to us or not
makes no difference, the truth of the main charges,
every one of them, is admitted in an official docu-
ment of a national Protestant body. And several
hundred of the leaders convene to see what can be
done about it. Notwithstanding all that has been
said against us, here is the ugly fact that Protes-
tants are alarmed ; that they are arousing to the
truth that they have lost their hold both upon the
intellect and upon the masses of the day ; they
feel that both are slipping away from them, and
that peculiar vigilance is demanded on their part
lest they utterly lose the vantage-ground they once
had entirely. Indeed, beloved, it is a very note-
worthy fact that both Rome and Protestantism
have lost the men of the day. Their adherents
are mostly women. There must be an intellectual
feebleness about both systems. And there is an-
other very noteworthy fact, that wherever true
Catholicity has been brought out it gains more
men than women. I do not say that women are
not susceptible to it. In the end there is no doubt
that the masculine and the feminine elements
of its adherents will be equalized, but at present
more men surrender to it than women. The fact
is, whatever we may say of the women of the day,
there are thousands of men left outside the walls
of any faith, who cannot accept Protestantism,
which they have shaken off, who will not surren-
der their proper freedom of thought to Rome, but
154: THE FAILUKE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
who are craving for a faith of some kind for a
Christianity with reality, robustness, and common
sense in it.
But let us see a little more about the action
of this Convention. In discussing the first ques-
tion that was up, the Rev. Dr. J. T. Duryea said
that " whereas the Saviour had laid the com-
mand on His disciples to go and preach the Gos-
pel to every creature, Christian people were 'be-
ginning to realize the startling fact that the Gos-
pel was not presented to every creature. It was
not presented to the masses in this city. And he
said that proportionately the Gospel was not pre-
sented to the masses as much in the country as in
the city. Something was wrong." Comment
were unkind and unnecessary. We pass on.
You will remember that the Church is large
in England and very small in New England. Her
Catholicity has been brought out more and more
during the last thirty years in England, but until
recently her Catholicity has been very little
brought out in large sections of New England.
Now what did the Rev. Dr. Hall and others say
in the Convention ? Why, when somebody called
for missionary effort in England and Germany,
Dr. Coy said, " Germany is full of infidelity," and
Dr. Hall, saying nothing about Germany, leaving
the claim all right for that, " insisted that New
England needed more missionary work than Old
England," and he "bewailed the unconverted
state of New England." Ah, what a falling off
PEACTIGAL ADMISSIONS OF ITS FAILUEE. 155
under two centuries of Protestantism is here ad-
mitted ! 'New England, once filled with converted
Puritans, now bewailed for its unconverted state.
Immediately after Dr. Hall's remarks, there
fell another morceau, which we will pluck by the
way : " Mr. Moody, of Chicago," says the report,
" made the noteworthy remark that city missions
had proved failures, on the ground that the wrang-
ling among the different sects prevented the crea-
tion of permanent congregations from the converts
made." Whether that is the sole ground of their
failure we will not discuss now, since it would be
but a repetition of what has already been said.
II. F. Durant, of Boston, then appealed to the
ministry, " to thunder from the pulpits against
infidelity." But suppose the writings of Theodore
Parker, w r ho is the legitimate brain-child of John
Calvin, should thunder back. What then ? The
thoughtful mind of Boston and Massachusetts
understands, and has understood for some time,
which has the best of the argument.
I will not reiterate another statement I have
made ; it will suggest itself to your minds when I
say that at that very session the Rev. Dr. Matlock
said, " that there was a deal of infidelity^ in the
Church. All around he saw a world of human
beings going down to the blackness of death."
But let us look a little at what went on the
last day of the Convention. In discussing the
question, "By what means can we (the Protes-
tants) reach those who do not come to our church-
156 THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
es ? " Mr. Moody said, among other things, " What
we wanted was live preaching to reach the masses ;
that opera-singing in chnrches can't do it." So
Protestantism is waking up, too, to that subordi-
nate mistake.
Now let us see what the Rev. George Wash-
burn said. I will not reiterate to you what I have
said about Catholicity's sisterhoods and brother-
hoods. It will all suggest itself to you as I read.
You will remember that one of the pieces of vandal-
ism wrought by the Continental Reformation was
the abolition of Religious Orders. And some peo-
ple are very much shocked indeed that our Church,
true to her Catholicity, should encourage the for-
mation of Sisterhoods of Mercy. It is considered
a very alarming symptom, if not very wicked, for
any woman to put on a black bonnet and habit,
and devote herself to the Lord's work. But this
National Protestant Convention seems to have
yielded the ground to Catholicity in this matter ;
to have acknowledged not only that Protestantism
has been guilty of a blunder, but of a very bad
blunder. The subject was, " Women's work in the
Church." Dr. Washburn said : " The theory that
woman has no place in the Church deprives
America of two-thirds of its Christian force. He
would ask, was there any distinctive work for wo-
men in America ? That there was, nobody would
presume to deny. He then spoke of the work of
women in the early Church, and of the allusions
of St. Chrysostom and other Fathers to them.
PKACTICAL ADMISSIONS OF ITS FAILURE.
The work of these holy ladies was to go out and
care for the sick and poor, the widow and the
orphan, and to carry the G-ospel into every home
and heart. Such women they wanted in connec-
tion with the Christian Church at the present day ;
women who would make themselves at home in
every house ; who would carry the precious word
of life around with them, and give it a lasting
tenement in the house of intemperate fathers and
disconsolate wives and children, and thereby effect
a complete regeneration in the morals of the way-
faring. He would again be for appointing a sepa-
rate class of women for visiting jails, poor-houses,
hospitals, etc., on visits of consolation and charity.
The existence of charitable institutions generally
through the country would be a great boon. We
need trained women in the Church ; we want a
place where they can be educated for this field.
The churches should open recruiting-offices for
them. A home should also be established, so that,
when our sisters return from foreign or domestic
mission-work, they may find a place of welcome
and of rest. Suppose we open in this city a House
under the care of the Church. Here all women
who desire to enlist in the service of the Lord can
be trained and educated. He then alluded to the
fact that the Romish Church owed two-thirds of its
existence to the labors of females the Society of
St. Yincent de Paul." "Mr. McDougall highly
eulogized the labors of the nuns in Canada. He
said the strength of the Catholic Church lay in the
158 THE FAILUEE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
sisterhoods which it had established. Their be-
neficent ministrations have attached all sufferers to
the Church that sends them forth." u Mr. Trask,
of Massachusetts, Mr. Gary, of Utica, and others
spoke in high terms of approval of the object." It
is to be trusted, after this fiat acknowledgment of
the Protestant blunder, this semi-official surren-
der, that this will be the last we shall hear of Puri-
tan opposition to Sisterhoods. One more remark
on the topic I cannot refrain from quoting. The
Rev. Mr. Blair said, " He was glad to see so many
were in favor of adopting this element of strength.
The great want of Protestantism is the aid of wo-
men. We are weak " mark that " we are weak
because we have rejected the noblest of mankind
from the work Christ gave us to do."
But I must bring these rich quotations to a
close. And I will do so by showing you the
spirit which has pervaded Protestantism. The
question was, " "Why so many churches failed to
reach the poor ? " Several clergymen spoke in
reference to the matter, " during which the ques-
tion of pew-fees was extensively discussed ; it be-
ing the opinion that while the rights of the poor
to adequate accommodations in the church should
be regarded, those of the rich should not be vio-
lated. The general opinion was, that proper ac-
commodations should be secured for each, the
places to be apportioned out to the poor to wor-
ship in at the smallest possible expense to them."
I have only to set over against this practice of
PEACTICAL ADMISSIONS OF ITS FAILUKE. 150
Protestantism, thus defended, a certain remark
with which some of you may be familiar. " My
brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus
Christ with respect of persons. For if there come
into your assembly a man with a" gold ring, in
goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man
in vile raiment, and ye have respect to him that
weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit
thou here in a good place; and say to the poor
Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool,
are ye not then partial in yourselves and are be-
come judges of evil thoughts? Hearken, my be-
loved brethren ; hath not God chosen the poor of
this world rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom
which he hath promised to them that love Him ?
But ye have despised the poor." In justice be it
said, there were speakers who opposed this " gen-
eral opinion," and who spoke noble words of truth
in reference to the subject. So there were at least
marked evidences in the Convention of a reaction
from another blunder of Protestantism.*
* The week after the above sermon was preached, an eminent
clergyman of one of the " Collegiate Churches " of this city deliv-
ered a discourse on " The Evangelization of the Masses," in which
be made the following statements, viz. : " Every age seems to
have had its own peculiar problem, and certainly, from the facts
with which we are familiar, this question, How shall we evangel-
ize the masses ? seems to be the one left for our solution. It has
been estimated that the present population of this city is about
three-fourths of a million of people, about one-half of whom are
foreign born, comprising forty-two different nationalities. And
for the spiritual improvement of this entire number there are
about 350 churches of all denominations, capable of containing
160 THE FAILUKE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
I now come to another remarkable feature of
the week. It is a leading article from one of the
most prominent religious papers published in the
interest of Protestantism. I select it for notice
because it leads all that has been said on the other
side in ability and tactics. I leave you to judge
whether or not it is another practical admission
less than 325,000 people. Of evangelical churches there are 275,
able to accommodate about 200,000. Of evangelical ministers
there are 500, but of pastors only 250. The number of evangeli-
cal Christians is about 70,000. In other words, there are in our
midst, this day, about 300,000 souls to whom the preaching of the
Gospel is quite as foreign as though there were no Gospel. To
obtain a conception of the vast multitude thus dead, as it were, to
all Christian teaching, were they to stand side by side (allowing
two feet for each), the line would not end till the twenty-seventh
milestone had been passed ; or were they to sit in our city cars,
thirty to a car, more than 10,000 cars would be required to con-
tain them.
"And now the question arises, How is this vast multitude to
be brought under the sway of moral and Christian influence?
Bibles have been profusely scattered, and pithy tracts have been
systematically distributed throughout the city, and there have
been established Sabbath and mission schools, prayer-meetings,
sewing-societies, and reading-rooms. Yarious have been the in-
strumentalities employed to move these same multitudes, and yet
no marked, deep religious impression has been made upon them.
Not that the Bible and tract, the establishment of Sabbath-schools,
missions, and the like, have done nothing for the evangelization
of the city. By no means. But the methods which thus far have
been pursued aimed at the religious improvement of the masses,
as masses, have failed, inasmuch as it is undeniably true that, as
a city, we are neither as moral nor as righteous as we were years
ago. How, then, it is asked, is this melancholy fact to be re-
versed ? . . . . Men may say what they may, the masses have not
had the Gospel preached to them. And for the reason that the
PEACTICAL ADMISSIONS OF ITS FAILUEE.
that the first campaign of the war is closed. " We
can easily imagine," it says, " that some persons
would think Dr. Ewer has the best of the argu-
ment from his stand-point. For, it seems to us,
that the contest has been fought upon a false issue,
which he has adroitly presented, and which his
opponents .have too readily allowed; that his
premises involve a definition as to the aim of
Protestantism which has been suffered to pass
without scrutiny." So, it seems, the battle proving
rather disastrous at our stand-point, the editor
thinks it best to beat a retreat. He summons the
Protestants away from the field, where they have
been fighting, and tells them to mass together in
another position, and there showjight, wherejhey
missionaries, whose special work thus far this seems to have been,
do not really get at the masses."
The remedy which he proposes is a more vigorous preaching
of Protestantism among the masses.
Some thirty years ago, a man was taken sick with biliousness.
It was in Maryland. His family physician administered calomel
to him. There being no improvement, he administered the calo-
mel in larger doses. He tried it in powders, he then tried
it in pill-form; he then tried it mixed with molasses, but he
failed totally in reaching the seat of the disease. At length it
was resolved that a consulting physician should be called in. The
two doctors retired into a room by themselves. They remained
there over an hour, consulting upon the case, and then came forth
and went into the sick man's room. He looked up inquiringly at
them, when the consulting physician who, by-the-way, was a man
of very grave countenance leaned over the bed, and, looking
through his spectacles, said, " Mr. B , we have thought over
this case, and we would like to know how you would like to take
your calomel ? "
THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
can do better. Let us watcli them as they run,
and see whether it is worth our while to run after
them. The writer says : " To begin with funda-
mentals, when is any thing proved a failure ? It
is when it is proved either to have ceased to exist
without achieving its object, or that, if it still ex-
ists, it has not, after sufficient trial, attained the
end or ends which it proposed. We trust that
these positions are not questionable. Now, then,
that Protestantism is a failure, because it has died
without any results, will hardly be advanced."
Of course not. Protestantism has had some
results. It has not failed in a good many things.
It has not failed in plunging Germany into infi-
delity. It has not failed in keeping the poor out
of churches. It has not failed in " rejecting the
noblest of mankind" (viz., woman) "from the
work Christ gave us to do." It has not failed, on
the contrary, it has triumphantly succeeded in
making Dr. Hall "bewail the unconverted state
of ~NQW England." It has not failed in substi-
tuting a Sabellian God for the Tri-Unity. It has
not failed in killing out all definite faith in Amer-
ica. It has not failed in ostracizing and mobbing
those who wish to worship in a mode different
from its own. But I will not go on with a list of
its successes.
The writer continues : " That it still exists,
will be granted by Dr. Ewer, we suppose. There-
fore, if it is a failure, it is because it has not, after
sufficient trial, done what it aimed at, and we
PKACTICAL ADMISSIONS OF ITS FAILUEE.
allow that it has had sufficient trial, that it may
be judged by its history up to this day. Thus the
question is narrowed to this, "What was and is the
object of Protestantism ? Here has been the
error."
Then the writer goes on to state that it is very
easy, if they permit us to define what the aim of
Protestantism is, for us to make out a strong case.
He says : " Thus the reverend gentleman in ques-
tion has impliedly assumed that Protestantism
meant the establishment of a system, or Church,
or organization, which was to do certain things,
and consequently urged his points as to disin-
tegration, etc., with force, while some of his op-
ponents tacitly admitted this idea." Exactly
what that sentence means to say, I do not know,
and the use of the words " and so forth" does not
help to clear it much. However, whatever it is,
the writer goes on to say, " But Protestantism
aims at no such thing." What ! Protestantism
not aim at preserving Christianity on earth ?
Well, if it does not aim at that, it had better
close its doors. Protestantism, as, forsooth, the
only true presentment of Christianity, not aim
at reaching the masses ? Protestantism not aim
at preserving the Bible for the world ? " Oh,
no ! " says the writer ; the enemy flee from the
battle-ground. " It is merely," says the writer,
" a principle of action asserted and assumed by
certain Christians." Well, if it is frittered down
-to that, all we can say is, it is a worse failure
THE FAILURE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
than we took it to be. But, behold the enemy on
the new battle-field which it has selected, and to
which it has fled for safety. Protestantism has
only two aims, it seems, according to the writer.
They are not those that I have stated, at all. It
does not care whether Christianity runs down
into Rationalism or not. It does not care whether
the poor have the Gospel preached unto them or
not. It does not care whether or not vast regions
of country, after being burned over and over
again by the fires of Revivalism, are left at last
dead to any religious feeling. But it seems its
solitary aims are two first, a negative aim, and
second, a positive. First, " to throw off the spirit-
ual despotism of Rome." Well, we admit that it
has triumphantly succeeded in doing that. We
do not deny that it has swung clear away from
tyranny over to an equally disastrous license,
which has wrecked its millions of souls. If that be
success, then Protestantism is welcome to all the
credit it can extract from it. In order for the
writer to prove that, in succeeding in disen-
thralling herself from Roman tyranny at the
same time that true Catholicity did, Protestant-
ism did not fall into an equally bad evil, and,
therefore, make a failure of it while trying to
right herself, he has still got to come back to our
stand-point, and drive us from our position, that
Protestantism is incipient Rationalism. This we
have shown to be the case, both logically and
historically ; and neither argument has been
PKACTICAL ADMISSIONS OF ITS FAILURE.
touched. So it is hardly worth our while, unless
something more is done, to chase up the flying
foe on this point.
But it seems there was one more aim of Prot-
estantism, according to the writer. It was, "to
promote the spread of the Bible and the preach-
ing of the pure Gospel the evangelical as dis-
tinct from the sacerdotal system" ; that is to say,
the preaching of Protestantism ! Of course, we
admit that the Protestants have succeeded mar-
vellously in preaching Protestantism. The foe is
shrewd. But his shrewdness does not save him.
He is not permitted thus to dodge the question.
Of course, Protestantism has succeeded in preach-
ing Protestantism, but the real question is, what
have been the effects, the results, of that Protes-
tantism which has been preached? The real
question is, whether Protestantism is the " pure
Gospel." He assumes that. But he is not per-
mitted thus to beg the question. We admit, too,
that Protestantism has helped true Catholicity in
spreading the Bible. But the real question is,
what have been the effects of the peculiar mode
in which Protestantism has turned the Bible out
adrift in the world ? ' So long as they yield to us
the point that the effects have been bad, they are
welcome to all the credit they can extract from
the mere fact itself of their spreading the Bible.
And it is still less worth our while to chase up the
flying foe on this other point.
And now comes the best thing in this
THE FAILUKE OF PEOTESTANTISM.
shrewdly-written paper. It is the most excel-
lent attempt yet at clouding the matter. He
says of us : " If our points are met, that will not
prove Protestantism a success ; and even if they
cannot be met, the reverse does not inevitably re-
sult." How does he sustain this assertion ? Why,
as follows : " If he (Dr. Ewer) shows that there
follow upon Protestantism Rationalism and dis-
integration of organizations, he merely shows
that men have abused the good principle of lib-
erty of conscience (and abuse of a good thing is
always possible)." Certainly, if I had simply
shown that Rationalism follows as a mere fact.
But the difficulty is, more has been shown than
this, viz., that the inevitable logical result of Prot-
estantism is Rationalism that, if any man thinks
and is unrestrained by other influences, such as
prejudice, social affection, position before the
world, or what not, he is bound to go down from
Protestant premises to the Rationalistic conclu-
sion ; that the Unitarians decidedly have the
argument on the Orthodox Congregationalists.
The mere assertion that " men may have abused
the good principle of liberty of conscience " does
not meet this. It is not a question as to abuse of
a good principle. It is a question as to whether
or not thinking men can help themselves ; whether
they are not bound to follow premises to their
legitimate conclusion. And there is no way for
Protestants to escape their ditemma, but to show
PEACTICAL ADMISSIONS OF ITS FAILUEE.
that Rationalism is not the logical conclusion of
Protestantism. But the writer -goes on: "If he
(Dr. Ewer) shows that it (Protestantism) has failed
to reach the masses, the reply is not to be a tu
quoque to Catholicism, but to admit that the zeal
of Protestants has not been equal to their light,
not that they could not reach the masses if they
would." But the difficulty, brethren, is, we have
not only shown that Protestantism has failed to
reach the masses, but why it has failed, and that
it is positively not from want of zeal. And the
points we have made on this have not been
touched.
Why, my friends, is it possible that what has
hitherto been said on the other side is all that can
be said for this great phenomenon of Protestant-
ism ? One can hardly believe his eyes as he reads
what has been written. But I turn to our writer.
He concludes his article as follows, viz. : " It
seems that this is the true way to meet the
preacher whose words have startled and shocked
us, by showing that he takes a false position ; and
also, it seems that, to meet him thus, provides a
way of turning the tables on him, on which we
may dwell at another time. In closing, we hope
that some one may take up and develop more at
length, and accurately, this question which we
have briefly sought to present that is, what does
Protestantism seek to do, and how has it suc-
ceeded therein ? " The writer very prudently in-
168 THE FAILUKE OF PKOTESTANTISM.
troduces the above paragraph with the words,
" It may be we are mistaken." It is for you to
decide, brethren, whether he has made out his
case. One thing is evident he is keen enough
to see that the first campaign is about closed.
THE END.
