Brethren -- The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ would ever make to whom it was given anxious to declare it to others. I have been deeply anxious concerning you from the day I came amongst you; and as I did not know how to leave the labour I was engaged in to turn to you, I cannot but see the hand of God in thus taking me from it for a while. I shall be glad to discharge in some measure my conscience towards you; but I desire to do much more, making known to you the riches and power of God's redeeming love.
You all know how carefully you have been kept and warned from intercourse with those who have been anxious to bring the word of God amongst you, and to shew you what the Spirit of God has taught us concerning the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. You are taught to look upon them as heretics, as if we were not in the right faith at all. I shall make no observation on these things, for the Spirit of the Lord Jesus has taught us in His word, and teaches the heart of every real disciple, that the true and only answer to these charges, and this prejudice which they put into your hearts against us is the exercise of unwearied patience and love towards you; and this is our duty, brethren; and I pray God to enable His servants ever thus to walk, that you may see the sincerity of our hearts towards you in love.
I shall now proceed to set before you those blessed truths of the gospel, which we hold as the refuge and salvation of our souls. If you refuse altogether to inquire into them, I beg of you only to consider on what ground you will justify yourself, if God shall call you in question for having despised His truth. Brethren, my heart's desire to God for you is, that you might know the peace and power of the gospel of Christ which is kept from you. No other enmity have I against those who keep you in darkness but this, that they deprive you of the gospel. Would to God they would hear it, and not be heaping up judgment for themselves against the day of wrath! Would to God they would! Gladly and thankfully would every zealous Christian see their work ended by those who exercise authority over you themselves ministering the gospel, joined in one mind with us in furthering the glory of the Saviour, and our common hopes; but while they will not, it is the bounden duty of every one to whom the grace of the gospel has been committed, so far as he is afforded opportunity, nay, to seek opportunity, to warn you earnestly that you are kept in darkness, and to hold up the gospel before you, that you may see the light. It is a work of unfeigned love, and I beseech you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to receive it so.
I join with my whole heart those who urge the reading of the scriptures; and I do not conceal from you, that I judge it the manifest work of Satan to keep them from you, and the proof of the power of Antichrist; and all the history of the church shews me this. But I shall not enter on this now. I shall first plainly state the blessed gospel, in the hope that, by the blessing of God, its glory and its grace may reach some soul; and that, if any amongst you be mourning over their sin, they may find the perfect comfort it was meant to give; and I shall then shew you, that that in which the priests make their boast over us is an invention only tending to rob Christ of His glory, and you of your comfort, and, I must add, to keep you in sin and impenitence. Forgive me this, brethren. Would to God I had opportunity of simply stating the gospel to you, and you had ears to hear it with desire. Little need I then trouble you or myself with opposing what is contrary to it. But if your souls are endangered by it, is it anything but kindness to shew you your danger?
I say then, brethren, that the Lord Jesus, by the one sacrifice of Himself once offered, has totally and eternally put away sin, so that it shall never be imputed at all to those that believe on Him, and that every repentant sinner who comes to Him is justified from all things, is accepted of God in Christ, with all the love He bears towards the Lord Jesus, for whose sake He does so accept us; that the glorious love of Almighty God has provided this deliverance for sinners who could not help themselves. You can understand, my friends, what comfort it would give to a soul really burthened and distressed with sin, who would earnestly desire favour and acceptance with God, against whom he had offended, to find that God Himself had freely put it all away and blotted it out. And He has, if you will believe the Son of God and His Spirit speaking by the apostles -- He has so loved us while we were sinners, as to give "his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life"; so that, being justified by faith in Him, we should have peace with God, and rejoice in hope of His glory. And it is Satan's own work to deny this -- to say that God did not so love us -- that Christ's sacrifice was not sufficient to put away sin -- that His blood, through faith in it, does not cleanse from all sin. Brethren, what you want for your peace is to have your conscience cleansed from sin against God; and this the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, once slain for us, alone can do -- and can do altogether. How much more, says the apostle, shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered Himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God, Hebrews 9: 14.
Brethren, I beseech you to lay this to heart. Has the Son of God left the glory of His Father, and given His life for you, and will you say, I will not accept your freely offered love, I will not believe that you have wrought a full and perfect salvation for me? And if you do not believe that Christ has altogether and perfectly justified you from your sin by His death, you deprive yourself of all the hope of the gospel. For if you are not at peace with God, you can never have the hope of His glory; and if you are not perfectly justified from sin, it is impossible you can be at peace with God; nay, more, you can never serve God here with a free and willing mind, which is the only acceptable service. For if you do not know but that God is still angry with you, if you are still afraid of Him, your service will be no real service, you will go on working in misery, in hope of gaining His favour. And this is what every sincere Roman Catholic is doing, adding work to work, in hope of turning away the anger of God, and gaining His favour; but this is all in vain, and really a great dishonour to God. God is love, and He has proved it by sending His Son to die for you, while you were in your sins. How freely, how devotedly, would you be able to serve God if you knew that He loved you, and had done such wonderful things for you, and that you were fully accepted! And He has, my friends, or we should all have perished eternally.
Oh! that you knew this; oh! that you would believe this, that you might know the comfort and the joy that there is in believing. And how is all this? By the sacrifice of Christ, the one great atonement for sin, the one glorious shewing forth of the love of God to sinners, so that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, as Paul says, or as our Lord Himself says, "He who heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life everlasting, and cometh not into judgment, but is passed from death to life," John 5: 24.
"By one oblation," says the Epistle to the Hebrews, "he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified," Hebrews 10: 14.
And what, on the denial of this, is promised instead, in which you boast yourselves? The pretended absolution of your priests and the sacrifice of the mass.
The effect of these is not to bring the conscience to God, that it might feel the depth of heart sin against Him, and seek for cleansing pardon and renewal of soul through the blood of the cross, and the power of the Spirit of God -- but by relieving your conscience at the moment from the fear it was under, to leave you at liberty to go on sinning again. But, my friends, need I solemnly warn you, do not your own consciences tell you, that this is an impious delusion? It takes away the fears of the wicked man, so as to let him go on in his sins, and leaves the poor humbled penitent with his conscience as burthened as ever; and because they are sincere in their sorrow for sin, some additional burthen of penance put upon them. Oh! is this like the grace of God, or the truth of His love? Brethren, if anything would rouse Christian indignation to what is called religion amongst you, it is to see the wicked thus let go free, and still more, the heaping sorrow upon a contrite heart, putting them off with penances, which in their sincerity they will rigidly fulfil, without one ray of that comfort which the blessed God delights to give the humble. "For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." But I tell the unrepenting sinners, they miserably deceive themselves, and they, and those that deceive them, shall find judgment for. their iniquity; and I tell the humbled and contrite in the Lord's name, Fear not, Christ has died for you, God Himself has justified you: there is free and perfect remission by the death of Him who was delivered for your offences. Nay, more, the same Jesus who died for you is now at the right hand of God, making intercession for you; able, as the apostle says, "to save them for ever that come to God by him, always living to make intercession for us."
And this is another point where the great and tender love of God has been hid from you, I mean the mediation of Christ. You are led to look at Christ as a severe judge, or an unapproachable Lord, as if we had need of a mediator to come to Him by; but let the humble soul remember that He is, through the infinite grace of God and His own love, man as well as God. Did He not prove to us, that He was ready, nay, desirous to receive all that come to Him, by becoming one of ourselves, though without sin? For what did He pass through suffering and trial in the flesh, but to enter into all our sufferings with us, to understand them all, that they who believe might feel they had a friend who knew thoroughly all our wants and trials? or will they say He has left off to feel for those for whom He suffered so much, nay, whom He purchased at so costly a price? Brethren, I beseech your attention to this. The very glory of the gospel, the way in which it has pleased the Father to glorify Himself and His Son Jesus Christ, is by the Son's becoming mediator between God and man; and for this purpose, as the apostle speaks, He became man. He acquainted Himself with all the trials of those whom He redeemed to be His brethren, and whom He ever looks at as such, that He might succour them in all their difficulties; Hebrews 2: 11. The words of the apostle are these: "For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren"; and again, "Behold I and my children whom God hath given me." "Therefore, because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he himself also in like manner hath been partaker of the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil. Wherefore it behoved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest before God, that He might be a propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that wherein he himself hath suffered and been tempted, he is able to succour them also that are tempted."
And it is not merely argument we have for these things: I quoted to you above, He was declared to be "always living to make intercession for us"; but the apostle is plainer still.
"Having therefore a great high priest, that hath passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession; for we have not a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities, but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin. Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid." In short, brethren, what could our hearts desire more, than that One who so loved us as to give His life for us -- one who has a perfect sense and tender feeling for all our wants, by having felt them Himself -- should be now exercising that love for us at the right hand of the Father? And so John -- "But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just, and he is the propitiation for our sins." Acquaint yourselves with the love and gracious tenderness of our glorified Lord. Taste and see that the Lord is gracious. Dishonour Him not in denying His willingness to receive you, as though He were a consuming fire; He is not except to those who deny Him.+ The Lord, who is the same yesterday, today, and for ever, has not changed in love since He said, "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Open your hearts before Him, ye that seek for mercy; if He redeemed you when you were enemies by sin, how much more will He receive you now that He has reconciled you! But having gone on to say so much for the humble soul, I return to the sacrifice and priesthood.
+[This the author would no doubt put differently now; for "our God," it is written, "is a consuming fire." Still the truth intended abides untouched. The believer stands in His grace and shall never perish, though all his inventions perish under the consuming judgment of God, just because He who is holy and righteous loves him perfectly. -- Ed.]
Some, I know, totally to their. own confusion, deny that Christ has thus perfectly delivered the conscience of believers, by putting away sin for them by the sacrifice of Himself. But, perhaps, some of you will say, who denies it? I answer as to the comfort of your consciences, as to the faith of the soul in it, it is utterly denied to you; and your consciences in consequence kept in bondage.
Christ, the Spirit of God has declared, has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself: if He has, what need of any other sacrifices? He hath made an end of sin, says Daniel, and brought in everlasting righteousness. But in your sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sin as not put away; for if Christ has reconciled us to God, and expiated sin for us, what is the repeated sacrifice for? Does it not directly and expressly take away from the glory of His sacrifice, and say it was not enough, that it was insufficient? And while it robs Christ of His glory, as if He had not reconciled us to God, it deprives us of our comfort by declaring His sacrifice insufficient to clear our consciences. And mark the utter folly of such a thought. As if the sacrifice which the Lord Jesus Christ offered Himself in the shedding of His blood by the eternal Spirit was insufficient to put away sin, or to cleanse our consciences by faith in it, but the sacrifice which men offer without blood does that which the former did not do!
Ah! brethren, why will you be kept from the faith of the Son of God once dying for us?
I further shew you, that it is contrary to express testimony of the Spirit of God: not merely as to the sacrifice, but as to their claim of being priests, and that both one and the other are in fact a denial of Christianity. In the Epistle to the Hebrews (chapter 7: 22) the Spirit of God thus testifies, "By so much is Jesus Christ made a surety of a better testament; and the others [referring to the Jewish priests] indeed were made many priests, because by reason of death they were not suffered to continue; but this [that is, Christ as a priest], for that he continueth for ever, hath an everlasting priesthood, whereby he is able also to save for ever them that come to God by Him, always living to make intercession for us, for it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily (as the other priests) to offer sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the people's; for this he did once in offering himself." Now, brethren, if you feel any interest in how you may rightly come to God, if this be the express teaching of the Spirit of God, is not the claim of priesthood, and the offering of sacrifice, which is the proper office of a priest (Hebrews 5: 1), directly opposed to the truth of the gospel, and the mind of the Holy Ghost?
It is fitting, that we Christians should have a High Priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens, who needeth not daily to offer sacrifices, for this He did once in offering Himself. What room does this leave to one who believes in it, that accepts the mercies of God in His Son, set forth by the Holy Ghost, to look for constantly repeated sacrifices, and a multitude of priests on earth? For if that which the Holy Ghost declares to be fitting has been done, as it certainly has, there can be no truth in that which is contrary to it; and supporting the earthly priesthood and sacrifice is not only against the honour, but is really a denial, of the sacrifice and priesthood of the Lord Jesus our Saviour; which is the hope, the support, the comfort of every believer in Him, and the blessed earnest of their being with Him in glory, seeing, as the apostle speaks, Jesus, in entering into the heavens, has entered for us as a forerunner.
In a word, Jesus Christ is the Priest of the Christian church and its sacrifice; nor is there the least ground whatever given by God, for any man to assume the character of a priest, that is a sacrificer; and whoever does it, does it on his own authority and in opposition to God and His Christ.
The repetition of the sacrifice shews its total inefficiency to cleanse the conscience from sin. By this the apostle shews the inefficacy of the Jewish sacrifices, and afterwards asserts that to which I would earnestly entreat your attention, as the great centre of truth in this matter; I mean, the perfect remission of sins wrought for believers by the death of Christ. Speaking of the sacrifices under the law, he says (Hebrews 10: 1), "the law by the self-same sacrifice which they offer continually every year can never make the comers thereunto perfect, for then they would have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers once purged would have no conscience of sin any longer; but in them there is made a commemoration of sins every year"; and then verse 10, "In the which will" (that is, of God) "we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once." And again, verse 12, "But this man offering one sacrifice for sins, for ever sitteth on the right hand of God." And again verses 14-18, "For by one oblation He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified; and the Holy Ghost doth also testify this to us; for after that He said, And this is the testament which I make unto them after those days, saith the Lord, I will give my laws in their hearts, and in their minds will I write them, and their sins and iniquities I will remember no more. Now, where there is remission of these, there is no more an oblation for sin."
So that, my friends, either there is not remission of sins by Jesus Christ, or there is no more oblation for sin; and if the Holy Ghost hath testified truly that there is remission of sins by Jesus Christ, and that the sins and iniquities of those within His testament are remembered no more, then the sacrifice which you pretend to offer for sin is false, and not merely a harmless error, but one amounting to a denial of the remission of sins by Jesus Christ, the preaching of which in His name was the great commission given to the apostles; Luke 24: 47.
I shall copy another passage without any observation. I speak as unto wise men; judge ye what is said. The apostle had said (Hebrews 9: 22), "Without shedding of blood is no remission of sins," and then (verse 24), "For Jesus is not entered into the holiest made with hands, the patterns of the true, but into heaven itself, that he may appear now in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holies every year with the blood of others, for then he ought to have suffered often from the beginning of the world; but now once at the end of ages he hath appeared for the destruction of sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment; so also Christ was offered once to exhaust the sins of many, the second time he shall appear without sin to them that expect him unto salvation."
In a word my friends (Romans 5: 19), "as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one man many shall be made just." And I solemnly warn you, in the name of Him who shall judge the quick and the dead, that if you are not partakers in the righteousness of Christ, you have no hope in you: all your works are vain delusions, unacceptable, nay, an abomination to God; they can give you no peace, nor have they any fruit unto life eternal, while you despise the work which God has Himself wrought in the gift of His own Son.
Brethren, brethren, my heart's desire would be to preach the gospel simply to you, and not touch -- why should I desire it? -- upon those things in which you are kept in error: my own hope and comfort, and, through the mercy of God, my joy too (blessed for ever be His holy name, who hath called me in His mercy to the faith of His Son), is in the knowledge of the perfect and gracious salvation wrought by Jesus Christ, so that all fear is taken from him that believes; and in the knowledge we are given of the glory of the Lord, of God our Saviour in it. Of this I earnestly desire that you may be partakers: we are all equally unworthy of it. It is free grace to all. The prayer of my soul is offered up to God for you, that through that grace you may be brought to the knowledge of salvation by faith in Christ Jesus. But, brethren, it is an awful time for you. Your errors in ignorance would be freely forgiven and put out of remembrance, if you repent and believe the gospel: but judgment comes upon those, who, when "light is come into the world, love darkness rather than light," John 3: 19. Read the whole chapter down to this. The fear of men will be no excuse in that day; for if you had thought rightly of God, you would rather have feared Him. I have anxiously, according to the grace given me, thought of the state you are in, and the testimony of the Spirit of God in His word concerning you, and I earnestly and solemnly entreat you to consider it in your own souls, to examine what real ground you have for hope of acceptance, which you know God sanctions; you will see you have none, and that the rejection of the gospel now declared to you is the rejection of your salvation.
You are in the extremity of danger, where you are, of being involved in the judgment which shall fall upon those who, from wilful corruption of the truth, will have their portion appointed with unbelievers. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
May God Almighty, by the power of the Spirit of truth, deliver you from the power of darkness, and lead you into all truth, that you may know the glory of His grace, whereby He has made us accepted in the Beloved, and give you a place in the fold of the great Shepherd, who loved us, and gave Himself for us, and liveth for evermore, our great and merciful High Priest.
Your affectionate friend and servant in Christ Jesus.
I have purposely refrained from controverting errors, but you will find all those things which are peculiar to your system tend to the robbing Christ of His glory, and the denial of the completeness of His work; and this, if any wish, can be shewn them. Where I have made any direct quotations, I have quoted from the Douay version to satisfy you. In your translation and ours the sense was the same.
Men and Brethren, I consider often within myself, when I write these things to you, what motive have I for doing it? And if you can find any but love to Christ and your souls, that, by the truth, coming to Christ, you may find the holy liberty of Christian obedience, then blame me. I consider further -- Is the way in which I do it according to the will of God and the Spirit of Jesus Christ? If you can shew me that in any thing it is not, I will acknowledge it with sorrow.
In my intercourse with you I am conscious of no fault, unless it be not having spoken the truth to you in love sooner: I pray you to forgive me this. I will endeavour to repair it towards you.
Yet is it in no righteousness of my own, brethren, I am, or seek to be justified, but in the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ. I know that some of you count me to have turned your enemy, because I tell you the truth -- shew me wherein. It is because I love you and would have you to know the blessings of Christ's grace, that I am willing to sacrifice my good name amongst you, that I may win your souls for Christ. That is my whole and sole desire: my allegiance is to Christ; the rule of my faith, the word of the living God. My object is in no way to gain proselytes to any outward human system, but to bring you (if God will please to accept and bless my humble endeavour), in the acknowledgment of sin, to the truth of God, and the pure faith of the gospel, your souls to a hearty confession of it unto salvation, and your lives unto the way of His will, and the rejection of every thing that is contrary to it.
Here, brethren, I find the rest of my own soul, which was once as far from God and consequently without hope as any of you, till I found the good Shepherd, Christ Jesus, who gave His life for the sheep, and has gathered me, as I trust undoubtingly, into His fold, and whose best and proper mercy and grace I count it, till He gather me to Himself, or rather while we wait for His appearing, to be the humble instrument of gathering others into the same place of security and blessing.
I am led to some of these remarks by the little book called "Reasons which Roman Catholics offer why they cannot conform to the Protestant religion." I shall make some observations on these, in the hope that they may lead you to inquire diligently on what ground the hope of your souls rests. One reason given is the impossibility of the church of Christ erring from the true faith; and I know this weighs much with many sincere persons amongst you. Now brethren, I freely admit this; for rightly understood as to the true church, it is a self-evident truth; for this reason, that where there is no true faith, there could be no church, for the church thus understood is properly an assembly of believers, that is, of people that have a true faith. And I further freely admit, as the promise on which my souls rests, that from Christ's first coming in the flesh, till His second coming in His glory, there undoubtedly has been and will be such a company of believers; and this company of believers are all witnesses to the faith, and maintain in and to the world the profession of faith, and thus the honour of the Redeemer's name. And this is what Paul means by the church of God being the pillar and ground of the faith. And my assurance of this, which makes me full of joy and gratitude, is rested on the promise of God in His word (and its actual fulfilment at this day), and, amongst others, on the very texts given in the little book I have mentioned: so that they are proving what I joyfully confess and praise God for. And more, brethren, I say that it is the church of Christ who have the only hope of salvation; so that this is not the question between us at all. The question is, who is able to say that he is in that church, and keeping the sayings of the great Head of it? So that they should shew, which they do not, and it is absolutely impossible that they should do, that the church of Rome, and none else, is the church of Christ. On the contrary, brethren, I affirm, and I call upon you to search the scriptures whether it be so or not, that every true believer is a member of Christ, that is, one of His true church; as the Lord Christ says Himself, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman."+
And here I think I am bound to notice an argument which is given publicly amongst you, and which I heard also from one of yourselves, and that is this -- "If you say that every one that is a true believer in Christ will be saved, why may I not stay in the church of Rome and still be saved by being a true believer; especially as your divines say that a man can be saved as a Roman Catholic, and we say that he cannot be safe as a Protestant?"
+John 15: 1. [This use of the text the author would no doubt correct now; as the branches in the vine do not mean members of Christ's body however truly most of these branches became so. -- Ed.]
Now I must say, that this is not the objection of one that fears God, for such an one seeks with a willing heart what the whole will of God is; and does not say, if I am safe here, why should I not stay? And, brethren, I should have awful fears for the safety of a soul that should wilfully use this argument at all, instead of seeking to follow Christ with all his heart, in whatever He shewed him to do. It is the spirit of a true believer to say, "Lo, we have left all and followed thee";+ so that a person cannot be safe wilfully continuing in that which is contrary to the truth and will of God, for every true believer takes the will of God as the rule of all he does. Hence if a man continues in what he sees to be contrary to it, he is not a true believer. And I honestly confess to you, that this seems to me not only an unsound but a very wicked argument.
The reason then, why it does behove men to separate themselves from the communion of the church of Rome, is this one, given by our Lord Himself, that they make the word of God void, and that their worship is vain, because they teach for doctrines the commandments of men.++ You say you hold the fundamentals; if you do, this proves nothing, for, as James says, "The devils believe and tremble."+++ The question in which your souls are concerned is -- Have you believed the gospel of the Son of God with the heart unto righteousness?++++
But our Lord declares that there is such a thing as making void the commandments of God by traditions: it was this very thing that our Lord charged upon the Jewish teachers. You boast in traditions: should not this sentence of our Lord's teach you to reflect on such a boast? And accordingly, what is looked for from a Roman Catholic who desires to become a Protestant is to renounce those doctrines and commandments which have no warrant in the word of God, avowing his faith in that which is found there, and to receive the word of God as the warrant of his faith, and Christ Himself as the only hope of his soul. And the name of "Protestant" was received from protesting against practices contrary to His will and goodness -- against laying on men's consciences the burthen of things which God had not laid, and thereby keeping them from the knowledge of the exceeding riches of God's grace in His kindness towards us by Christ Jesus, and thus making Him seem to men a hard Master, instead of a tender Father to those that believe in Him. As the scripture says, "Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you."+++++ Again, "Every word of God is pure. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar."++++++
+Luke 18: 28.
++Matthew 15: 6.
+++James 2: 19.
++++A true believer is a person who, by the power of God's Spirit, has been brought to accept the offer of divine grace in Christ Jesus, and to rest the hope of his soul in His death and mediation, in the sense of his own sin and of Christ's all-sufficiency; and a person cannot rest the hope of his soul on this, and at the same time trust in other things, as the Virgin Mary, Penance, Absolution, the Mass, being of the Roman Catholic Church, and the like, resting the hope of his soul in them.
+++++Deuteronomy 4: 2.
++++++Proverbs 30: 5, 6.
They teach things, brethren, which have no warrant in the word of God, and (by offering remedies for sin which God has not offered, and therefore will not accept) prevent men from being led to true repentance and faith in Christ Jesus for remission of sins and salvation, which is expressly offered by God as the remedy for sin, and the only one. There is therefore in the present doctrines of the church of Rome no real remission of sins at all; and not only so, but it is expressly denied. And they say that the doctrine which God has set forth in His word about it tends -- dreadful thought -- to sin! The doctrines they teach, and the character they assume -- I speak it, brethren, with deep sorrow -- directly dishonour the Lord that bought us with the price of His own most precious blood, by assuming to themselves the honour and authority which belong to Him alone, whose glory is the believer's satisfaction.
They teach and command things which have not only no warrant, but are in truth contrary to the word of God.
You who have ears to hear are called upon by the voice of the Lord's love to separate yourselves from them, that you may find the true grace and truth of the gospel for your soul, and lest the judgment and plagues which will come upon them for these things should find you amongst them, and fall upon you also.
Brethren, I presume not to say when that hour of judgment will come. It will come suddenly and with terror upon those who have lived carelessly and at ease, saying, We shall see no sorrow, we are safe. But I could, brethren, earnestly desire to see you, having believed the testimony of God, watching as men prepared for your Lord, as those that are of the day, so that it should not come upon you unawares, but "when these things begin to come to pass," you may be among those who shall "lift up their heads, because their redemption draweth nigh"; who have put their trust in Christ, and the promises of God in Him, so that, when He appears, ye may rejoice before Him with exceeding joy. Oh! how differently will that man feel, who has trusted in His word and promise and acted upon faith in Him alone, when He shall appear, from one, who not relying upon His word that He would save all that trust in Him, has trusted n his own works, has put his hope in man and man's word and man's work.
Look unto Him, I beseech you, that cares for your souls, while He calls, "Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found, and call upon him while he is nigh. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."+ And if it bring reproach upon you, and trouble, dearest brethren, and they cast out your name as evil, is not this very thing rather a mark of truth? "For all," says the apostle, "that will live godly in Christ Jesus, will suffer persecution":++ nay, as our Lord Himself said, "Rejoice and be exceeding glad [that is if ye suffer as witnesses of God's truth], for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."+++ And when Paul went round the churches he had planted among the Gentiles, he went "confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."++++
I say, then, that the whole hope of the gospel is denied by the doctrines of the Church of Rome -- I mean the free, full, entire redemption purchased for us by the blood-shedding of Christ, and laid hold on by faith; that consequently there is no saving faith amongst you at all; and this is why I am in earnest in speaking to you on the subject. I own to you, brethren, that though I was firmly convinced that you were utterly in the wrong in every point in which I was acquainted with the differences between us, I never felt the deep necessity that now lay upon you of coming to Christ out of the system of popery, as I do now. I entreat every one, with my whole soul, who loves our Lord Jesus Christ and His honour, to come out from among them and be separate. I would lead you to the discovery that you have not Christ amongst you, and that you are given "another gospel" than that which the Lord and the apostles preached, "which is not another, but there are some that trouble you, subverting your souls"; but the Lord will judge them in His own time, when He hath gathered His own sheep. I know not, brethren, the hour when the Lord will call me, and I solemnly assure you, that you will find in Christ, and in Christ alone, by faith in Him, that which your priests falsely pretend to give you, and yet which none of you have -- the solid comfort of Christ's gospel. I ask you if you have, yourselves; and I tell you it is expressly promised in God's word, and the power of it is brought to a believer's soul by the Spirit promised to them that believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. Why will they not even let you read it?
+Isaiah 55: 6, 7.
++2 Timothy 3: 12.
+++Matthew 5: 12.
++++Acts 14: 22.
Brethren, they keep you in bondage, because you know not the glorious promises of the Father of mercies; and they are enemies, and try to make you enemies, of all that have them. But the voice of the gospel is gone abroad, and His sheep will hear it; yes, brethren, salvation by the blood of the Lamb of God, free, undeserved -- reconciliation to God by the death of His own Son, come amongst us in the flesh to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, is proclaimed, and He will see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. His own word shall not fail: "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." Will you count yourselves unworthy of eternal life? Hear, I beseech you, brethren, and save yourselves from this untoward generation, who hate and oppose the knowledge of Christ by the gospel. Ask any real believer, of any denomination, of the Established Church, of the Presbyterians, of the Independents, or by whatever name they may be called; and see if they do not agree in the faith, that "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin"; but why do I say, ask a real believer? -- Ask the word of God, in which they find the promises on which their faith is founded. What infatuation is it of your priests, under the name of Christianity, to deny all the efficacy of God's promises in the gospel! -- the cleansing of the blood of Jesus Christ, and the renewing, enlightening power of the Holy Ghost, and to lead you -- to what? To that which is not to be found in His word, and has no warrant but the word of men like yourselves. If they can shew any authority for it, it were all well; but they shew none but of men like themselves, or perhaps none at all; and they will not suffer you to have God's word to see if it be there or not. Oh! they are heaping up wrath against the day of wrath in a way they little know. They say you cannot understand it, and yet the Lord says, "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight."+ And He declares that He Himself was anointed to preach the gospel to the poor; and who were His disciples? Were they rich or poor? They were fishermen; and I tell you why they understood it -- they were taught of God: as it is written, "They shall be all taught of God: whosoever, therefore, hath heard and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me."++ The Jews of that day said they were the only children of God, and yet those only who left them and came to Jesus were saved from the judgment that came on their nation.
+Luke 10: 21
++John 6: 45.
Brethren, the Lord Jesus is not now amongst us in the flesh, but the scriptures of God declare the truth and power of His coming in the flesh; and they keep these from you. They hide the glory of His free and glorious salvation to the utmost of their power; and when those actuated by the Spirit of truth would declare it to you in love, and appeal to these scriptures, they do all they can to prevent your hearing the one or searching the other. Why could not you understand when you read it by the teaching of God, as well as the poor of that day, when they heard it by the teaching of God? Is God less powerful, or less near us than He was? and so far from saying that the Jews could not understand the scriptures, He says the greatest of all wonders would fail of convincing them if the scriptures did. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets" -- that is, the scriptures of the Old Testament, which was what the Jews had -- "neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."+
+Luke 16: 31.
Hear too what Paul says -- "it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For the Jews require a sign" -- as your teachers ask for miracles -- "and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God"+ -- them which are called, brethren, when the power of Christ's voice reaches the heart so that it feels the call. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is proclaimed to you. Some are daily hearing the voice of the good Shepherd: who among you will follow Him, and who will count Himself unworthy of eternal life? "By me [He says] if any man enter in, he shall go in and out and find pasture; and I will give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no man shall be able to pluck them out of his hand."++ Mark "by Me," as He says, "Come unto me."+++ We preach to you Christ, brethren -- Christ crucified, the good Shepherd laying down His life for the sheep -- we preach Christ all in all, as Paul preached Him. What will they add to Him? Can the offerings of men, or the works of men, add to Christ? Or has He laid down His life in vain, and done half His work? You say you believe in Christ; yet those that lead you deny His work, the power and efficacy of His blood to cleanse from all sin! What! I repeat it, brethren, the blood of the only-begotten Son of God, come in the flesh for our sakes, be insufficient, and your priests can do what He cannot! Oh! here is the iniquity of these men keeping the sheep of the great Shepherd from the comfort of His love.
I will copy for you a passage in the scripture, which declares His saving love in His own words -- "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep: to him the porter openeth, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out; and when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice; and a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers." "Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep: all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine: as the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep." Again, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one."
+1 Corinthians 1: 19, 20, 22, 24.
++John 10: 1-15, 27-30.
+++Matthew 11: 28.
Oh! brethren, dearly beloved, I pour out my heart to God for you, and I know that He hears my prayer; and herein I find comfort in the thought of declaring these things to you, that you should be gathered unto Him. Brethren, there is not one doctrine of those which are peculiar to yourselves, on which you are taught to depend for your souls for present grace or future glory, that has the least warrant of God's word; and, moreover, there is not one of them which is not the invention of Satan, to hinder your souls from coming to Christ. Ask those who have had their eyes opened by reading the scriptures, whether they found them there, or free salvation by Christ? Nay, read rather yourselves, dear brethren, and see: and oh! when you see, confess Him with your mouth unto salvation, for His own love's sake, for the sake of your brethren who may be still in darkness, and as you would find mercy yourselves in that day.
I shall go on to mention some things, not for their own sake, but because they use them to keep you in darkness.
They tell you Luther was a bad man. How does that change the truth of the gospel? I firmly believe I shall meet Luther in heaven through the free grace of God: but, brethren, did he tell the great truths of the gospel, which had been hidden or corrupted? But though I have not the least doubt that his name was written in heaven, our faith is in no way founded in him but in scripture, where his was in all its main points founded; and the reading of which made him, by the teaching of God, wise unto salvation, as they will every one partaker of the same grace, and that by leading him to that entire and unmixed dependence upon Christ, which can alone give peace to the soul. "Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you"; even the full treasure of the unsearchable riches of Christ, freely, "without money and without price," as says the word of the Lord: "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why spend ye your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not?"+
Brethren, I had thought of some arguments as to this matter, but I will not lead your souls from the word of the living God the Saviour to human arguments. I pledge myself to satisfy, out of the word of God, every one who in sincerity of heart will take the word of God for his authority: and, brethren, will you dare to deny the authority of the word of God? Your teachers wickedly say, that Luther held communion with Satan. Tempted by Satan, no doubt, he was; but you know, brethren, this is the lot of every man, as it was, for our sakes, of the sinless Son of man Himself. For the rest neither you nor I are his judge: and more, if they loved the truth, they would not, if there were faults in the teachers of it, seek to overthrow the truth by means of those faults: if they loved God's word, they would not defame the instruments by which God has made it known. And, I must add, brethren, that denouncing the enemies of God's truth and righteousness where they shew themselves such, in a spirit of zealous faith, is not contrary to Christian faith.
Luther honoured the truth and loved it, and we love him because he loved it and the Author and Giver of it -- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and we are thankful to God on his account.++ He was a man, and we accordingly reject everything he held which we do not find according to the truth of God: acting according to the direction of the apostle, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."+++ And so far from asking you to believe Luther, we entreat you to trust in no man implicitly. And it was to the scriptures Luther and his companions appealed, and to which we appeal, and by which God will judge all at the last day. If you accept grace, He will deal with you accordingly; you will be freely forgiven; your sins blotted out and remembered no more; and you will find, what you have trusted in, that God is love. If you will persist in seeking to be saved by your works, God will judge you accordingly, and you will be found wanting in that day; for "in his sight shall no man living be justified."++++ But it was not flesh and blood, much less the enemy of all truth, that made Luther cleave to and preach the scriptures of truth. And if you read them, you will find so, to your soul's everlasting comfort. Or if the gospel of eternal love and the truth in them be hid, when they are brought before you, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the hearts of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them.
+Isaiah 55: 1, 2.
++It is evident from the life and writings of Luther, that he was a man of God -- a man who studied the word of God deeply, and a man of much prayer, and the honoured instrument of breaking the chains of darkness over a great part of Europe and the world -- chains in which his enemies would, if possible, still keep men. And the more I inquire into this point, the more I see the malignancy and wicked-heartedness of what they say of Luther.
+++1 Thessalonians 5: 21.
++++Romans 3: 20.
Moreover, brethren, Luther was not alone, but it pleased the God of all grace to raise up, in order to give to the world the fullest testimony that it was His own work, at the very same time, at a distant place, the monastery of Einsiedeln, a member of that monastery, named Zwingle, to preach the truths of the gospel, and protest against the wickedness of the pope and practices of Rome. And God was pleased so to order it, that these two men, Zwingle and Luther, were never united in sentiment to the day of their death. And so far was Luther from agreeing with Zwingle in his opinion on one point, that he was so angry with him about it that he would never join churches with him. And the truth is, that it rather seems that Zwingle began to preach the gospel before Luther. The cause of the Reformation was God's mercy and grace, the time for which was now fully come. The occasion of it, under God's providence was this: Pope Leo the tenth wanted to finish a very splendid church in Rome, commonly called St. Peter's; and in order to raise money for it, he set indulgences for sin to sale without limit. And this it was which made Luther and Zwingle both at the same time begin to protest against the conduct of the church: though Luther at first did not charge the pope with it, but only preached against the indulgences. When they tried to silence him, he went on to search the scriptures in order to defend himself, and find out where the truth of the matter lay; and there he found that the papacy of Rome had no foundation for its assumed authority, and afterwards he was persuaded that it was indeed that Babylon which it is expressly foretold should rise in the Christian church, and corrupt everything herself, and persecute all faithful witnesses to God's truth. Would to God, brethren, and it is my earnest prayer and trust, that many amongst you may be led by the same means of searching the scriptures to discover the same truths; and above all, that your souls may find their way by the teaching of God's Spirit, by the means of God's word, to the full power of eternal life and unfeigned holiness of heart and life through the knowledge of Jesus Christ therein revealed; that you may enter with unmixed joy into the presence of your God.
I have added, brethren, a few distinct texts, which shew in direct terms the falseness of the doctrines on which you have been taught to depend. They do not deny that the scriptures are the word of God. And then judge you, whether those men are to be trusted who teach those things, and keep the scriptures from you, which they must own to be true.
They say that men who are forgiven their sins must nevertheless pass through the fire of purgatory, in order to be cleansed from them.
The scripture says, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin."+
They say that men ought to address she Virgin Mary and the saints as mediators.
+1 John 1: 7.
The scripture says, "There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."+
They say that the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice, an offering or oblation for the sins of the quick and the dead.
The scriptures say, that "by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" -- that remission of sins is obtained by the new covenant in His blood; and that "where remission of these is, there is no more an offering [or oblation] for sin."++
They say that salvation is obtained by men's works.
The scriptures say, "By grace ye are saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast."+++
I take notice of these here (not to enter further upon them as points of controversy; and indeed where the scripture has plainly spoken on a subject, I do not see what room there is for controversy), but to lead you to this point: the priests would have you trust blindly in them; at the same time they cannot deny that the scriptures -- take your own Douay, I am content -- are the word of the living God. Now I ask you, Do they not teach you the things I have mentioned? and are not the scriptures, your own scriptures, flat contrary? How can you give the salvation of your souls into the hands of men who acknowledge the scriptures to be the word of God, and yet teach things flatly against them?
But not to shew you error merely, and what you have reason to distrust, but to set before you truths upon which your souls may rest, if God shall give mercy to you that this may reach you, and open your hearts to the acknowledging the truth, I add --
+1 Timothy 2: 5.
++Hebrews 10: 14, 18.
+++Ephesians 2: 8, 9.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the true sacrifice.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the great High Priest.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the mediator between God and man.
Christ, and Christ alone, is our righteousness in the sight of God.
Christ, and Christ alone, is our perfect pattern.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the great Head of the church, and the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the true vine, in which every branch finds life; while every believer incorporated into His mystical body by faith+ and baptism thus by the communion of His Spirit becomes one with Him, and, partaking of His fulness according to the measure of the gift of God, fulfils in his sphere the same offices which He fills as the first-born amongst many brethren, ministering to the completeness and perfection of His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Brethren, the scriptures contain all things necessary to your salvation, because they reveal the fulness of Christ Jesus, "God manifest in the flesh."
The Apostle Paul says, "By grace ye are saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast; for we are God's workmanship, created again in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."++
What we want then is to know the way of salvation, and how to be perfected in good works, in which believers walk.
Both are found in Christ by faith: He is our Saviour and our pattern.
Both are revealed in the scriptures, as to which Paul says to Timothy, "From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."+++
Further, brethren, that the minds of any of you who love the truth may be undeceived, I add some further points.
First -- You rely upon being catholic. Catholic means (as your catechism, I believe, tells you) universal, and that it is universal in different ways.
Brethren, the fact is, the Church of Rome is universal in none, except by the antichristian assumption by the pope of what belongs to Christ alone. A large portion of professing Christians have no communion with the Church of Rome, and have never, at any period, admitted its supremacy. Its faith is not universal; it totally differs from, and is opposed to, "the faith once delivered to the saints"; and for this we appeal to the scriptures, which they cannot deny contain that faith.
+[The author would now say, no doubt, by the baptism of the Spirit. -- Ed.]
++Ephesians 2: 8-10.
+++2 Timothy 3: 15-17.
Not only, brethren, are they opposed to the scriptures, but the articles which we renounce have been added to the creed, in express defiance of the authority of the primitive church itself. In the year 449 the third General Council, which sat at Ephesus to maintain the truth against heresies, expressly decreed that no innovation should be made on the creed then settled. In the eighth century after Christ, Pope Leo the third wrote to his Legate (who was attending assemblies of German and French bishops), in answer to an enquiry from him, stating, that no addition should be permitted to be made in the creed, which the French and German bishops were thinking of making; and he set up, out of the archives at Rome, silver tablets in St. Peter's and St. Paul's, with the creed engraved on them, as a memorial of what it was then, for the very purpose that nothing should be changed or added. This happened a thousand years ago. Now the great difference between the Greek Church (which denies the supremacy of Rome, and is separated from it) and the Roman (which calls itself catholic) is the addition which this tablet was put up to prevent, and which the Greeks have not agreed to the insertion of. And most of the great points in which we, who deny both the catholicity and the supremacy of the church of Rome, differ from you, are, twelve new points added at the time of the Reformation to the creed by Pope Pius the fourth and the Council of Trent. So that, far from their being catholic in point of faith, we are sanctioned in our separation from them, not only by the scriptures, which these new doctrines of theirs are quite contrary to, but they are, in adding them to the creed and attempting to impose them on us, expressly condemned by a General Council, which they receive and declare to be of divine authority, which sat fourteen hundred years ago. And the Greek Church, which they also condemn as schismatic is, to say the least, justified in its separation by the authority of one of their own popes who took the pains of fixing up a silver tablet to prevent that which after popes did or acquiesced in. So utterly unfounded are they in the pretensions which they set up in order to keep you in bondage.
And this fact is as strong against their pretence of infallibility as catholicity; for we have the church four or five hundred years after Christ, expressly decreeing that no article shall be added; and we have those who call themselves the church, fifteen or sixteen hundred years after Christ, adding twelve articles as matters of faith, and rejecting all who deny them. Was the church in the first ages, or the church of Rome at the Reformation in the right? or how can that be infallible which contradicts itself? But the true catholic church, brethren, that seed of God, which shall indeed never fail, the body of Christ, the real communion of saints, the one holy catholic and apostolic church, subsists in the company of true believers, in every age united to the great Head, Christ Jesus, by His Spirit dwelling in them, and incorporating them into His mystical body. And while the power of the Lord lasts, even to the end of the world, while the influences of the divine Spirit shew to souls His glory in hope, so long will there be a church upon earth. But to say that this is any particular communion or body of professing Christians (and that too without inquiring whether they hold the faith once delivered to the saints) is nothing else but the spirit of Antichrist.
And now, brethren, see what sort of arguments they use to keep you still in bondage.
Luther did not give scriptural advice in some instances; therefore do not you read the scriptures, which would have hindered him giving the advice if he had read them properly. Is that sound reason?
Again, King Henry the Eighth was a bad man, and acted contrary to good morals: therefore do not read those scriptures which condemn his immorality. What reason is there in such an argument as that? Do we say that all Protestants are good men, or under the vital influence of the Spirit of God? Alas! no, brethren; but we do say, that they have the truth and faith and kingdom of God amongst them. But the fact is, Henry the Eighth, though he was an instrument in the hand of God to overthrow popery in England, never, I believe even to the time of his death, cordially submitted to protestant truth,+ and during some part of his life burnt people for believing it, even after he had thrown off popery. For Henry the Eighth, although we leave him to God's final judgment, was corrupted by power and wealth and pleasure, so as to love his own will rather than popery or Protestantism; and the fact is, we have nothing to do with him, nor will his crimes be any answer for your souls in the day of judgment.
+In proof of this, he left £600 a year to Windsor church to have masses said for his soul, principally, among other religious services.
The point, brethren, is this -- there are certain doctrines in which the faith and hopes of a professor of the Christian religion are deeply concerned. You are told you ought to believe these doctrines. We say there is no foundation for them, and not only so, but that the belief in them precludes the faith by which we find the power and comfort of the gospel of the Son of God come in the flesh; and we appeal to the scriptures, confessed by all to be inspired, and given to us by God for our edification in the truth, written by apostles and evangelists commissioned by God, so that they might say, and none could deny, "he that is of God heareth us." And we declare to you as honest men, that a person reading them with the assistance of God's grace will find none of these doctrines in them, but what is entirely inconsistent with them, and your teachers, while they dare not deny that the scriptures do contain the truth of God, will not let you read them to see whether these things be so, as we say: while we know that the Bereans are expressly commended for so doing: "they were more noble, searching the scriptures daily whether those things were so."+
Another common difficulty in the mind of a person beginning to see the truth of God, amongst you, is -- this Protestant faith is a new faith; or, as they are accustomed to say, it came fifteen hundred years too late. I mention these arguments as things which might hinder a sincere soul from receiving the truth. They will tell you, the first religion must be the right one. Undoubtedly, brethren, it must. The first religion must be the right one, and the only one, not because it is the first, but as coming from the Lord. And that is exactly the ground we go upon. And it must be so for this reason, that that is the true religion which came from God Himself. In a word, the only true religion is that which was "once delivered to the saints," which came from the lips of Christ and His apostles -- so much so indeed that Paul is bold to say, that he wished they were cut off that troubled the Galatians, perverting the gospel of Christ. "But," says he, "though we, or an angel from God, should preach to you any other gospel than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be accursed."++
+Acts 17: 11.
++Galatians 1: 8, 9.
And now brethren, where will you find the first religion? Hear Paul -- "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son":+ and then, after declaring the glory of the Son of God, he goes on, "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?" Hebrews 2: 1-4.
So that we may put the case thus: we agree that the first doctrines are the true ones, as coming from Christ and the inspired apostles: the question is, how we are to find what they are? You take it at the priest's word, who comes eighteen hundred years after them. We appeal to the scriptures, which record Christ's sayings, as none of you deny, and contain the apostles' writings, as none of you deny: is not this a good way of finding out what that first religion was which they taught? And not only do we shew that we use the right way to follow the first religion, which I agree we are bound to do; but we shew you as a matter of direct history, that they have added twelve articles to the creed which was in use in the primitive or old church, and which is commonly called the Nicene creed. I take for granted you know the creed. Now will you tell me what there is in that about the Virgin Mary, or that the saints are mediators? Ought not this to make you doubt whether you are not misled in being made to believe things which are not in the creed, when they refuse you the scriptures to see if they are there; and when, too, a General Council prohibited any new creed to be made, beside what is called the Nicene creed?
There is one thing more, brethren (which I should never mention; I should in truth be ashamed to mention it, but that it is commonly said amongst you) that is, that Peter stands at the gate of heaven with the keys, and lets in the Romanists as belonging to the true church, and keeps out other people. Now, brethren, you will not deny that, as Paul says, "we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."++ Keep this in mind: good and bad, we are all to stand at the judgment-seat of Christ. Now this is quite out of the question if that be true about Peter; for, according to that, they will never get to the judgment-seat of Christ, or perhaps you will say it is after they have been judged. But then Peter need not be there at all, for those that the Lord rejects He sends away to hell: as it is written, "Depart ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. +++
+Hebrews 1: 1, 2.
++2 Corinthians 5: 10.
+++Matthew 25: 41.
Brethren, I have spoken of these things for your soul's sake, With sorrow of heart. We are all sinners, and under just judgment in the sight of a holy God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; nor Can there be any sound real hope to see His face, unless We are cleansed from all sin. It is the very truth and purpose of the gospel to assure us, that there is perfect and entire remission of them in Christ Jesus, for those that believe in Him, and that His blood cleanses from all sin; and also this further blessing to those who by the work of His grace have been brought to desire holiness, that He "Will put his law into our hearts, and write it in our minds." Instead of saying to us, "If you do not do so and so, to keep my law, you will be condemned"; He says, "I have mercy upon you; I will put the love of my law in your hearts; I will give you a new heart; and your sins and iniquities I will remember no more."+: This is what God has said, brethren, and why should you not believe Him? Oh! comfort to a soul weary in itself, to a heavy burdened conscience, to hear the Lord from heaven saying, "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And again, "Your sins and iniquities will I remember no more." Think of this.
Yours with many prayers,
+Hebrews 10: 16, 17.
And you have not one word, then, to say for the Mass, the very centre and distinguishing feature of the whole Romanist system!
The omission is intelligible, but remarkable. The pretension to offer Christ still, as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead, is so subversive of Christianity, so contrary to the express testimony of the word of God, that it is natural for one who seeks to conciliate Protestants to Romish doctrines to pass over it in silence, if he can.
The best way to win to these doctrines is to conceal them, to direct the attention from them. You cannot deny that the Mass is the centre of your whole system. "He goes to Mass" is the very term familiarly used to designate a Romanist; "he goes to church," to mark out a Protestant. Why have you omitted this subject in your effort to enlighten poor Roman Catholics and disabuse prejudiced Protestants? The pretence to have a sacrifice still offered up on earth, when the word of God declares, that "by one offering Christ has perfected for ever them that are sanctified"; that "there is no more offering for sin, where remission of sins is"; that a continual offering was a memorial of sins, proving that they were not put away -- the declaration that you have an unbloody sacrifice, when the word of God declares, that "without shedding of blood there is no remission," and that consequently, if the oblation of Christ was to be repeated, He must often have suffered: such a plain distinct testimony of God's word on the very point, makes it natural you should omit all mention of it. The sacrifice of the Mass is the proof that, in what calls itself the church of Rome, there is no true remission of sins; for "where remission of sins is, there is no more offering for sin."
This is a very solemn point, dear reader. If the word of God be true, there is no remission of sins in the so-called church of Rome. Hence, those belonging to it are continually, as the poor Jews were, "offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins"; for they are unbloody sacrifices, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. Romanism has a form of piety, but it denies the substance. God forbid that I should use a hard word as to souls as precious as my own, and who believe they are in the right; whom, I trust and believe, I love with unfeigned charity; such as I have lived amongst for years, and loved and served as well as I knew how. It is not want of love to speak plainly in what concerns the salvation of souls. I would not use an abusive or hard word that could offend them, but I say plainly, that that is not the church of God, nor is the true remission of sins to be found, where a sacrifice is still pretended to be offered. "For where remission of sins is, there is no more offering for sin." The church of God enjoys the perfect remission of sins by one perfect sacrifice, in which the precious blood of Christ was shed, offered once for all, and which never can be repeated; for Christ can die no more -- can never suffer again, nor need He, for He has by one offering perfected for ever them that are sanctified. The Mass is but a return to the weakness of Judaism.
Hence this one capital point is sufficient for everyone taught of God, and must lead everyone who bows to the word of God to reject the Romish system as an entire departure from Christianity as revealed of God. Yet I will take up briefly the different points the author of "Law and Testimony" has touched upon. And, first, some general observations which I would address to the writer.
You lean much upon the Fathers. Forgive me if I think you have not much read them. You tell us, that you have taken from the authenticated work of every author you have quoted, as may be ascertained by reference to their writings. Now, that you are not personally acquainted with them, you have afforded most unequivocal proof in your pamphlet, in this: that you have supposed the Clement who wrote the Stromata to be the Clement who was, as you say, a "fellow-labourer of the apostles, who was Pope of Rome, third after Peter, and is often mentioned by St. Paul, in his Epistles." "The church, he writes," you say, "which is one," etc., and you quote "St. Clem. 7 Stromat." Now, the very smallest acquaintance with the Fathers would have saved you so glaring a mistake as you have here made. There was a Clement, companion of Paul, who wrote a letter to the church of Corinth, and who (though there is the greatest confusion and contradiction+ as to the succession of the first bishops of Rome) is stated by respectable historians to have been the third bishop of Rome. Two letters have been attributed to him; one is believed to be authentic -- a pious effort to compose the strifes of the church of Corinth. But (must I say so? As my readers may be peasants of the North of Ireland, it may be necessary) Clement of Alexandria, who never was a bishop at all, was the author of the Stromata. He flourished from 192 A.D. to the beginning of the third century. He was president of the school of Alexandria. He was a great philosopher as well as a Christian, but of doubtful soundness++ enough on some points, and full of philosophical speculations. However, whatever the value of Clement's opinions, one thing is quite clear, that you did not consult him yourself; whether you did the other Fathers, which you quote, every one must judge by this example for himself. One thing is certain: you must be an utter stranger to the Fathers, to have taken Clement of Alexandria for Clement of Rome.
+Some make Clement Peter's successor; others the fourth, putting Linus and Anacletus between; some seek to reconcile the two accounts by saying Linus and Anacletus were bishops under Peter, in his lifetime. Learned men are not agreed by thirty years as to the date of Clement's epistle.
++The very learned Jesuit, Petau, accuses him of Arian sentiments -- that is, as to doctrine, for he lived long before Arius.
Your definition of the church introduces another point in which the flagrant departure of Romanism from the Christianity taught by the apostles betrays itself in a remarkable manner. It is, you say, an assembly of Christians, united by the profession of the same true faith, and communion of the same sacraments, under the government of lawful pastors, whose head is the pope. Now scripture is as explicit as possible in saying that Christ is its head -- and it cannot have two.
The statement of the Catechism of the Council of Trent is curious enough on this point. It says -- it could not say otherwise -- this church has also but one ruler and governor, the invisible one, Christ, whom the Eternal Father hath made head over all the church, which is His body; the visible one, him who, as legitimate successor of Peter, the prince of the apostles, fills the apostolic chair. One would have thought that made two. God "gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body"; or, if you prefer the Rhemish translation, "hath made him head over all, to the church which is his body" (Ephesians 1: 22, 23); and again (chapter 5: 23), "the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church."
Now this is practically very important, because the glorious Head, living in heaven, gives the true church, His body, a heavenly character, though its members may be despised on earth; whereas a glorious head on earth, greater than emperors and princes in the eyes of men, gives it a worldly character which neither Christ nor the true church ever had: besides Christ as the Head is a source of grace, which it is impossible the pope or any man can be. But the grand point is, Christ is the one sole Head of the true church; the pope is the head of yours; therefore yours is certainly not the true.
One little word in addition as to your definition. You tell us it is an assembly of Christians united by the profession of the same true faith. Hence, as there are millions in the Greek church who say they are the true church, and millions of Protestants who say they are, and millions of Catholics who say they are: and you tell me that their being united in the same true faith is part of the definition by which I shall know which is the true one, I must find out what the true faith is, before I know which Christ's church is, or if any of them are; for each of them tells me it is. Of course they honestly think themselves so; and you tell me that profession of the true faith marks the true church. Well then I must necessarily know what is the true faith, to know who professes it; that is, I find the true faith before I find the church. And so it always was; for it was on receiving the true faith from the apostles, or other servants of Christ, that people at the first became members of the church; and they did not, and could not, become so otherwise.
But, again, you give us the usual marks of unity -- sanctity catholicity, apostolicity, and add infallibility, perpetual visibility. The first four are given in "Milner's End of Controversy"; indeed they are the well-known marks as given in the Catechism of the Council of Trent. Nowhere is the truth given as a mark of the true church. This is strange -- still more strange, since in your definition of the church, the profession of the true faith is made essential to it.
It is very convenient to assume it as a definition, and to drop it as a mark; but you have replaced it by a very convenient substitute -- infallibility, which means, take it for true without inquiry. Before, I was to take the true faith, as shewing Christ's church; now, I must without inquiry take the church and all it teaches, as securing the truth for me. Which is the right way? Both cannot be. Holding and professing the truth are not infallibility. Every true Christian holds and professes the truth, but he is not infallible. If the church professes the true faith, she holds a true faith which exists all ready to be professed, as it was given by inspiration to those whom Christ sent to reveal it. If she is infallible, she is the source of truth, not the receiver of it. Now that is true of God alone.
But, in giving the first four marks, you allege your system justifies you. They are those given in the Catechism of the Council of Trent. The only point I would now insist upon here is this very solemn one, that the truth forms no mark of the true church in the system of Rome. She dare not present it as a test; she disclaims it, she avoids it. She pleads unity, sanctity, catholicity, apostolicity. We will examine these just now.
Truth cannot be borne as a test. All that is taught is to be received without any test at all, though an apostle could say, "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." They of Berea were noble in the apostle's eyes, because they searched the scriptures to see whether these things were so. But the test of truth cannot be endured at Rome; it is not pretended to be one of the marks of the Romish body. In place of that, it would impose all it teaches without any test at all -- pretending to be infallible, which is the attribute of God only. Do I assert that man, by his own powers, is able to fathom the truth? No; but the Lord has said, "They shall be all taught of God; whosoever, therefore, hath heard and learned of the Father, cometh unto me." God may employ any one, a minister of the word, a mother, a friend, a book to present the truth -- grace applies it to the heart; that, the church, even the true church, has no pretensions to do, though she is an instrument to hold the truth up before men; but God alone can bring it home.
On the other hand, the Roman Catholic, having relinquished the truth as a test of the true church, saying that the truth is to be searched for in vain, leans not on grace, but entirely upon human powers, to find the true church. He points out, to use the words of a celebrated controversialist and bishop, "certain exterior visible marks, such as plain unlearned persons can discover, if they will take ordinary pains for this purpose, no less than persons of the greatest abilities and literature." This is stated in reply to the marks of the true church, which the author declares to be laid down by Luther, Calvin, and the Church of England -- namely, truth of doctrine, and the right administration of the sacraments. That is, truth of doctrine and the right administration of the sacraments are objected to as adequate marks of the true church, by which it may be known.
Now, if it be a question for heathens or Jews -- for them the whole question is, just how to be saved. If they believe and are baptized, they are saved, and members, it is to be supposed, of the true church, before they have discussed its merits at all. If it be a question which arises among Christians, who seek among Roman Catholics, and Protestants, and Presbyterians, and other bodies, where the true church is to be found; if, I say, the question arises among Christians, they have not all knowledge, doubtless, but they have saving faith, or they are not Christians at all; and hence, the truth is a most sure means of ascertaining the true church. Thus, if I know, as a matter of my own salvation, that the divinity and atonement of Christ are the very truth of God, and I found everything calling itself a church which denied these fundamental doctrines, I could at once say, That is not the true church. Souls may be ignorantly in error there -- may come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved; but I cannot own the body as the true church of God.
And here a great and important question arises, on which I desire to say a few words, from its intrinsic importance, though the book I am commenting on relieves me from the necessity. They quote the scriptures, and, consequently, suppose us capable of understanding them, heretics though we may be, capable of receiving proof from them. But the subject is too important to pass it over with this remark, conclusive though it be. It is said we cannot judge scripture; it is alleged that laws require judges, and the like. Now I do not go upon the ground of our capacity to judge scripture. My reason, dear reader, is very simple -- it judges us. "The words that I speak unto you," says the Lord, "shall judge you in the last day." "The word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, and pierceth to the dividing asunder of joints and marrow, and soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." There is a conscience in every man; God's word speaks to it, and judges everything in his heart. It is the light which manifests all things -- the revelation of God and of Christ, who is light. I do not judge if the light be clean; it shews whether I am.
When Christ was in the world, when He spoke the words of God, were not men bound to receive them on peril of condemnation? Did it require the church's authority to lead men to receive it? All the religious authorities -- authorities which they quote to confirm their doctrine -- rejected Him. Are His words less binding, less true, less holy, less gracious now? The word of God is not judged -- it judges. Woe be to the man who hardens his heart against it! Men did then: what was the consequence? God, by John Baptist, mourned to them, they would not lament; He piped to them, they would not dance. Hardening their consciences against the conviction of sin, they (to use the words of the blessed Lord) rejected the counsel of God against themselves; that is, to their own eternal ruin. The word (which was, and, blessed be God, yet is spoken and sent in grace) will judge them, and all who reject it in the last day; for God knows that, when He sent it in grace, He sent it with ample proofs to men's hearts and consciences that it is His word.
But a word more on this. It is not denied that the scriptures are the word of God. The Council of Trent has added seven books to the canon, never publicly received into it before, and against the express testimony of Jerome, the author of the Vulgate translation, which they receive as authentic. But leaving these contested ones for the moment (for in the New Testament there are none such), they own that the scriptures are the word of God. They own that Peter wrote his epistles as an inspired apostle; Paul his, John his, and so of the other books of the New Testament (and the same holds good as to all the Old Testament, to the Jews). Now, save the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, all the books of the New Testament are addressed to all the faithful; in one epistle, that to the Philippians, the bishops and deacons being added. That is, to express myself in modern language, the New Testament was addressed not to the clergy but by the clergy, the highest and wisest of them assuredly, to all the faithful in general, or in particular places. Now, if the faithful in general were incompetent to use them, how came the apostle to write them to them? The apostles thought what they wrote was suited to the mass of the faithful; you think it is not; which is right? And mark what a monstrous position you put yourselves in -- the apostles wrote (to say nothing of the guidance of the Holy Ghost yet) in the way they thought best suited to the mass of the faithful, writing to all of them; and even in one case particularly insisting that care should be taken that it was read to all. You think you can do it better than they. What monstrous presumption! Did they do it badly, in a wrong manner, so that you can do it better? If really looked into, it is blasphemy; for it is the Spirit of God who addressed all this, save the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, to all the common mass of the faithful.
But another very solemn question arises here, that of the authority of God in the matter. God did address the writings in question to the mass of the faithful as binding on their consciences, directing their lives and rejoicing their hearts. Now I do not insist here on the right of every Christian to read the scriptures (though no man has a right to call it in question), but on the right of God to address Himself to whom He will, and of the sin of intercepting what He has addressed to His servants. If I have sent directions and promises to my servants, he who hinders their having them as I send them, and directly from myself, meddles, not with the right of the servants, but with mine. God has sent His word to the faithful, not to the clergy (I except Timothy and Titus, as to this argument, however profitable, and in spirit binding on all). He who hinders their receiving it, or pretends to claim control over their getting it, flies in the face of God's authority and God's own acts. To pretend to communicate God's thoughts better and more clearly than His inspired apostles, and to hinder His communications reaching His own servants, when He has addressed them to them, is a strange way of proving any to be the true church of God. And that is exactly what the clergy of the Roman Catholic system do.
But I will enter on your marks of the true church. They are unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity. You refer to some other points, which I will advert to in their place.
First, unity. That the church of God was one at the beginning, and manifestly and publicly such, is evident to every one that reads the scriptures. That it is not, if we consider it as a public visible body on earth (for the true body of Christ will be infallibly so in glory, and is so always in the living unity of the Spirit) is equally evident, from the simple fact that we are inquiring which of two or three bodies, or if any of them, be the true church. Unity of doctrine, and general discipline, which you give as being unity, is not sufficient. These may prove sameness in two bodies, as well as unity. There must be corporate unity -- a single body. I therefore seek more than you do in unity. Further, your proofs of unity are utterly vain and useless; they are as true of the Greek body, which detests and rejects you, as of the Romish, which denounces the Greek as schismatic and heretical. They have bishops and the assemblings on Sundays, and the Eucharist, and the same doctrines, and the same general discipline, which you plead as proofs for Rome. You would find these in the Protestant Episcopal church too all over tile world. Perhaps, indeed, we may except a confession to a priest. But what a strange mark of unity you have given us here. It is perfectly certain that if it be one, no Christian for centuries after Christ was in the one true church. There is not an historical point more incontestable than this, that private confession to a priest is a novelty unknown to the early church. After the earliest times men did public penance for scandalous falls, and no confession was imposed as to others. There was indeed for a time one penitentiary priest at Constantinople, and, as it appears elsewhere; and such scandal arose, on a certain occasion, from it, that it was abolished by Nectarius; and his successor, Chrysostom, at the end of the fourth century, urges, over and over again, confession to God alone. Augustine's words are equally clear; so are Ambrose's. In the thirteenth century alone it was first made obligatory by the Lateran Council under Innocent III -- the same pope under whom the Inquisition was established, and the Crusades formed against the Albigenses, and the atrocities of that "holy war" perpetrated in the south of France.
We agree that unity was at the first; and it does not exist now. There are Romanists, Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Protestant Episcopalians, Presbyterians, all composing nominal churches, containing, the smallest of them, millions of professing Christians. Your talking of unity of doctrine and discipline amongst Romanists is nothing at all to the purpose. So there is amongst the millions of the Greek church; so there is in the smallest body of Christians you may affect to despise. The question is, Is unity found in the whole professing church? If you tell me, But none of the others, save Rome, are in the truth, that is just the question to be solved, and I must first have the truth to judge by. If I have that, according to the word of God, to judge by, then I judge the Romanist system to be apostasy from the truth of God. That you are at one among yourselves proves nothing at all, because others, as the Greek body, are that also. Nay, to go further, Mahometans are, as to doctrine and general discipline, with pretty much such a schism as Greeks and Romans shew under the name of Christ. Nay, in China we have numerically more than all put together in one system, worshipping heaven and the manes of their sainted ancestors.
You will say, and say justly, But these are not Christians -- have not the truth of God at all. But then I must know what the truth is, to judge that. I do (blessed be God!) know the sure precious truth of God, the doctrine of Christ, as God has revealed it. But when I use this, I find that you have it not.
But you have the pope. Is this a security for unity? Why, you know well that there was a time when there were three at a time, and all three set aside by a council, a general council -- that of Constance. If such unity as you speak of was necessary to the existence of the true church, and the pope was the keystone of it, where was it then? and where is your apostolic succession? In which of the three am I to trace it? There was a regular double succession of popes for fifty years; and then we have a council deposing a pope;+ and mark it well, the present succession of the apostolic see, and the consequent existence of the whole Romish body, depends on the right of a general council to depose a pope, and its superiority to the pope, for it flows at best from the pope set up by the council when they had deposed John XXIII. I say, at best; for these three popes are each of them sources of an ordained clergy. Again, when Pope Liberius solemnly signed the Arian creed, and the vast majority of Christendom were Arian, where was the unity of the church through the pope then? Now I will not affirm that the story of Pope Joan (that is, that a good-for-nothing woman was pope) is true; but with the real uncertainty whether it be not true, what is become of succession, as a secure test of the true church?
+One of the three resigned; one died in a corner of Spain, anathematizing all as true pope; another council deposed the Roman Pope, John. The Spanish one had a successor, but who can hardly be said to have been one, and retired.
We have touched now on the question of apostolicity, as well as unity; but, on other grounds, this mark will not help you out in your assertion that the system of Rome is the one true church. The apostolic succession of the Greek and Eastern bodies is as sure, and indeed much surer -- to say nothing of the Protestant -- than that of Rome. So that this will not hinder my being a Greek, or an Armenian, or even a Protestant. How will this visible external mark help me? Am I to settle all the nice questions of the Council of Constance? Am I to settle whether Urban VI, or Clement VII, or their successors, were the true popes of their day? or, when the successors of each line were condemned by the council as guilty of heresy, perjury, and contumacy, and were excommunicated, am I to consider them popes or not? or, instead of them, the third set, Alexander V, and his successor, John XXIII, and who was in turn degraded by the council for his crimes? It is a dreary scene; yet it is not I, but you, who have referred me to apostolicity as a test of the true church.
Do you say, that the poor man has nothing to do with all this? But this is apostolicity. It will not, you mean to say, bear examination. For how am I to settle apostolic succession but by knowing it exists? Is this a simple external visible mark? Why, it is a question your most learned divines are at sea about, and avoid. They tell you the pope and a general council together are infallible; but how, when a council condemns a pope and deposes him, a deposition on which the best line of your present orders, and the validity of the succession of the actual Peter, depend? Again, which are the general councils? This they dare not say; because if they admit Constance to be one, then the church can act without a pope, and depose him; if they deny it, their succession is gone, because the present popes derive their succession from this act. Am I to settle all this, before I know the truth of God for my soul, or find the true church? Where am I to find the records? How many historians am I to read? What is the authority of these authors? What a difference from the truth learned from the simple word of God! Or am I to gulp down as I find it, because Rome is infallible -- I know not why?
But one word more as to the pope and unity. You tell us, when a heresy spread, a council was assembled by the authority of the pope. Now, if you have the smallest acquaintance with ecclesiastical history, you must know that all the early councils were summoned by the emperors. They were held in the east; and when Christendom in those quarters was torn in pieces by clerical contention and ambition and doctrinal discord, the emperors tried to make peace by gathering these general assemblies, none having been held (if we except that recorded in the Acts) before the emperors professed Christianity; and then it was only bishops and others within the Roman empire who met. The council of Antioch before that time formally condemned the very term as heretical which the council of Nice established as the only secure test of orthodoxy against Arius (that is. Homoousion); and this circumstance being pressed by the eastern bishops who got influence over Constantine, the affair ended in Arius being received as orthodox into what you call the Catholic church, and dying in its communion; and in Athanasius, who held what both you and I believe to be the truth, dying in banishment. And in the subsequent reign (the emperor being an Arian, and the orthodox persecuted), the pope signed the Arian creed, as a more dutiful subject than I suppose he would be now. But this by the bye; it is perfectly certain that, in the first and great general councils, the pope did not assemble them by his authority. Is this what you refer me to as securing me in the knowledge of the truth and the true church?
But you tell me also that I have a test in its catholicity, that is, its universality. But here the voice of facts speaks too loud for you not to sink into what is ridiculous. "It must contain," you say, "more members than any other community or denomination of professing Christians." More members! a majority! Is that all the truth of God has to depend upon? What has that to do with universality? Why, if I live in England a poor countryman, such as you address your book to (the immense majority are Protestants -- indeed, save Irishmen, none else scarcely could be found), and if I am to take such a poor test as the name of a building, everybody knows that if I asked, Where is the church? I should be shewn the Protestant place of worship; all else are chapels. Indeed this test would hold good in Ireland. But is your test of the true church reduced to a majority? Go to the east, where little is known beyond their own doors, and there this simple external visible test is the certain exclusion of all pretension of the Romanist to be of the true church.
But some facts on this point require a little comment. You tell us that Rome has two hundred and thirty millions of adherents. Where have you found them? The fact is, that you have exaggerated by pretty nearly a hundred millions. There are in the world, on a rough calculation -- for nothing more can be given here, or indeed be arrived at, as to some countries -- there are in the world about one hundred and forty-three, say one hundred and forty-five, millions of Romanists, eighty-five millions of Protestants, sixty millions of Greeks, and perhaps four or five millions in all of other denominations, as Armenians and the like in the east. Asia and Africa contain a certain number of Protestants and Romanists difficult to enumerate, and scarcely changing the proportions. That is, there are about as many professing Christians who hold that Rome is right and who hold that she is wrong But who, in his senses, would take this, or the contrary, to be a means of ascertaining the true church? Had men gone by numbers, they would, in the fourth century, have gone from the confession of Christ's divinity to the denial of it with the different emperors and the same pope, who would have helped them in and out with the majority into (not unity, thank God, for some would not give up the truth for an emperor or a pope, but into) so-called orthodoxy, if majorities were to decide it. And alas! being mere professors, so it happened that they did wheel about with the turn of the tide.
I have spoken briefly of three of the marks of the true church -- unity, apostolicity, catholicity. As to unity, the Romish body is one, the Greek church is one, and so of others: but general visible unity is lost, or we should not have to inquire which is the true church. Catholicity, or universality, you have given up the pretension to; you claim only a majority; so that, if universality be a test, Romanists have not the true church, nor, since there are Romanists, any other body either.
This test, by your own confession, and change of it into a simple majority (itself more than doubtful), makes the whole ground on which you search for the true church a perfect absurdity. Your own statement proves, if universality be a test, that there is no true visible church at all. Lastly, apostolicity is the most absurd test imaginable; for, while pretending to be simple and external, the succession of bishops from the apostles' day must be ascertained, or the mark does not exist at all. And in the next place Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and even Protestant Episcopalians have it, and prove it as gaily as Romanists themselves; while the only place where it is known to be most grievously damaged and upset is in the papal succession, where for fifty years there were two popes at a time, both ordaining other successions; and at last three, all put down for heresy, and another set up by a council which upset all their claims together. I have reserved the question of sanctity: it is a painful one, and I shall speak of it at the close.
I shall now refer to your use of scripture. First, your quotation of it is important. It is then available, intelligible to the faithful, and conclusive. We can understand it with God's help (without which we can do nothing right), and it binds our conscience. Your use of it is another thing. You quote, for example, passages, or parts of passages (for one is applicable to the state of glory), saying, that Christ would have one fold and one shepherd (that is, no longer Jews or Gentiles as distinct people); Christ's prayer, that they all may be one; then the passage which applies to glory ("the glory that thou hast given me I have given them," precedes what you quote). Paul's direction to the faithful, to be careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; a direction to Timothy to keep what was committed to his trust; and one to Titus to reject heretics. It is clear, you say, from all these texts, that no one can be a member of the church of Christ unless he holds the same doctrine as she teaches. Well, how this conclusion flows from a prayer for unity, or an exhortation to keep it in the bond of peace, is, I confess, beyond me, and, with all humility, I apprehend beyond anybody; because there is nothing in the passages you quote about the conclusion which you draw. Common sense tells us, that a person who is a member of a body, and does not hold what it teaches, is, in some respects, inconsistent. But your conclusion is utterly false; for either the church must teach some error, or no member can ever be in any error whatever without ceasing thereby to be a member of the church at all; for if he be in any error, he holds something the church does not teach, or else she teaches error.
But, though you tell us the texts prove it, you (strangely enough) give in the same sentence a totally different reason for it. The church has received authority from Christ to teach all nations. Allow me to correct an error of a very grave character, on which all your reasoning, and all the Romish reasoning, is founded. You say the church teaches. Now I deny that the church teaches at all; she holds the truth, has learned the truth, is sanctified by the truth; she teaches nothing. She is taught, and has learned. Ministers, whom God has sent for that purpose, teach. It was never said to the church, "Go ye and teach all nations." It was said to the apostles, when Christ ascended; and they went and taught, as did certain others, sent by the Holy Ghost; and the church was gathered and built up. Then those whom God raised up as pastors and teachers, waited, or were to wait on their teaching.
But there is authority, you allege, also in matters of discipline; but this resides in the body. The passage you quote from Matthew 16 (your text-book failed you here, or you failed it; it is Matthew 18: 17: chapter 16: 18 is your favourite passage of the rock, on which it is built) does not speak of doctrines, but it does speak of the whole assembly, where a man is, and not of clergy or church teaching, or doctrine. If one Christian wrong his brother, the latter is to seek to win him alone; if the attempt fail, he is to take two or three, that all may be clearly established; and, if he do not hear them, the injured party is to tell it to the whole assembly; and, if the trespasser neglect to hear them, then the wronged man may hold him as unclean and a stranger. What has this to do with the clergy settling doctrine authoritatively, or with the clergy at all, or with doctrine at all? Just nothing. But when nothing is to be had, we must get the best sounding passage we can, that there may be an appearance of the authority of scripture: with the reality of it Rome can well dispense. Shall I tell you what the citation of this passage by Rome proves? That there is no passage in scripture to favour her pretensions -- not a trace of one; had there been one, this would not have been always cited, while the smallest attention must prove it to have nothing whatever to do with the matter, and that Rome is forced to pervert scripture to have some appearance of being justified by it.
This is all you have to say for the unity of the church. The unity of the church I believe to be a most precious truth; but if you place it where you do, scripture will not bear you out, because it speaks of the saved, quickened, sanctified members of Christ, called to glory, as His body, the church. There is another view of the church. It is the habitation of God through the Spirit; Ephesians 2. As the body of Christ, it is surely preserved and kept; but as a responsible body on earth, its career will certainly close. A falling away will come. This is positively declared in scripture: "that day will not come unless there be the falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, who exalteth himself above all that is called God or worshipped."
As regards the texts to prove the universality, you quote a number of passages which do not apply to the church at all, in which she is never named, and the context of which proves to demonstration that they do not apply to the church. I shall quote one to shew how utterly untenable this application is: "Ask of me and I will give thee the Gentiles for thine inheritance, and thy possession to the ends of the earth." But continue: "Thou shall rule them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." Is that the church, or judgment? Any one may see, by looking at the epistle to Thyatira in Revelation 2, that it is a judgment to be executed when the church is glorified with Christ. But your proof that these promises apply to the church destroys, on the contrary, all your arguments. You say they are to be fulfilled in the last days. To prove that the last days mean the time of the church and its universal prevalence, you quote the passage of John, which shews that the last days are those of Antichrist. Is the time of Antichrist's rule the time of all nations flowing into the church? For that s the passage you are proving applies to the universal prevalence of the church. Why, in Antichrist's time, instead of all nations flowing into the church, if any one confesses Christ he will be killed. Your friends, the Fathers, speak with the most terrible apprehensions of those days, when Christianity is to hide itself in dens and caves, and, save in such places, scarce such a thing as a Christian known, and if known, slain by apostate fury. This was a very untoward proof of your doctrine.
Another proof you give us of the universality of the church is, that the gospel is to be preached in all the earth. This is more untoward still, because this is not done yet, very far from it; as gathering the nations, the very large majority remain heathen, and a very great part have never been visited by the preachers of the gospel. So that the mark of catholicity or universality is not yet to be found at all. If all the ends of the earth seeing the salvation of our God applies to and means the catholicity of the church, then the church is not catholic yet: for all the ends of the earth have not seen the salvation of our God.
But you quote another -- "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony to all nations." Surely this word shall be accomplished; but you should have finished the sentence, for it destroys even the hope of catholicity, as you state it. It continues -- "and then shall the end come." So in Revelation 14 it is said, the everlasting gospel should go to?11 them that dwell on the earth, and to every people, and nation, and tongue, and language, saying, Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come. Indeed, if you would take the trouble to read Psalm 98 (97), which you quote, you would see it states the same truth; it closes by saying, are to rejoice before the Lord, for He cometh to judge the earth.
You tell us that every succession of bishops+ and priests ... communicated to their flocks and successors the same doctrine they themselves had received from their predecessors. Did they? Why the whole world was Arian at one time, save the persecuted. But that is not all. If the bishops and priests did this, why are you seeking to bring the professing Christians of (geographically) the greatest part of the world back to what you consider the truth? Did all the Greek bishops of the East do this? Do you own that they did? If so, why seeking to win them to Rome, and glorying in having here and there a little parcel of "united Greeks," and all the Asiatic bishops, and the Egyptians, to say nothing of poor England? Did they, rejecting you utterly as they do, deem they had the true doctrine handed down? I deny it altogether as to Rome. It has been proved a hundred times over, that it has corrupted the doctrine of the apostles. But I take a shorter road; because, if the whole body of Greek and eastern bishops, who teach different doctrine from Rome, have done so, then Rome is wrong; and if they have not, their bishops and priests have not communicated to their flocks and successors the same doctrine they had received. It is merely an assertion that yours have, which is just the thing to be proved; it cannot be itself a security, because a very large proportion (as you admit) have not done so. The bishops of some hundred millions, between Greeks and Protestant Episcopalians, teach quite different doctrine from Rome. Have they taught what they received? It is sadly poor ground you stand on for your proofs of the true church.
+The author tells us, when he is vaunting the papacy, that it is the only institution which has so continued. -- Law and Testimony, page 67.
As to your texts for apostolicity, I have no doubt that the Lord sent the apostles, and was with them, and will be with all who, sent of Him, walk in their footsteps and preach their doctrine, and that these will be sent to the end of the age. But how does this prove that the Romanists are these persons? Your proof is that, unchanged by lapse of time, Rome is teaching in every age the same doctrine God revealed and the apostles promulgated. Now this is just the question. In order to settle it I must know what the apostles promulgated. There is no way so good as having it from their own lips addressed to all the faithful; but when I take this sure and admirable criterion, I find that you teach all the contrary of what they promulgated. You teach that there is still a sacrifice for sin, and they very earnestly teach there is no more such. They teach there is only one mediator, and you teach there are a great many, and in most solemn acts leave the true one totally out. In the Confiteor used for renewing the remission of sins the name of Christ is not found, neither as confessed to, nor as demanding His intercession, though you have Michael the archangel and saints in plenty. You teach the pope is the head of the church; they teach that there is but one, and this is Christ; and so with a multitude of the most fundamental doctrines. I take the test you appeal to, and I find it totally condemns the system you advocate. I conclude you are not the real successors of the apostles at all, to whom these promises were made. The pretension is ruinous to you if you are not. What is a loyal man's judgment of one who pretends to be king when he is not? That he is a rebel in audacious hostility to the true king. If you are not the apostles' true successors, the pretension to be so proves you to be in bold and presumptuous hostility to the Lord, and to those whom He did send; and that is the truth. The question is not whether the Lord gave apostles and ministers, but whether you are those He gave.
You tell us to remember our prelates who have spoken to us the word of God, whose faith follow, and denounce the Reformation as setting them aside. As to the mass of the prelates at the Reformation, they did not speak the word of God or anything else to the people; and those who did preach did not preach the word of God. To know at any time whether they do, I must have the word of God to judge by. The apostle tells the Hebrews that their leaders had: does he tell me that your prelates do? How should he? Their faith was to be followed. The apostle puts his seal on it, though in truth the passage speaks of practical faith. They were to remember those whose death had crowned their profession. But how this teaches me that the pope or a priest teaches the right doctrine, no human wit could divine; nor will it do, for Protestants at least, to say to them, Obey your prelates. The question is to know whether they could own you as true prelates -- a very different matter.
Here your mild winning preface gives place to judgment. You quote a passage which applies to the last and final message of the Lord Jesus to the Jews, and in which He declares judgment on that impenitent race, if they did not receive it; and you apply His title in sending it to yourselves, and His denunciations to your Protestant brethren, as you call them. Happily we are not Jews, and you are not Christ. Your threats do not awaken terror, but pity for your presumption and ignorance of the passage which you thus quote at random. The apostles were strictly forbidden on this journey to go to any but the house of Israel. They were not to go near a Gentile, shewing the true character of their mission.
In fine, the passages you quote, which embrace the whole world in prospect, prove, not indeed that Christ has failed in preserving the true church, His body -- those livingly united to Him by the Spirit -- those whom the Father has given Him (as He says, "Those whom thou hast given me I have kept"), for this is impossible; but that the visible church, those particularly called clergy, have wholly failed in acting up to the responsibility connected with these passages. They have not to this hour, though eighteen centuries have elapsed, carried the gospel into all the world. Instead of that, another thing has happened. So corrupt was the visible church, that God has allowed the greater part of what was professing Christendom to be overrun with Mahometanism,+ which has spread AT LEAST as widely as Christianity; and what you call the Catholic church has had so little spiritual power, that well-nigh half the church split off from it, and became the Greek church (I am speaking according to its own pretensions, for I believe what you call the Catholic church to be Babylon); and subsequently, by the grossness of its corruptions, lost nearly half the countries which remained to it; and in others, as France, Belgium, Bohemia, and Moravia, only escaped the same result by suppressing by the most cruel persecutions the profession of the truth -- in Spain and Italy burning those who had any conscience in maintaining it, and in France celebrating the horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew by medal and rejoicing.
+Christianity, as a prevailing religion, is less widely spread now than in the sixth century. The largest of all the continents, Asia, and all the north of Africa, is lost to it. Of course within its own limits the population has increased.
Have you never read so much as this warning, drawn from the case of Israel: "On thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off?" Of the professing church you have lost rather more than half; of the heathen world you have not gathered in a quarter, yet you claim catholicity -- that is, universality -- on such texts as, "All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God." Have you not shame in quoting it?
But this leads me to your next question -- the infallibility of the church. You have quoted passages from the Old and New Testament to prove the church is infallible. First, for the quotations from the Old, if I can call quotations passages, or bits of passages, with the beginning or end or middle left out. I can hardly think you read the passages, as I have no wish to have an ungracious thought of you. But you must allow me, at the risk of being tedious, to refer to and complete those passages you have adduced. Not one has the smallest reference to the church.
The first is, "I have made a covenant with my elect, I have sworn to David, my servant, thy seed will I settle for ever." Now, allow me to say, the church is neither David nor the seed of David, nor ever called so in scripture, nor by any sober man. And, further, if you will take the trouble to read the psalm, you will find that it is a plaint that the family of David is utterly overthrown, his crown thrown to the ground, and all that is contrary to the hope founded on this promise. Now do you mean that this has actually happened to the church? If so, what comes of your argument? You are unfortunate in your quotations. You see why I am unwilling to believe that you have read the passage you quote from. Now if you apply it to David's seed, of which it speaks, the case is quite clear. It has been set aside, their throne has been cast down, as Ezekiel speaks, "I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, till he come whose right it is, and I will give it him."
When Christ displays His glory, then indeed the promises to the seed of David will be accomplished. Till then His throne is cast down to the ground. But in whatever way you please to interpret the psalm, it is a complaint that the promise, which you cite, as to present fulfilment, wholly failed. Is that what you think as to the church?
In your quotation from Luke there is not a word about the church, but a statement that the throne of David belonged to Christ as come in the flesh, for He is born of the seed of David, according to the flesh, but that is not the church's connection with Him.
I turn to other passages. Did you ever read Isaiah 66? This is what it says, "For, behold, Jehovah will come with fire, and with his chariots, like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will Jehovah plead with all flesh; and the slain of Jehovah shall be many." Then he describes their idolatry and abominations, and continues, "For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto Jehovah, out of all nations, upon horses," etc ... . Then comes your extract, and after it follows this -- "And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith Jehovah. And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." Now do you believe that that applies to the church, and that it is this dreadful judgment of all flesh by Jehovah which has set up your clergy, brought out of all nations? or if you do believe it, do you think any sober Christian can think this an evidence that you have solid proofs of what the true church is?
Again, why did you not begin and finish the quotation from Jeremiah? Suffer me to do both for you. You begin with -- "And they shall be my people." Now what precedes is this -- "And now, therefore, thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, concerning this city, whereof ye say, It shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence. Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again to this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God," Jeremiah 32: 36, etc. Is that the church? Has He scattered it in wrath, anger, and fury, into all lands; and is it only at some future restoration to its original place, that He will own it as His people? Do you believe it applies to the church? And now see how it finishes.
You close with -- "I will not cease to do them good." The prophet continues, "But I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart, and with my whole soul. For thus saith Jehovah; Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. And fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is desolate without man or beast; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans," etc. Now do you believe that God has utterly dispersed the church, and that it is only when He shall bring it back again, that He will begin to put His fear in the hearts of those who compose it? Or is it not as plain as possible to what it all applies?
But I am bound to hope that, whatever it may be of Isaiah and Jeremiah, you certainly never have looked at the passage in Ezekiel, because you expatiate on every member of the phrase you give, and shew in detail how it applies so beautifully and clearly to the church. But the middle of the passage is entirely left out, though you give it as a continuous whole. This is what comes in after "shall do them." "Another shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob, my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children, for ever; and my servant David shall be their prince for ever," Ezekiel 37: 25. And this is what precedes: two sticks, representing Israel and Judah, which had been separated, were to become one in the prophet's hand; these two parts of Israel, being separated, were to be united; and then it is said, "And say unto them, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king to them all, and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all; neither shall they defile themselves with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will save them out of all their dwelling-places wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God; and David my servant shall be king," etc., which you quote.
Now every one who has the smallest acquaintance with scripture history knows what the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel are which were separated in the time of Rehoboam, and what the land means where their fathers dwelt, and that it has nothing to do with the church founded by the apostles. But if you will apply it to the church, instead of proving the infallibility of the church, you prove that it has been divided, scattered, given up to idolatry and transgression, and that it is only when it is brought back from this state that God's sanctuary (which it had wholly lost) was set up in the midst of them, and that then the heathen would know that God sanctified it, when His sanctuary was in the midst of them. They had been in idolatry, divided and dispersed, and had not had God's sanctuary amongst them. Do you believe this applies to the church? But it is the passage, taking what your citation has left out of it. If it does apply to the church, does it prove its infallibility? And why do you cite only a part of the passage? I will not for a moment charge you with garbling scripture in this way, and applying passages in such a manner. Your church has taught you this; you have got it in her schools of theology, and have not examined for yourself. But do you think that your church's garbling passages, cutting out parts of them, leaving out the beginning or the end or the middle or all three, is a proof of her infallibility to a sober Christian taught of God or any man of sense at all? Of course, if a person examine nothing, there is no reason why he should not receive anything, even the church of Rome, or Mormonism, or anything which superstition or fanaticism may propose to his imagination.
But you quote Daniel too: "In the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed." In the days of what kings? The ten kings, if you examine the chapter. Do you mean that the church was only set up after the ten kingdoms existed; that is, after the destruction of the Roman empire? But what does the prophecy say of this kingdom? A little stone, cut out without hands, was to smite the feet of the image, and the whole image was to be totally destroyed, so that no trace was found of it; and the stone that had smitten the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. That is, it first destroyed every trace of the empires and kingdoms of the image, and then extended itself. Do you mean that the church first effaces and obliterates every trace of the empires, east and west, and then begins to spread? There is a judgment of the earth, which you have sadly overlooked: you are not indeed the only one.
This is all you quote from the Old Testament to prove the church infallible, in not one of which the church is mentioned, and not one of which can apply to her, and if they do, instead of proving her infallible, prove she has utterly failed, and lost the presence of God, because this is the truth as to Israel who has so lost it, of which they expressly speak.
We come now to the New Testament. And here I must notice that infallibility is used in two senses totally different, and when one is spoken of or proved, the other is assumed to be so. We are sure the church is infallible; that is, it will surely be kept through this world as to its eternal salvation, till Christ takes it to glory. Till that blessed day He will always have true members of His church upon earth, will keep them, secure eternal life to them and for them. In this sense the church cannot fail. There will infallibly be a church. But infallible is used in another sense, that a person or a body can never fail in what it teaches. The church is said by Romanists to be infallible in what it teaches. Now this is a very different thing. I may be infallibly kept of God for salvation, yet never teach at all, or even fall into error sometimes.
Again, an individual or the church may be kept in the truth by grace, and yet have no pretension to be infallible in teaching. Now I doubt not that God will maintain the truth in the earth, and the church too; though there may be partial failure, yet in spite of failure He will preserve it. But the church has nothing to do with teaching infallibly. She has to learn and hold and profess the truth, not to teach at all. Some of her members may; but no one says they are infallible. Somewhere God will always preserve the truth, and some witness to it, in the earth. Thus, when Arianism overspread the world, and the pope received it, and put his signature to its doctrines, many, though banished and persecuted and hidden through violence for the most part, still held fast the truth. So, amid the disputes and violence which characterized the conduct of ambitious bishops (so that one very large council of them, held at Ephesus, is called "the council of robbers" in ecclesiastical history), yet God preserved the substance of the truth. And if the Eastern church erred, and patriarchs erred, and popes became Arian, still some held fast the faith and a witness for it. You may find a whole council of bishops establishing semi-Arianism at Sirmium, and accepting Arianism at Ariminum and Selinica; but yet God preserved the truth.
But no one is infallible but God. Hence, when an apostle or a prophet was inspired by Him, he spoke the perfect truth. But an apostle or prophet was not himself infallible; for Peter denied the Lord, and, even after he had received the Holy Ghost, carried away all the Jews with his dissimulation. Yet the humblest child of God, if waiting humbly upon Him, will be kept in the truth.
I now turn to the texts you quote; and first the famous passage -- "Upon this rock I will build my church." Now the confession of Peter was a remarkable one; it was revealed to him by the Father Himself -- a personal favour conferred upon him, which belongs to no one else. We may receive his faith, as every true Christian does; but the revelation is not made directly to us but to Peter alone. "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas." Now nobody is Simon Barjonas but himself, not even the other apostles, and certainly not Pius IX. Thus taught of God Peter made a confession which none had yet made -- Christ was the Son of the living God. Several had owned Him to be the Christ the Son of God, but he adds the living God. So in his epistle he says, "He hath begotten us to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; unto whom coming as unto a living stone, ye also as living stones," etc. Now, here was more than a Messiah come to the Jews, and owned to be, as in Psalm 2, Son of God. It was the power of life in God Himself which was displayed in Him; as He says, He is the resurrection and the life Himself. Now here, in the Person of Christ, was that power of life and resurrection on which He would build His church, and the gates of Hades -- that is, of Satan, as having the power of death -- should not prevail against it. It is always true. The resurrection of the saints will be the great final proof of it; the resurrection of Christ was the pledge of it, and has given us a living hope.
Here, if I may so speak reverently, the Son of the living God, He who was the power of life, was pitted against him "who has the power of death, that is, the devil." But the knowledge of the Person of Christ, as Son of the living God, removed all question as to the issue of the conflict, and laid a foundation for the church which nothing could shake. It was not mere Messiah glory, nor the kingdom: the living God was engaged in the matter in the Person of His Son. Satan did his best -- the Lord allowing it -- in Christ's dying on the cross; but it only demonstrated Christ's absolute victory in the resurrection. This is the foundation of the church, so that it cannot fail -- the Person of Christ as Son of the living God. God forbid I should trust a church, or be of it, which was founded on a man simply! Be he an apostle himself, he is but a man, and this will not do to build God's church upon. Is God to build on a mere man? Christ (for He says, "I will build") on Peter? It may do very well for man's church; it is natural man should build on man; but it will not do for God's. It would be impossible, and destructive to His glory. God is not going to set aside His Son for Peter.
But Peter, let men say what they will, is never called a rock.+ He is called a stone; he partook of the nature of the rock, God having quickened him with this life, and given him to confess Christ in this character. But Peter means a stone, and does not mean a rock. People do not build on a stone, even if it partake of the durability of the rock to which it belongs. Peter is not the rock nor a rock; he is, as to his name, a stone. Peter having just confessed the true, living, and divine foundation of the new thing, which the rejected Christ was going to raise up in contrast with rebellious Israel; and Christ, having recognized that the Father Himself had taught Peter this great truth, carrying far beyond the hopes of Israel, says, "Thou art a stone," thou participatest in this truth; and on this rock, this eternal truth of My Person, which you have been given of the Father to own, I will build the church. The Father had revealed this great truth of Christ's nature to Simon, and Christ gives him besides the name of Peter; for the confession of truth, by divine teaching, connects a man with the strength and durability of the truth he so confessed; he abides livingly with it and by it. The Lord adds that He will give him the keys of the kingdom of heaven (not of heaven, but of the kingdom of heaven to be established on the earth); and here Peter had to serve, whereas Christ builds the true church. He used the keys on Pentecost, and with Cornelius and the like.
+It is well-known that this is the grand foundation for the pretensions of the pope. My interpretation, though flowing from my own full conviction, is, as to the main point, nothing new. The Fathers, whom the Romanist so much leans upon, give frequently the same. Thus Augustine -- "Thou art therefore Peter, and upon this Rock which thou hast confessed, upon this Rock which thou hast owned, saying, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, I will build my church-that is, upon Myself, Son of the living God, I will build my church; I will build thee upon Me, not Me upon thee." (Sermon 76.) In the same sermon he says, "Because Christ is the Rock, Peter the Christian people": so in many places. Chrysostom says on the passage -- I borrow the quotation here from another -- "On the Rock, that is, the faith of his confession." Gregory I, or the Great, "Consolidate your life in the Rock of the church, that is, on the confession of the blessed Peter." Cyril of Alexandria gives two interpretations -- the two we have just referred to: one, that it is Christ in whom is all the church hid safe, as in a cave of a rock, leaving poor Peter out altogether, save as an individual member: the other, that it is the unmoved faith of Peter. Pet) an oimai legon to akradanton eis pistin tou mathetou. (Cyr. Alex. ii, 460, 593. Aubert.) Ambrose was cited by Luther in his dispute with Eck, as since by others -- "On this article of faith the church is founded." I do not quote these as the smallest authority, for, as is general with the Fathers, not only they do not agree with one another, but they do not agree with themselves; but to shew how little, after all, the most essential points of the foundations of Romish doctrine were matters of faith then, Cyril we have seen giving two interpretations, both rejecting the Romanist sense. Augustine, in his Retractions, says he had very often (saepissime) given the one I have quoted; for it was not said, Thou art Petra (a rock), but (Petrus) a stone; but that he had once applied it to Peter, following a hymn of Ambrose's and if the reader liked it better, he might choose that! (1 Retract. 21: 1). Think of a Father, whom the author so especially applauds, treating this mainstay of papal authority in such a manner! He once accepted the sense found in verses of St. Ambrose, which everyone was singing; but that afterwards, very often indeed, he had shewn that the rock was not Peter; but that if any reader liked the former meaning better, he had full liberty. If that is not a solid patristic foundation for the See of Rome, I know not what is! But the good Father did once render good service to the See of Rome. A certain pope, named Zosimus, had pronounced in favour of Pelagius and Celestius; but Augustine, in spite of this, maintained his grounds and set Zosimus right, who then condemned Pelagius and Celestius, whom he had before declared sound in the faith.
As to the Lord's sending the Paraclete, and teaching the twelve all things, surely this precious promise has been fulfilled. To apply it to the church is mere nonsense, because the Lord says, He shall bring to your remembrance whatsoever I have said to you. Now He has said the things to the twelve, not to people alive now. The Holy Ghost may graciously act in any Christian's heart to make him attentive to Christ's recorded words, but He cannot bring to his remembrance what Christ has said to him, unless he pretend to have fresh revelations and then have forgotten them. Hence, though the church pretends to be infallible and to teach all truth infallibly, it has never pretended to have recalled to it what Christ had said to it. It would prove the absurdity of the pretension on the face of it; but then unfortunately this is what the Lord has said, and you have quoted.
You say this states plainly what the Holy Ghost would do when He came. Quite true. But do for whom? He could not do this but for those who had heard Jesus during His life; and mark, He was to teach the apostles all things, and guide them into all truth -- that is, the work which the church pretends to do is done long ago. It may be formed by this truth, have it, be kept by it; but it was all taught to the apostles. If you say, that is what we say -- we have learned and kept it; we own it was all taught to the apostles, not to us; our boast is to keep it safe; then the verses you quote as a promise to yourselves do not apply to you at all, for they speak of teaching all things, and bringing all things to their remembrance which Christ had said to them. In a word, the thing was complete before you were there, as the text you quote proves. The only question is, Are you acting on, believing, and are your ministers teaching, truths received long ago? The promise is not to you, but to others long since gone. Whether you are doing so, I try by what these persons have confessedly left us. When I try this, I find you abusing their record to every false pretension to exalt self, and that you have departed altogether from the truth they taught and were guided into. The Holy Ghost has not to teach the church all things, because He has taught all things already to the apostles: the text you quote proves it. That He may apply it now to the heart is all very true; that devoted men may teach the same truths to the heathen, or build up the faithful in detail, is all true; but the truths are taught. There is no question of infallibility, because the truth is already there.
That the Holy Ghost remains with the church, dwells in all true Christians, acts in them, helps them, makes them obedient to the truth, and that He will never go away till the time of glory comes, I fully believe. But this does not make them infallible. There is no place for infallibility, when all the truth is there. What are they to be infallible about, when nothing more is to be revealed? That, as weak creatures, we may be kept, preserved in the truth, so that the testimony of it should be always as a fact preserved in the world, is most true and most precious, and that God, I doubt not, will accomplish, according to His sure and precious word. You say, "If the Holy Ghost did come and remain with her, and if he continued to teach her all things whatsoever the Son of God revealed to her, how could she fall into error?" Now what is the meaning of this -- "continued to teach her"? Was she then ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth? Continued to teach her all things whatsoever the Son of God had revealed to her -- revealed to her when? Why continue to teach her what was revealed to her? She had then wholly forgotten it? "Continuing to teach her all things whatsoever the Son of God revealed to her" has no tolerable sense. Why did she not keep by the Holy Ghost what had been revealed to her, instead of being taught anew? But I repeat, When revealed to her? It was revealed, all of it, to the apostles who had conversed with Jesus. It has not to be revealed to the church.
You quote also John 16; but it is the same thing in substance, save that, as the passage of John 14 spoke of remembering what He had said, this speaks of shewing them (not to the church) things to come. Does the church pretend to have new prophetic revelations? Not one. Where are they authenticated and promulgated with her sanction? In a word we have great pretension to authority when self is exalted; but when the test of reality is to be met, be it as to the past or the future, she is dumb. She has never authenticated one saying of the Lord as brought to her remembrance, nor dared to commit herself to a thing to come which she could shew; nay, nor any fresh knowledge of the glory of Christ not in the written word. Yet this was the remaining part of the Holy Ghost's office, as stated in John 16 -- indeed the whole of it, as teaching and revealing. "He shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you: all things that the Father hath are mine; therefore said I, he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you." Now what of the past, present, glory of Christ, or of the future, has this boasting body, which calls itself the church, ever taught which is not revealed in the word given by the apostles? Let them produce, authenticated by the church, some new truth not in the word. If not, what is revealed to her? unless she boasts of forgetting it continually to be retaught it anew, and pretends this is the special glory of God, and a proof that she exclusively has the Holy Ghost -- namely, that she has not kept the truth, and has to be taught it afresh. That individuals (enabled by God) may, through the help of the Holy Ghost, teach the truths revealed long ago, every one admits; but no one pretends such to be infallible.
But, further, the Lord promises to be with the apostles in teaching all which He had commanded them to the end of the world. It is urged (what is not in the passage) that, as it is to the end of the world, it must be for their successors. Whose successors, and successors in what? In bringing the heathen to the faith? I do not doubt that, though it be not with the title of apostles, whoever do the same service in grace will find the Lord with them in the service, according to their measure; and this is what is promised. Though secured, when inspired to reveal anything, the apostles were not infallible. They had the Lord always with them in their service; in like service, they who accomplish it will find the Lord with them, I doubt not, to the end. There is nothing whatever else in the promise; not a word about infallibility -- it is not the subject of the passage, any more than the church; it speaks of the Lord's help in the missionary service they were to perform in His name. He would not abandon them in it; surely He did not.
Thus you have cited from the Old Testament passages which, you allege, speak of the church, which declare the body they contemplate has been divided, dispersed, idolatrous, doing detestable things, and deprived of the presence of God -- His sanctuary being set up only when promised restoration takes place. This is a very strange proof of perpetuity and infallibility, which secures from every error; and the citing them equally curious as a proof of infallibility in teaching. From the New you have cited passages which declare that all truth was revealed to the apostles; and hence, if the Holy Ghost has always to continue teaching the church what was revealed to her, affording a proof that she had not kept the truth, and had to learn it again; an equally curious proof of infallibility and security. You quote one, a serious and important one -- "But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." The church of God has been established of God to maintain and uphold the truth; and I am sure, however dark the times, God will never, till judgment comes, leave Himself without a witness of the truth, in and by the church, binding on the consciences of men. Blessed be His name that it is so!
But you cannot speak of the whole visible church as having continued to be such; because you believe that half Christendom, and undoubtedly the most ancient part of it, where it was first established by all the apostles together, and the latest under apostolic care, has departed from the truth, and is not a pillar and ground of it. The Greek church is disputing with you for the holy sepulchre, and for many years the Turks using whips to keep the combatants quiet; while now we have the West arrayed against the East in a war which had its origin in this very dispute. This immense body of the most ancient bishoprics in the world has ceased to be a pillar and ground of the truth. All Protestant Europe and America have equally, in your judgment, abandoned it. It is not a promise then that the whole visible church is necessarily and always such; for by your own account a very large part (nay, if we include the Protestants, Nestorians, and Eutychians, the greater part) is not; if they are, you are not. It is not then the body of the visible church as such. Where this true church is to be found is another question; but your use of the passage is certainly unfounded. You cannot present the visible church as a security for the truth, when you affirm that half of it has gone away. If you tell me they are not the church, but we are, this is just what is to be proved; at any rate, they were, and thus the ground of securing is gone.
I have now examined all you have alleged for this. In conclusion I reply to your assertions. The Old Testament never speaks of the church. Paul declares it was a mystery hidden till the Holy Ghost was given -- hidden from ages and generations -- hid in God. Christ, no doubt, founded His church (that is, on the day of Pentecost, and in general by the apostles), but He promised to be with them, not her, to the end of the world. The Holy Ghost will surely abide with Christ's true disciples till He takes them up to glory. He did not declare that he would teach the church, but the apostles, all truth -- a promise undoubtedly fulfilled; and it is equally sure that Satan's power will never set aside the church of God, and she is, according to God's counsel, the pillar and ground of the truth, whatever may be the condition of the visible body called the church; which we have shewn, by your own account, cannot be what this passage applies to. But that you are it, is a very different question.
Instead of declaring that the professing church could not fail, mark it well, the Lord has declared the express contrary. He has said, first, as warning (referring to the Jews, lest the Gentiles should deceive themselves by their conceit), "Be not high-minded, but fear ... upon thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." He has further declared that a falling away or apostasy (so that it is certain that it would not continue in God's goodness to the end, for apostasy is falling away from it) would come; and that the day of Christ's coming to judge could not come till it did. He has declared that the presence of Antichrist was the mark of the last times. He has declared, the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the last days perilous time shall come (men running into all kinds of wickedness shall have the form of piety, denying the power of it); and warns the true disciple to turn away from such, and refers him to the scriptures as able to make him wise unto salvation. You seek to turn him from them, and to trust in that in which it is certain, by God's word, apostasy was to be found.
You may ask, what do we make of the promises of God? I answer, they are infallible; but he who has the scripture, the true servant of Christ who has the truth, has them before his eyes, but has all the rest of the word, so that he does not misapply them. Satan applied true promises to Christ without reference to obedience. He used the rest of the word to shew that His part was to walk with God, and He would surely have all that God had promised to the true believer. He does not look for the heirs of promise in what denies the truth, to which God Himself has referred him for warning. He knows that all the unfaithfulness of man will only glorify the faithfulness of God, and that God will certainly preserve the truth and His saints (even should there be partial failure amongst them) till Christ Himself comes to fetch them, according to His own promise, at the end. They do not count the mass of ungodliness and corruption and worldliness around them to be the little flock which is to inherit the kingdom. They do not take the tares for wheat, though it be not their business to root them up, as you have pretended to do (rooting up, for the most part, as the Lord warned, the wheat with them); but they are sure the Lord will keep the wheat for His garner, and that the Holy Ghost will never leave them till He does, nor allow the truth to fail in the earth. It shall be maintained to the end by the church taught of God.
But I am touching on the next point, the perpetual visibility of the church. That there is a great public body called the church of Christ is notorious. The marks you now give you rejected, when, as you alleged, Luther, Calvin, and the church of England pleaded them as such: but we cannot expect error to be consistent. But suppose I was born in Greece or Russia, and I was told that I should obey my pastors, and that pure doctrine and the same sacraments were the marks of the church visible, what would be the effect? Why I should remain a Greek, and abhor you as false. I should have to go to the Propaganda at Rome to find you out, you are so invisible in those countries. Is the true church to change with countries, and east and west? and can these be the adequate marks of it, which, in one, would make me take a body to be the true church, which in another three days' steaming would make me reject as schismatic and heretic? You are tired, I am sure, of the Greek church. But there it is, as ancient as yours, with the same claims. It has its pastors, it has its sacraments, it has what it calls the true faith, as you allege of yours, it has its visibility.
The marks you give me make me a Greek when in Russia, and you at Rome condemn me for using them when I get there, and, if I were born in Russia, persuade me they are insufficient, and that I must leave what they prove to be the true church there, and join you. Yet there are these Greeks in spite of you. God has taken care by their existence to make all your pretensions and marks futile nonsense. They are proved to be worth nothing to secure a man's finding the true church; for some of them prove two or three to be such, while the existence of the two or three proves the essential ones to be false. God has taken care that the sober godly inquirer should have patent proof, if he take the pains, that your allegations of unity, universality, visibility, perpetuity, tradition, and all the rest, are just worth nothing; because, in the dreadful departure of the professing church from God, He has taken care that there should not be unity, and, consequently, no universality; while visibility, and tradition, and perpetuity, and antiquity are as strong for one as the other, and therefore prove nothing for either. Blessed be God, the spiritual man, who has his Bible and reads it, wants no such proof. He knows that the truth of God has been perverted, the forms of piety assumed, and the power gone, the headship of Christ abandoned (though Romanists alone have ventured to set up another head, and hence are worse than Greeks), and subjection to ordinances brought in. He sees the Spirit's words fulfilled -- "In the last days perilous times shall come" -- the form of piety, denying the substance. But of this a word at the close.
Must I turn again to your use of the Old Testament? can afford to be brief after what we have already examined. You quote Isaiah 60: "Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem, for thy light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee." But again, whom am I to accuse? I honestly lay it on your church, and not on you. You have left out, between what I have just copied and the next verse of the chapter, an all-important verse, which shews the absurdity of the application of the passage: "For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but Jehovah shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee." Now, whatever is the subject of this chapter under the name (justly used after the Vulgate, though not in the Hebrew) Jerusalem, it had been in darkness, though existing, and in an awful state, as the previous chapter shews. Truth failed, and he that departed from evil made himself a prey; but now Jehovah visited her, and while all else was in darkness, light and the glory of Jehovah was here. Indeed Paul has quoted part of the preceding description to shew the awful state of the Jews. But do you believe that the truth having failed, and he that departs from evil making himself a prey, is a description of the true church? Is that indeed what the church of Rome is? Or, again, when the full light and glory of Jehovah has risen on the church, so that it is in "cloudless manifestation and universal visibility," as you say, how comes darkness just then to cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; or why did you leave that verse out? So Jehovah goes on: "In my wrath I smote thee" (verse 10); and again, "Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee" (verse 15). When and how long was this unfailing and perpetually visible church forsaken and hated of God? Apply it to Jerusalem which is named, and nothing is more simple: we know it has been her state.
You quote also (and the same a little before) Isaiah 2. If you take the trouble to read that chapter, you will find that it is concerning Judah and Jerusalem, and describes the blessing as being brought about by the dreadful judgment of Jehovah, when men shall go into the clefts of the rocks for fear of Jehovah, and for the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Well may the Spirit of God add, "Cease ye from man."
Again, Ezekiel 17, we have these things explained by the Spirit: "Know ye not what these things mean? tell them, Behold the king of Babylon is come to Jerusalem, and hath taken the king thereof," etc., and then describes the conduct of Zedekiah, and at the close predicts the raising up of Christ as seed of David. What has this to do with the church? The seed of David is not the church.
In Jeremiah 31 it is revealed: "He that scattered Israel will gather him." Has God scattered the church? Is the church the backsliding daughter of Ephraim? Further, the Lord says, "Like as I have watched over them to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict, so will I watch over them to build, and to plant, saith Jehovah." Has God watched over the church to pluck it up? And the prophet adds, after the verse you quote, what you do not quote: it runs thus: "Then I will also cast off all the seed of Israel, for all that they have done, saith Jehovah. Behold the days come, saith Jehovah, that the city shall be built to Jehovah, from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of the corner," etc., "and it shall not be plucked up nor thrown down any more for ever." Jeremiah addressed the Jews, and told them that God would not cast them off in that future day, and that the city should be built, and that then they who had been so utterly plucked up should never be so any more. Is this the church?
That God's name may be great among the Gentiles (Malachi 1) no one disputes, and that under the figure of Jewish offerings they should offer theirs, every Christian can believe; though I do not believe it applies to the church. And here allow me to ask a question. All the passages which you have quoted you have applied figuratively up to the present; now that there is a question of oblation and sacrifice, you apply it literally. Why so?
The apostles were the light of the world, and so set doubtless. But how does this prove that you are that light, or that it was to be perpetual? Though, however dimmed, I doubt not that God has never suffered it to be extinguished. The Lord is speaking of His true disciples, poor in spirit, pure in heart. Do you mean that the mass of the professing church, Romish, Greek, Protestant, or Presbyterian, are that? I have been in many Roman Catholic countries, and in Protestant and Presbyterian; and, though doubtless there are blessed exceptions, the mass of pleasure-hunters, and money-hunters, and passion-governed men, are not what the Lord describes in Matthew 5. Or do you mean that, when their character is wholly changed, they are as much light as before? Or is it the judgment of the Romish body, that moral condition or holiness has nothing to do with the light the saints should give? The Lord, on the contrary, says in this same chapter (which you take care not to quote), "If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is good for nothing." You may salt other things with salt; but if the salt be savourless, what other things shall salt it? In fine you tell us, because Christ said to the apostles, "Ye are the light of the world," therefore the church is so at all times -- that is, the outward professing Romish body; a strange conclusion where nothing is proved at all. The word of God says the contrary, that the day shall not come except there be a falling away first (e apostasia).
Your chapter on tradition is hardly worth an answer. Every one knows that tradition in scripture always means a doctrine delivered, and never has the Romish sense of it. A passage you quote shews it: "The traditions you have learned by word or by our epistle." The apostle had preached to them by word of mouth, and written an epistle to them: they were to mind all he had taught them. Next, your arguments are a mere nullity. You urge that the apostles taught by word of mouth before they wrote to the churches. Undoubtedly. Who ever doubted it? The question is, whether, since they wrote, what men have retailed for seventeen centuries can be relied upon -- a question you do not so much as touch upon. You refer to Timothy's committing the truths Paul had taught him to faithful men: an excellent service, a thing which is done, be it well or ill, among different sects of Christians in their theological schools and colleges, and I doubt not was very well done by Timothy. But how does this make it authoritative teaching? No man's teaching is held, even by Rome, to be infallibly authoritative, save that Ultramontanes hold the popes to be infallible, which the Council of Constance, as we have seen, held them not to be. The question is not, whether Timothy taught or whether you do, but whether you have got what he taught besides what is written. You have no authentic truth by tradition. In the very epistle you cite we have the proof of it: "And now ye know what withholdeth," says the apostle; for when he was yet with them he had told them of these things. Now, here is an instruction given by word of mouth, which we have not got. Can you produce any authenticated church statement of what it was?
Tradition is very convenient to say (I leave something you can have no proof of), in which you must obey me blindly; but when we come to ask what are they, they are not to be had. The Rabbis, to whom you refer for purgatory, keep the poor Jews in blindness by the same means. The early church was frightened by the warnings of the apostle, and thought the final judgments would come after the revelation of antichrist, on the fall of the Roman empire; but this consent of the Fathers as to the millennial scheme and Christ's soon reigning at Jerusalem (for scarce could any topic be found more generally believed by them), this sure tradition belied itself; and already in Augustine's time, and after it passed off into a more general spiritualization, and the faith of the early church (which is declared positively by Justin Martyr, in his dialogue with Trypho, to be held by all the orthodox) was cast off as a fable, and the early Fathers left on these points in oblivion and forgetfulness; and the account between tradition, universal tradition, and an orthodoxy founded on tradition, having been thus far falsified by fact, had to be settled by modern orthodoxy, passing as lightly over its grave as it could. Though they misapplied it, I believe, in the substance, Papias, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Nepos, and the orthodox of those days, were right, and not Origen and Dionysius and the moderns. But I believe it, because scripture is clear upon it.
But you mention two things in particular, which you say are founded on tradition, and which are not in scripture -- Lent and Sunday. The apostles, you say, instituted the solemn fast of Lent. If they did, certainly it is not found in Scripture. But let us see what the facts are. I need only quote Irenaeus, a godly Father of the church, who had heard Polycarp, who had heard John. There was a dispute between Victor, the bishop of Rome, and the churches of Asia, as to the celebrating of Easter. Victor would have it on Sunday, and the Asiatic churches celebrated it (as did all the old British, till the sixth or seventh century, if I remember right) on the day of the resurrection, whatever day of the week it fell upon. For the Passover was computed by moons, and was held upon the fourteenth day after the new moon, and the resurrection was three days of course after, and this did not always fall on a Sunday. The Easterns went by the days of the month, the Westerns by the days of the week. Well, Victor refused to own them as Christians at all. Irenaeus agreed, it seems, with Victor in opinion as to the day it should be kept upon. But earlier than this, some thirty or forty years before, the aged Polycarp, himself a disciple of John, came from Asia to Rome, to confer with Anicetus, bishop of Rome, about it.
Think of a disciple of John himself (and a most blessed old man he was, and a martyr too) going all wrong, and insisting on a tradition derived from John himself, contrary to the pope's tradition and his authority too! Well, Polycarp would not give in, nor Anicetus either; but they agreed, it seems, to part in peace, and each go his own way. But Victor, a more energetic and less Christian man than Anicetus, orders all the Christians in Asia to change their rules in this respect, and follow Rome, and give up their apostolic tradition. However, they would not; and then he excommunicated them all in mass, as far at least as Rome was concerned. It was thunder, however, not lightning, for they did not obey; and the bishops elsewhere continued in communion with them. This did not please all the bishops, says Eusebius, some of them writing pretty sharply to him (Victor); and Irenaeus warned him not to cut off whole churches who observed the tradition of their ancient customs. This was at the end of the second century; and then he adds (says Eusebius), not only was the controversy about the day, but about the form itself of the fast; for some think they ought to fast one day, others two, and others more, and some measure this day forty hours, day and night; and this variety of observance had not its birth first in our age, but began long before, with those who went before us ... . And then he adds, and thus the disagreement as to the fast commends the unanimity of the faith. -- (Euseb. 5: 24).
Now this little bit of ecclesiastical history gives occasion for one or two remarks: first, how the Roman bishop sought to satisfy his ambition, not quite two centuries after Christ; but, secondly, at the same time, not only Polycrates at Ephesus and others, but other bishops besides paid no attention to his orders, and even rebuked him sharply; thirdly, what a slippery thing tradition is! Here, as to this very Lent, which is adduced as a proof of apostolic tradition, Polycarp, who conversed with John, has one from him which he will not give up; because he who leaned on the Lord's bosom, he says, had so kept it and taught. But Victor, who professed to have Peter's and Paul's too, excommunicates whole churches, because, after Polycarp's clear tradition, they kept John's. Could not tradition secure certainty on such a trifle as this? The conflict was maintained till the fourth century, and even long after that the Asiatic way was maintained in certain churches derived from that country.
It is urged that the Holy Ghost was to teach things the apostles could not receive while Christ was alive. No doubt; but what has this to do with tradition? Further, that the Holy Ghost was still teaching. This would tend to shew that tradition was not needed; for, in that case, the church had always the same teaching as the apostles themselves, and did not want theirs by word or letter. There is a passage or two important to cite, as regards tradition and apostolic succession.
But I must give the reader a few more quotations from the Fathers as to this Lent, which is not in scripture, says the author, in which he is surely perfectly right, but is observed by tradition from the apostles. The Romans in the fourth or fifth century observed Saturday as a fast, and the Easterns and many of the Africans dined and ate as usual, and did not think of fasting. A hot Roman in St. Augustine's time attacked all the churches for not following the Roman custom. It was alleged, as the origin of the custom, that Peter, having to contend with Simon Magus, fasted along with all the Roman church on Saturday. If he did, I am sure it was a very godly and excellent thought and act for that time; hence the Romans did it every Saturday, when there was no Simon Magus at all. St. Augustine wrote a letter to a presbyter, Casnelanus, on this hot-headed Roman's book. He gives a pleasant reply enough to the Simon Magus reason, that, if he was a figure of the devil as they said, they would have that work every day of the week.
But in replying to this we have from him general remarks on fasts which touch our present point of tradition. He says, it was the opinion of the most, that it was a mere Roman custom in reference to Peter's conflict with Simon Magus. "But if," he continues, "it be answered, James taught this at Jerusalem, John at Ephesus, others in other places, which Peter taught at Rome, that is, that men should fast the Saturday, but that other lands had deviated from this doctrine, and that Rome had remained firm in it; and, on the contrary, it is replied, that rather certain places of the West, among which is Rome, have not kept what the apostles delivered, but that the lands of the East, whence the gospel itself began to be preached, have continued, without ever varying, in what was delivered by all the apostles along with Peter, that they should not fast on the Sabbath (Saturday), that dispute is interminable, generating strifes, not finishing questions." -- (Augustine, Ep. 36). And then he says that the unity of the faith was the point, for that the glory of the church, according to the psalm, was within: "The king's daughter is all glorious within"; that the observance was only the garments, and that she was in golden fringes, clothed around with variety: so the Vulgate, circumcincta varietate, after the Seventy. -- Psalm 44 (Hebrews 45).
What a testimony this bright light (as the author alleges, and justly, compared with much of the Fathers) affords of the certainty of tradition, and about fasting, and about Roman tradition too! It was a source of interminable disputes, he says. In the same letter we have another statement, which I will quote, on the point: "But since we have not found, as I have above remarked, in the evangelical and apostolic letters, which properly belong to the revelation of the New Testament, that it is clearly prescribed that fasts should be observed on any certain days, and therefore, that thing also, like many others which it is difficult to enumerate, has found in the garments of the daughter of the king, that is the church, room for variety, I will tell you what the revered Ambrose answered me when I asked him about this." And then he relates how his mother was uneasy, because at Milan they did not fast the same days as at Rome; and was she to follow the custom of her city, or that of Milan where she then was? Ambrose, a light too among the Fathers, told her he could not teach her better than he practised -- a good deal to say too, if he went beyond fasts; and so she was to do at Milan as they did at Milan, and to do at Rome, in such matters, as they did at Rome. So Augustine recommends in the beginning of the letter: "In those things, concerning which divine scripture has settled nothing certain (and we have seen he states that it had not settled any certain day for fasting), the customs of the people of God, or the institutions of those of old (majorum), are to be considered as a law." This is a strange way to talk, if these are apostolic traditions too. We see, however, the real source of it -- following old habits which were made a law of.
However, we have something about Lent itself from Augustine. "The quadragesimal period of fasts, indeed, has authority (that is, scriptural) both in the old books -- in the fact of Moses and Elias -- and from the gospel, because the Lord fasted so many days, shewing the gospel not to depart from the law and the prophets. In the person of Moses, namely, the law, in the person of Elias the prophets are found ... . In what part of the year, therefore, could the observation of quadragesima be established more suitably than on the confines of, and close to, the Lord's passion?" And then he shews many wonderful mysteries in the number 40. But where is the apostolic tradition here?
But we have something more from the Fathers on quadragesima. We have seen Irenaeus telling us that some fasted one day, some two, some several, some forty hours continuously. Now, this last is the real secret of this number forty. Tertullian is a Father who lived in the end of the second century, an upright and able man; so that the famous Cyprian used to call him "the master," saying, Bring me the books of the master. This was the famous Cyprian who wrote a celebrated book about the unity of the church; though he would not yield to Rome on what both thought a vital point, namely, re-baptizing heretics. But this Cyprian tells us that the church in his day (Cyprian. de Lapsis) was corrupt to the last degree; that professing Christians were bent upon money-making, men luxurious in their habits, women painting their faces and adorning their hair, cheating going on in a shameful way, marriages with heathens taking place, bishops leaving their sees and flocks to carry on secular affairs, and making long journeys to gain money, not helping their hungry brethren, but seeking large fortunes, seizing on property by insidious frauds, and employing usury to enrich themselves. In other treatises he insists on the evil state of Christendom.
Such a state of things seemed to have moved Tertullian, who lived just before Cyprian, and driven him (Jerome says it was the envy the Roman clergy bore - to him) to believe in the rhapsodies of Montanus and his two prophetesses of Phrygia, who were much stricter in their lives and fastings. The pope was on the point of receiving them too (already acknowledging is the term used), when a certain Praxeas, afterwards a famous heretic, came to Rome, and put the pope off it, who then excommunicated and rejected them. Our famous Tertullian would not give them up, and said they were rejected, not because of the spirit they alleged they had, but because of the fasts they gave themselves up to. However, this led him to say something of these fasts; and from him we learn that the Catholic party had their quadragesimal fasts from this -- the forty hours that Christ passed, as was alleged, in the grave; and that the scriptural authority (for none of them knew anything of apostolic tradition) they had for it was this: "When the Bridegroom shall be taken away, then shall they fast in those days"; and that as Christ was taken away till His resurrection, therefore they fasted these forty hours -- a curious reason, by the bye, for doing so, when He was, according-to this theory, restored to them. But let that pass. Here we have, from the two earliest Fathers who speak of it (Irenaeus and Tertullian), the original of quadragesima, that is, forty.
But you shall have, reader, a specimen from history also. After relating what we have stated as to the observation of Easter, and that the Quartodecimans (the Asiatics who kept it the third day after the fourteenth of the moon) alleged that John had taught them; and the Romans boast that they had received their way from Peter and Paul, but that neither could bring a writing to prove it (he does not seem to have valued oral tradition much), he goes on to speak of Lent. Socrates, lib. 5, c. 22. "For these who are of the same faith, the same differ among themselves in rites. It will not therefore be out of place to add somewhat about the various rites of the churches. First, therefore, those fasts which are kept before Easter you will find differently kept among different people; for those who are at Rome fast three weeks continuously, except the sabbath and the Lord's day (it is a question whether this does not apply to Novatians). Those who are in Illyria, and throughout Achaia, and those who live in Alexandria, fast six weeks before Easter, and call that the quadragesimal fast. Others, again, follow a different custom from that. They begin their fast the seventh week before Easter, and, fasting three only of five days with intervals, call the time nothing the less quadragesimal; and I cannot but wonder why, although they differ among themselves about the numbers of days, they still call it by the same name of quadragesimal."
"But of this appellation each different person, according to his own invention, gives a different reason: for not only in days alone, but also in abstinence from foods, they are found to differ. For some, indeed, abstain altogether from eating what has had life; others eat fish alone of such as have had life; some, with fishes, eat also of birds, affirming that they also are formed out of water, according to Moses; some abstain from fruit of trees, and from eggs; some eat only bread; others do not use even this. Some, fasting to the ninth hour, eat without distinction of every kind of food afterwards. There are other observances, again, in different nations, and innumerable causes are alleged for them; and since no one can produce a written precept concerning this matter, it appears that the apostles left to the choice and will of every one that each one might do what is good, neither from fear nor necessity." What a certainty of apostolical tradition we have here! Sozomen gives the same accounts. Lib. 7, c. 19. Cassian, too, tells us, as others state (I have not his works), the same thing. For a long time there were only thirty-six days' fast, even when six weeks or forty-two days were kept; because they never fasted on the Lord's day, till at last either Gregory the Great or Gregory II (in the close, that is, of the sixth, or beginning of the eighth, century, for it is disputed which) added Ash-Wednesday and the three following days to make it forty. Think of an apostolic tradition, arranged seven hundred years after Christ, and grown from forty hours to forty days, and all the original reasons gone!
But I have yet one extract more from this same Cassian, for which I am also indebted to another. Cassian was a monk, founded monasteries and nunneries, was ordained deacon by Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, and made priest by Innocent, pope of Rome. He will give us a sounder idea, perhaps, of this apostolic tradition. "It is, therefore, indeed to be remarked that, as long as the perfection of that primitive church remained inviolable, this observance of quadragesima (Lent) did not exist at all; but when the multitude of the faithful, abandoning that apostolic devotion, daily gave themselves up to their wealth, etc., it then pleased the body of priests, that men, bound by secular cares, and almost ignorant of continence or compunction, should be recalled to holy work by canonical obligation of fasting, and compel them by the necessity of a legal tenth (thirty-six days is tenth of 360, or nearly a year )".
What a history of Lent in the way of devotion! and think of apostolic tradition! The reader will not think that I attach great value to Lent or tradition; but I have quoted these passages because Lent has been selected as a point brought forward as a matter of apostolic tradition for a thing not in scripture. We have seen now what, in this carefully selected case, such an assertion is worth, and what solid authority the Fathers are.
I am now going to quote something in favour of what the author says; for you may generally find in the Fathers both sides of anything, except the truth itself. Jerome says (he is writing to Marcella against the Montanists, who had three Lents) that one Lent in the year is observed, according to the tradition of the apostles, and says just that much in passing. Leo calls it the apostolical institution of a forty days' fast, which the apostles instituted by the direction of the Holy Ghost. But then Jerome also says (to shew what a solid thing apostolic laws founded on tradition were in those days), "But I think you should be briefly put in mind, that ecclesiastical traditions are so to be observed (especially those which are not in opposition to the faith)" (how much such a reserve shews he could have thought them apostolic!) "as they have been delivered by our ancestors. But let each province abound in its own way as of thinking, and consider the precepts of their ancestors' apostolic laws"! Epist. 52, Ed. Benedict. 71, Ed. Veron.
As to Leo, Pagi (a very learned and highly-esteemed Roman Catholic commentator on Baronius's Annals, and another) tells us that Leo was used to call everything an apostolic law which he found either in the practice of his own church, or decreed in the archives of his predecessors, Damasus and Siricius. (Pagi, Critic. in Baron. an. 67, note 15.) I use another's quotation in this instance also.
You have now, reader, the authorities for Lent being proved by apostolic tradition, and for the Romish assertion to that effect.
I turn to the Lord's day, the other example selected by the author; it is old battle-ground. My answer to this is easy, a lighter and a happier task. It is always distinguished in the early church from the sabbath, which invariably means Saturday. As regards the law, the change of the whole system involved the abolition of the Jewish sabbath. The Jewish sabbath was the sign of their covenant; but this was broken on their part, and gone, and buried on God's part in Christ's grave. The sabbath, which was the public sign of it, Christ passed in the grave.
No establishment of any form of relationship with God took place under Moses without the sabbath being anew introduced -- a very remarkable fact; and in Ezekiel 20: 12 it is said, "And I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Jehovah that sanctify them." Hence these sabbaths could not be preserved as a Jewish sabbath, according to the commandments; because, when once Christ was crucified, God did not sanctify the Jewish people any longer. This the Lord shewed beforehand, over and over again during His ministry, in the way He acted and spoke on the sabbath days.
But, further, the sabbath was the sign of the rest of the creation; and, sin having entered into the world, and man having rejected Jesus who had come into its sorrow, there could be no rest of creation in connection with the first Adam. So "If they shall enter into my rest, though the works were finished from the foundation of the world"; grace, and power, and redemption, must be the basis of rest and blessing. Hence, when they maliciously and unreasonably accused the Lord of not keeping the sabbath, He does not pay heed to their malice, but says (in the touching revelation of a grace which, if it could not find its rest where sin and misery were, could begin to work where all was ruined), "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." We can rest neither in sin nor sorrow, but can work in grace, where both are, and find occasion for work, if not rest, in it. The sabbath of the Jew, as the rest of man in creation, whatever physical mercy it may be to him as it is, could not remain spiritually as the valid sign of a state of things which was abrogated and passed away.
Is there no such witness of rest, and a better rest too, which remains for God's people? Surely there is. If now our rest is not on earth, because it is polluted, it is prepared in heaven, where we shall have our place in glory by resurrection (or an equivalent change), as Christ entered there by it. Hence, not God's rest in the first creation, but the day on which Christ rose from death, which had passed on Adam, the head of the first (and which He had in grace taken on Himself), became the witness, as far as a day is, of the church's hope of rest. She does not celebrate her joys and her hopes on the day her Lord was in the grave (how could she? It was the proof of the ruin of the old, of the first, Adam), but on the day on which He rose, the day of the triumph of the Second, who is the Lord from heaven. The Jewish sabbath fell with the whole system of which it formed part.
It was not the church changing a day, which was gone before the church existed; the cross abrogated it and all it was connected with. The church could not have existed, had the sign of the covenant made with Israel remained in force as a witness that the covenant remained entire. The sabbath was the witness of man having a share in God's rest under the first covenant; but he could not. The covenant was gone, and the sign with it. The resurrection inaugurated with divine power a new ground on which man could rest -- a new scene in which he was to find blessing, when the ordinances of blessing were not to be imposed as law, but revealed in grace and spiritually understood.
Have we not proofs from scripture of the institution of the Lord's day not imposed as law, which would be contrary to the very nature of Christianity, but established in grace? The plainest. First, the Lord Jesus assembled on that day His disciples, and met them: two or three assembled in His name, and He in the midst of them. Next Lord's day He did the same thing. This the Gospels give. The Acts inform us that the disciples met on this day to break bread. In the Epistles the day is remarked as that in which the faithful were to lay by for the poor saints, as God had prospered them; and in the Revelation it is expressly called "the Lord's day" -- "kuriake emera," the apostle being peculiarly blessed on it.
Such is the scriptural warrant, not for making a law, but for recognizing the Lord's day, the first day of the week, as one of worship and blessing; and so it has ever continued. The word of God gives it according to its unfailing perfection. It does not make a law of an ordinance where grace reigns, but it marks out distinctly the character and blessing of a day given us by grace, as the Lord's day, the day on which He began all things new for our eternal blessing. The Old Testament has, in more places than one, recognized the eighth -- that is, the first day after the old week was closed -- as the day of special blessing. This was a pertinent figure.
Thus we have seen what tradition affords on one of the topics produced by the author, and what scripture affords on the other; that tradition is obscure, variable, and establishes nothing -- can demonstrate nothing -- which scripture does not prove; and that scripture is clear and simple. For Lent there is no warrant, and it is not in scripture; and, as to the Lord's day, even to the very name, we have the clearest testimony possible of its observance in scripture.
But you say that the doctrine necessary for salvation was carried down by tradition from the expulsion of Adam from the garden to the time of Moses. If I am to believe tradition, there were writings. Seth, we are told, set up two pillars, and engraved what was necessary to be known, that it might not be lost; and we are told where, which, I am ashamed to say, I forget, and cannot now search for. However, though I judge it certain that the use of letters was far more ancient than is supposed, and that there was in those ancient times a mass of knowledge now lose, of which we have traces in heathen mythology and heathen notions (just shewing how insecure a means it is), and that God has given us just what is needed of it in the scriptures; yet I do not believe in Seth's pillars. At any rate nobody ever read what was on them. But your reference in the case is most untoward; because this tradition was so powerless, that the whole world departed from God, so that He had to bring in the flood to destroy men from off the face of the earth. And after the flood all was so wholly lost, that even Abraham's family were fallen into idolatry (Joshua 24: 2), and God had to begin afresh by a new revelation of Himself to him. There were traces of truth which remained, as sacrifices; but the devil had got such complete hold of them that they offered them to him, not to God. Such was the effect of tradition in the case you quote. Your saying that the reference of sacrifice to a Redeemer to come was known to the Jews by tradition is monstrous. Their prophets are as clear on it as possible.
In fine I do not certainly contest that Christ established a church on the earth; no doubt He did. As to her being known by the four marks, we have examined them. Unity is gone; and universality is gone with it, as you admit you only claim a majority, which upsets both; apostolicity breaks down, for the Greeks have it more than you (for they have not a double and treble line of popes for a long while, as Rome has had). As to sanctity, we will speak of it hereafter. And, moreover, the marks are not marks at all; for the church was as true when there had been no succession, no catholicity -- that is in the days of the apostles -- as any can be now. If these marks are a test, the church wanted them when it was truest and purest.
We are next told of the Fathers and of the unity of the church. Of the latter I have spoken already. It is natural that, when men are in possession of a wide field of power, they should not wish it to be broken up. We have already seen that the true church, the body of Christ, united livingly to Him by the power of the Holy Ghost, is, and must be, as seen of God, always one; and that it will shine forth as one in glory. And we have seen that what is called the church-Christendom -- is divided; and that the boast of the Romish body of being one within itself proves nothing as to the unity of the whole church; while the truth is that nothing can be more evident than this, that it is not the true church at all but the most corrupt of any body that pretends to the name; its marks fallacious; while, as to truth and holiness and spiritual union with a heavenly Head, she avoids the test of truth, belies in practice the test of holiness, as every honest conscience knows and as I shall shew hereafter, and has another head of unity on earth in place of Christ.
I will now, therefore, speak a little of the Fathers whom you adduce as witnesses. Only remark, that the Fathers cannot tell us whether the visible church is one now (the only really important point), for the plainest of all reasons, that they lived centuries ago. If they only tell us that it began in unity, we do not want them for that, because the scriptures are plain enough upon it, historically and doctrinally. Only that unity they shew to us was composed of real saints quickened of God, though false brethren were already creeping in unawares, as we learn from Jude, and the mystery of iniquity already at work, as Paul teaches us. They shew divisions always ready to break out, restrained by God's grace and apostolic care; they shew that there ought to be unity, but a unity which is called the unity of the Spirit; the power of God by the Holy Ghost, keeping the true members of Christ bound together in one body -- not a vast body of persons, three-quarters of them infidels, and few of the rest doing more than going through a routine of forms. The scriptures shew us such a unity as God can create and own. The Fathers may echo it as a duty, but cannot tell us what is now.
But we will spend a word on them. The name sounds well and seems to claim respect. Some of them were godly men, a very few martyrs for the Lord's name, a few more confessors in persecution -- a real crown of glory for a Christian; but as to doctrine, they (and in particular some of those who suffered) are the loosest, wildest, most absurd, writers that ever wrote a book, to make sober men wonder how any one could possibly read such a mass of nonsense, bad morals, and heresy. If books containing such doctrine as is found for the most part in the Fathers, notions with such an absence of common sense, and such morals, were written now, every honest Christian in the country would forbid them to his children, or they would lie a lumber, so as to render such a prohibition unnecessary; while, as for the doctrine of some of them, Christians would be apt to burn the books, and Romanists the writers. This will scandalize some people, perhaps; but as people are talking so much about the Fathers, it is better the truth should be told. I admit piety is found in some, and, on some points, doctrinal truth in part of others; but there is not a child's religious book in these days which would not contain more and sounder truth than a whole folio of the "Fathers."
All the early Fathers held the millennial reign of Christ, which is now rejected by Romanists, to shew how much their authority weighs where it does not suit. Most of the Antenicene Fathers were unsound as to the Person of Christ, and corrupted by Platonism.
You may think that this is mere Protestant abuse of authorities which are against us; but we have already seen that you are not much acquainted with them, and I shall produce the highest Romanist authority for what I say. The very learned Petau, a Jesuit, a man whose theological works are of standard reputation in the Romish body, after speaking of heretics, says, "Others were indeed Christians, and Catholics, and saints; but as the times then were, that mystery (of the divinity of Christ) being not yet sufficiently clearly known, they threw out some things dangerously said" -- (Peter de Trin., lib. 1, c. 3, s. 1.) Poor Jerome, at a loss to maintain their orthodoxy, says, "It may have been that they have erred through simplicity (simpliciter), or have written in another sense, or that by unskilled editors (copyists) their writings have been by degrees corrupted, or at least, before Arius, as a mid-day demon, was born, they have said things innocently and less cautiously, and which cannot escape the calumny of perverse men" -- (Hierom. Cont. Ruffinum, lib. 2, 17, Ver.)
Now I have no objection to take the excuses of Jerome; but if, in such a fundamental point as the divinity of the Lord Jesus, such excuses have to be made for them, what can be said of their authority? This is said by Jerome, when the famous Clement of Alexandria, presbyter, and Dionysius, patriarch of Alexandria, were stated by another Father, the first to have said that the Son of God was a created being, and the latter to have fallen into Arianism, as he surely did when writing against the Sabellians; and, when it was objected against him, said he did not mean it. Jerome will not allow that their writings were corrupted by heretics. The title of this chapter of Petavius is this: "The opinions of certain of the ancients on the Trinity, who flourished in the Christian profession before the times of Arius, discordant from the Catholic rule, at least in the manner of speaking, are set forth; as of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, Irenaeus, Clemens Romanus." Think of all these eminent Fathers, if we except perhaps Tatian, holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith on the subject of the divinity of Christ, or at least expressing themselves so! What a comfortable security for right interpretation! I do not pretend that Petavius is warranted in all he says;+ but if so very learned a Jesuit judges the Antenicene Fathers thus, even if some of them may be speciously defended (as the Protestant bishop Bull, and the Jesuit Zacharia, and Horsley, and Burton, have attempted to do), while some certainly cannot, what possible reliance can be placed on them? And remember, that it is on the capital point of the divinity of Christ.
+Clement calls Christ "the sceptre of the majesty of God"; and he quotes the Old Testament as calling Him "the Holy of Holies." He says, on the other hand, that God had chosen the Lord Jesus Christ; and this is all on the subject. Petavius, I apprehend, had it only secondhand, and refers to both epistles, one not being authentic; but they are now published.
Let us now give a few details. Justin Martyr, and, it seems, Athenagoras (and it was a common notion) held that Christ existed in the Father as His word or reason, and became a distinct person only for the purpose of creation. Justin denies the possibility of the supreme omnipotent God coming, going, acting, descending, or shutting Himself up in a narrow body, as described in Genesis; and that Abraham, Isaac, etc., never saw the Father, and Ineffable, and of Himself Lord of all things aplos, and therefore of Christ Himself, who is God by His will, His son and messenger, because He is the minister of His will. -- (Dial. c. Tryph. 282, 286.) This is Arianism; yet, in other places, he speaks of Him clearly as God. Clement of Alexandria uses language which makes his doctrine as to the Godhead of Christ uncertain. He says that He had a nature nearest or very near (parechestate) to the Father; and, as to the humanity of Christ, he writes what is utterly heterodox, denying that Christ could possibly be nourished by food, and saying that He only ate that people might not think He only appeared to have a body.
As to Origen, he was as heretical as he well could be. He unequivocally declares the Son to be inferior to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son; and held that all men had lived before they were born, and were born here according to their previous merits, could recover themselves here, and be saved, as could the devil, and, as it seems, when in a heavenly state fall, for all that, afterwards: in a word, every wild notion that might grace a Mormon.
Tertullian received Montanus and the Phrygian prophetesses as having or being the Paraclete, and treated the Catholics as carnal. The term by which Arius was finally condemned, and which had been condemned as heretical by the previous Council of Antioch, was withdrawn after the Council of Nice, and Arius was thereupon received into, and died in the communion of, what is called the Catholic church, this famous word being revoked; and Athanasius died in banishment, deposed from his see by the Council of Tyre. Now, I am satisfied that Arius's views are the most deadly error possible. But what, then, can I think of the Fathers, if compelled to think of them?
Hermas, who is presented as an apostolic Father, tells us, in his Similitudes, that the Son (seen in his vision) was the Holy Ghost; and that God took counsel with the angels what to do with Him; and He made a pure body, and put Him into it, and that was the Christ. Yet this book, we are assured, was read in the churches.
And now for one or two further details. Ignatius, you tell us, was bishop of Antioch after Peter had fixed his chair at Rome. You are aware that it is contested that Peter was at Rome. It seems, indeed, almost impossible. However the succession of the bishopric of Antioch is nearly in the same obscurity as that of Rome, probably because they had not at the beginning such bishops as afterwards. Euodias is alleged to be the first at Antioch: some say Peter put him into it, others Paul. The most authentic histories declare he became bishop of it after the death of both. Some, to clear up matters, say that Ignatius had the Gentiles, and Euodias the Jews, and then Ignatius both. If this were the case, it is possible this may have created difficulties in his own path, and this is that which makes him speak so feelingly of adhering to the bishop, for such is his principal subject. His exhortations to unity and avoiding heresy are all very well, though there is evidently an excessive excitement produced by the thought of a man just going to martyrdom, and very full of it, and (I must say) not very full of Christ. Blessed as his end may have been, Polycarp and the Vienne martyrs shine, it seems to me, much more brightly. There is more peace, more calmness, more humility. Still it was given to Ignatius to honour his Lord by giving up his life for Him, and every true Christian will honour him.
I have already remarked that you have taken Clement of Alexandria for Clement of Rome, and I have said what is needed on the former, who was the head of the school at Alexandria, and not a bishop at all. He avows that he must conceal all the highest parts of Christianity as known to the initiated, and only say what suits the public. He was more a philosopher than anything else. Tertullian, as I have said, was forced out of what is called the Catholic church by its worldliness and evil, and, after having written to prove it right by prescription, left it as a hopeless case. Cyprian in the main was a bright specimen of the Fathers, and a martyr; but he resisted Rome energetically, and never yielded, maintaining a correspondence with a famous bishop of Asia Minor, Firmilian, to resist its principles. Even he speaks of the Father commanding us to worship Christ, just as Socinus did. As to what is quoted from Hilary, one of the best of the Fathers, I cordially agree with his very scriptural statement. Whether Rome be that church is another question. No such unity as he speaks of exists now at all. St. Augustine too was a bright light for the times -- I have nothing to object to what is quoted from him. That modern Rome is the church is our question. The church redeemed by Christ's blood He purifies by the word, and presents to Himself a glorious church. All its members are members of Christ, and will be in glory; but this no Romanist ever pretends to be the case with Rome.
As regards what I have stated as to the Antenicene Fathers being obscure as to fundamentals, I do not deny that passages may be found shewing that they held Christ to be God -- there are many. But it is not denied that there are many which deny that He was the God over all, o epi panton Theos, that being ascribed to the one supreme God. It cannot be denied that Justin Martyr, for example, teaches, in reasoning with Trypho as to the Being who visited Abraham, that it could not be the supreme God, who is the Lord of the Lord on earth (that is, of Christ in these appearances to the old Fathers) as being Father and God, and is the cause of His being both powerful and Lord and God (I use the translation of a learned and orthodox theologian). The passage is to be found in Dial. c. Tryph. 388 E. Justin declares (Dial. c. T. 283 A.), that it was not the supreme God who appeared to Moses in the bush. Trypho had said there was an angel and God there. Justin answers, that even so it was not God the Creator of all things. On the other hand, he declares, pages 227-8, that there neither is, nor ever was, any other God than He who created all things, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who led the Jews out of Egypt. He held (and it is not denied to have been the general doctrine of the Antenicene Fathers) that the wisdom of God, which dwelt in Him always, came out, as it were, into distinct existence, in order to the creation by the will of the supreme God. They owned Him to be God, but His eternal existence was endiathetos and not prophorikos. There was more than one source of this. First, they had only the Septuagint Greek translation, which in Proverbs 8 reads, "The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways," ektise (not possessed me, ektesato). Secondly, Platonism, to which indeed Justin refers, and the efforts to meet the accusations of the heathens as to God the Son, to which the Platonic doctrine of the logos afforded a reply.
Now I do not desire to accuse these Fathers of heresy, save Origen. But I am forced to read a mass of barbarous folio volumes to know what they do hold, and there I find Platonism in abundance. There I find it denied, over and over again, that Christ is God over all. There I find Him spoken of as having personal existence only just before the creation, and existing by the will of the supreme God as His minister or servant. I find indeed, when they are not philosophising or meeting difficulties, that their own faith was for the most part more orthodox. But if I want to make orthodox theology out of them, I am obliged to read another set of volumes, in which Romanists deny and affirm their orthodoxy, as in Zacharia's edition of Petavius' Dogm. Theol.; and Protestants labour honestly, as Bull, and Burton, and Horsley, and Kaye, to prove they are all right and orthodox against Romanists and Unitarians; declaring that these learned Romanists undermine the orthodoxy of the Fathers, that there may be no resource but the church, and proving very clearly that the Unitarians are utterly unfounded in what they have said. But what security does this afford for the truth? -- what reliance can be placed on the Fathers?
If I turn to scripture, nothing can be plainer. I may try to reason against it; but there I find, without any discussion or philosophy at all, that Christ is "God over all blessed for evermore"; that He and the Father are one; that He "was in the beginning with God, and was God." I find that when Isaiah (chapter 6) saw the glory of Jehovah of hosts, he saw the glory of Christ. In 1 John 5 I find that He is the true God and eternal life. I find that He created all things; Hebrews 1; Colossians 1; John 1. In a word, I find the proper eternal divinity of the Lord Jesus, and His distinct personality, taught as plainly as any truth possibly can be. John the baptist goes before Jehovah's face, but it is before Christ. God with us, who saves the people, is Christ, the God-man (an expression, by the bye, condemned as heretical by an early council -- men were to say God and man) revealed as plainly as testimony can make it; yet the unity of the Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) shining through every page, from Genesis to Revelation. I am not, of course, bringing all the proofs of the Trinity in unity here (it would be out of place?; I quote only a few passages to shew the positiveness and clearness of scripture, which gives these great foundations without a cloud and without hesitation.
The author quotes the Fathers on the sanctity of the church. I have not need to say much here. The Fathers cannot tell us what the Romish body is now. No one denies in the abstract that holiness is a characteristic of the true church of God. But the manner in which this truth is treated is singularly characteristic. The Fathers shew "the sanctity of the Catholic church in her origin, in her first preachers, in her doctrine, and in her sacraments." Now is it not singular that her practice is left out here? I should have thought that the first thing holiness would have to be sought in was practice. That the church's origin is holy is certain, for it is God Himself; and, as to power, the Holy Ghost glorifying Christ in the gospel. That her first preachers were is no less sure, for they were apostles, and prophets, and saintly evangelists; that her doctrine was is doubtless true, for we have it in the scriptures from God Himself, and are assured that "without holiness no man shall see the Lord"; that her sacraments, as moderns call them, were, no Christian will dispute either, if the term be rightly used. But then this only leads us to inquire, since this was so in the beginning, whether the doctrine and practice of Rome be like this; and if it be not, then we must conclude that she is not the true church, nor even like it.
But this question of practice our author avoids; it is too practical a one. Only, after a quotation from Tertullian on apostolic succession as a security for doctrine, which has nothing to say to holiness (Tertullian, who broke with the Catholic church, so called, because of its looseness), we just find "holy" in the virtuous lives of her children who observe her precepts. That reserve saves a good deal. We are told too, that the Fathers say there cannot be sanctity out of the Catholic church; but would it not be better to shew that there was in what called itself so? Now I have already given a quotation from Cyprian (and others could be added) which shews that, in some two hundred years after Christ, the self-called Catholic church was sunk into the lowest excesses of vanity, corruption, fraud, and avarice, bishops and all; so that God, he says, treated them most gently in sending the Decian persecution. Indeed the choice of bishops was more than once the occasion of bloodshed and war; yet Cyprian was a great stickler for unity.
On the catholicity of the church I have already spoken. That the Fathers used the testimony of the church universal against heretics is quite true; nor, though not a final authority, are they to be much blamed, when it was universal. But we have seen they were not preserved by it themselves, nor was the church; and the question still remains, Is the Romish system in the truth? The Fathers, with their usual inconsistency, when not pressed by the heretics, equally declared that the scriptures alone were authority. They argued, and argued as it suited them. Thus Cyprian, against those who deserted what he belonged to, preached unity as obligatory. But this same Cyprian was exceedingly opposed to the pope and Romans on the re-baptizing of heretics, and wrote against the pope, and never would yield to him. Stephen, the said pope, urged "Let nothing be innovated on what has been handed down" (traditum). Hereupon our good Father changes all his language. "Whence," he cries out, "is that tradition? Does it descend from the authority of the Lord+ and the Gospels (Evangelica), and come from the commandments and Epistles of the apostles? For God bears witness that these things are to be done which are written, and speaks to Joshua, the son of Nun, saying, 'The book of this law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate in it day and night, that thou mayest observe to do all things that are written therein.' If, therefore, it is commanded in the Gospels, or contained in the Epistles of the apostles, or the Acts, that those coming from whatever heresy should not be baptized, but only hands imposed on him in penance, let this divine and holy tradition be observed ... . What obstinacy is that! [in the pope, remember.] What presumption to prefer human tradition to a divine disposition, and not take notice that God is indignant and angry, as often as human tradition sets aside, and passes by, divine precepts, as He cries out and says by Esaias the prophet, 'This people honour me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.' Also the Lord, in the Gospel, reproving and blaming, lays it down, and says, 'Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may establish your tradition,' mindful of which precept the blessed apostle Paul himself also warns and instructs, saying, 'If any one teach otherwise, and do not acquiesce in the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and His doctrine, he is puffed up with pride, knowing nothing: from such turn away.'" -- (Ep. 74, ed. Oxon.) Here every tradition is to be judged by scripture. O si sic omnia! and this is a pope!
+ De Dominica et Evangelice autoritate, which I have translated Gospels, because we have apostles and their epistles in the next phrase.
The truth is, the Fathers were men, and reasoned as it suited them. The scriptures are the word of God, and speak plainly. "He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." But the letter of our good prelate affords us some further and excellent advice -- "It is simple with religious and simple minds, both to lay aside error, and find and dig out the truth. For if we revert to the head and origin of divine tradition, human error ceases [we must remember that tradition means any doctrine delivered by word or writing]; and the principle (ratione) of the celestial sacraments being considered, whatever lay hid in obscurity and a cloud of darkness, it will be brought out into the light of truth. If a canal, which conducts water that before flowed copiously and abundantly, suddenly fails, do not men go to the fountain, that there the reason of the failure may be known -- whether, the veins being dried up, the water has dried up at the source? or whether, being perfect there and full, running forward, failed mid-way? that if it be caused by the fault of an interrupted or leaky canal, which hinders the water from flowing constantly and without interruption, the canal being re-made and strengthened, the water collected for the use and drinking of the city may be re-presented with the same richness and purity as it flows from the fountain, which now is what the priests of God, keeping the divine precepts, have to do. And if in any one (or any thing) the truths have tottered or vacillated, let us return to the original of the Lord, and the gospel (originem Dominicam et Evangelicam), and the apostolic teaching (traditionem), and let the principle of our acting spring from that whence its order and origin has sprung." Here, remark, tradition does not mean what is now received; for the truth was tottering and lost, and he insists on going back from that to what was originally delivered.
Now we have gone up to the fountain, as Cyprian recommends, and we have found a rich and inexhaustible fountain of pure water of life in the very same source which he urged men to go to. We have found that the canal has been choked with filth; so that, though a little water has oozed through, the result has been mud, undrinkable and contaminated -- that the little that trickled through the filth, which has gradually filled up the channel, is utterly tainted; but when the grace of God had led us to the fountain, we have found the water as pure, as fresh, as abundant as ever, and only the more delicious from having found it again. We have found the truth easily discovered and dug out, as Cyprian has said, once arrived at the treasures of the scriptures which God gave. I have already quoted from Irenaeus a passage, where he states that, if we cannot find the solution of all that is in scripture, we are not to look for another God, but leave these things to God, because the scriptures are perfect as spoken by the word of God and His Spirit.
You quote the famous saying of Augustine -- that he would not believe the gospel, if the church did not move him to do so. He speaks rather of what led him to do it than as authority. Still it is a very serious statement to find uttered. We will examine it; but you must forgive me for increased hesitation as to your having looked at the original. I am not aware what 2 T. Ep. 53 means exactly; but this passage is in a treatise against a letter of a Manichean, which was called Fundamenti. The old and new editions of epistles have neither of them, in number 53, anything to do with it. However, it may appear as an Ep. in some edition I do not know of. But I have another reason for my hesitation. One would think, from your extract, that it was a continuous passage. This is in nowise the case. You read -- "Lastly, the name itself of Catholic. These so many and so great ties bind the believing man to the Catholic church; and unless the authority of the church induced me to it, I would not believe the gospel." Between "Catholic" and "these" there is nearly as much as you have quoted; but that is no matter, for it does not change the sense. But when you say, "These so many and so great ties," I can hardly suppose you translate for yourself. It runs -- "These so many and so great (tanta), most dear or cherished, ties of the Christian name bind."
Now, the sentiment is left out in what you say. His affections were in play, and this he expressly speaks of in what follows in contrast with the certainty of truth; and the last and famous phrase is in quite another connection -- nearly half a page of my copy farther on, and in another section. Nor have you ever finished the phrase which you end with "Catholic church." This I will do for you. You see you cannot be surprised if I believe you did not read the passage which you quote; for certainly your manner of quoting it would lead your reader to suppose it was one continuous paragraph. St. Augustine writes -- "Lib. Cont. Epist. Manichaei quam vocant Fundamenti, sec. iv" (verse in another edition) -- "These, therefore, so many and so great most dear+ ties of the Christian name keep the believing man in the Catholic church, though, on account of the slowness of our intelligence or the merit of our life, the truth does not yet clearly (or openly) shew itself." That is, his affections -- perhaps I might say superstitions -- linked him to the church, though he did not see the truth clear. What a different thing from being a security for the truth! And so little was it intelligence of the truth that he is speaking of, that he begins his reasoning by saying, that simplicity of faith keeps the crowd safe, not vivacity of intelligence; and therefore, if he leaves aside the wisdom which Manicheans did not believe to be in the Catholic church, many other things would hold him quietly in its bosom. This shews what the dear ties were, and how little it had to do with the certainty of truth.
But this is clearer still, if we cite all that follows the words, "the believing man to the Catholic church." I finished that phrase for you just now; I will now add what comes after the close of it -- "But with you" [Manicheans, who were not Christians at all, held there was a good God and a bad one; they had a gospel of their own, Manes having, as was pretended, perfected with far clearer light what Christ had taught, and rejecting much of the scriptures] "but with you, where there is nothing of these things (the most dear ties) which should invite or hold me, the promise of the truth alone resounds; which indeed, if it be so manifestly shewn that nothing can come into doubt, is to be preferred to all those things by which I am held in the Catholic [church]. But if it is only promised, and not exhibited, no man shall move me from that faith which binds me, by so many and such bonds, to the Christian religion."
+One or two manuscripts read "clarissima," instead of "charissima," but the Benedictine editors do not receive it.
Now here the bonds which did hold him were of no force if the truth was elsewhere, so that he does not look at them as themselves the truth. But, further, however confident he was that it was not the case, yet, if the truth were clearly shewn elsewhere, they lost their power, so that they did not in themselves secure the truth. Is it not singular all this part should be left out? But he proceeds to reason with the Manichean, to see if he has the truth. It is a mere argumentation to put the Manichean out of the field by beating his argument; and here it is we find the famous phrase you and others quote. This piece, called Fundamenti, began -- "Manichaeus, apostle of Jesus Christ by the providence of God the Father. These are healthful words from the perennial and living fountain." "Bear with me," says Augustine, "if I do not believe he is an apostle. I ask, who is he? You will answer, an apostle of Christ. I do not believe it. You will have nothing you can say or do. You promised me the knowledge of the truth, and now you compel me to believe what I am ignorant of. Perhaps you will read me the gospel, and thence you will maintain the character assumed by Manichaeus. If, then, you will find any one who does not yet believe the gospel, what will you do with him when he says, 'I do not believe'? But I would not believe the gospel if the authority of the Catholic church did not move me to it. To those, therefore, to whom I have yielded, saying, 'Believe the gospel,' why should I not yield when they say, 'Do not believe Manicheans'? Take your choice. If you say, believe the Catholics, they themselves warn me not to yield any faith to you; wherefore I cannot believe them unless I disbelieve you. If you say, do not believe the Catholics, you will not do right in compelling me by the gospel to [embrace] the faith of Manichaeus, because I believe the gospel by Catholics preaching it."
We see at once here, that to put the Manicheans out of court, he insists, that when he attempted to use the gospel to make him receive Manichaeus (Manes) and his doctrine, it could not take effect, because he had believed in the gospel by means of the very Catholics who condemned Manichaeus. Now it is a very foolish and bad sentence; but is merely a reasoning used in an argument ad hominem to frustrate the Manichean by taking the ground from under his feet; and it supposes a person refusing to believe the very gospel he appealed to, and then insisting he could not use the gospel against Catholics, because it was through Catholics he had believed. It is no business of mine to defend Augustine, though he were a bright testimony to the grace of God. His reasonings are often weak and foolish enough, and admitted to be so by Romanists, and I may almost say by himself, for he excuses himself as writing in haste, and admits that, not having been able to meet Manes in the plain sense of scripture, he had turned it into allegories. But the close of the chapter shews clearly what he meant. He had been led to believe the gospel by the preaching of Catholics, and, thus led to it by them, he could not read it as condemning them -- an argument which has no force. It is in no way a quiet dogmatic sentence as it is presented. It is to be hoped that he did not mean that when, through the instrumentality of the preaching of the Catholics, he had been brought to believe in it as the word of God, he still held it merely by their authority; because if he really believed it to be God's word, and that he had really faith in it as such, however brought to that conviction, he must believe it, because God had spoken it: otherwise there was no divine faith.
He who received Christ's testimony set to his seal that God is true. Anybody may move me and lead me to receive the Bible; but when I receive it, I have faith in it because God has spoken: otherwise it is mere human faith. It cannot be doubted -- for we have his account of it -- that the word of God had reached his heart with deep conviction within. It had its own title in his heart. Did he rest this on the church's authority? I hen it was human faith. A man may bring me my father's letter; I recognize it as his. Its authority is not the bringer's, but the writer's, though the fidelity of the messenger may have been necessary for my getting it. Once received, it has my father's authority -- the authority of him who wrote it. There is no pretence that "commoveret," the word Augustine uses, can mean the authority. It proves that the church had a practical influence over his mind, which led him to do it; all very well. It was Catholics' preaching which had led him to faith; he was converted from heathen wickedness and Manicheanism; but it was not their previous authority on which the scriptures rested, but an authority over his mind.
But I take higher ground than shewing it was a mere argumentative phrase to excuse Augustine. If the principle be the sober judgment of Augustine, that he would not believe unless on the authority of the church, this is not believing because God has spoken, but because the church had. If one tells me something, and another accredits him, and I believe the first because the other declares what he says is true, it is clear I do not believe the former, though I believe the fact he relates; for I do so because I trust another, not him. That is, if I believe the gospel because the church authenticates it, it is because I do not believe it without: that is, God's saying it is insufficient. I do not believe God in it at all. There is no faith in God's word.
But see what ground the Romanists set me on here, for this is the real truth of the matter. God has spoken; the apostles and evangelists have recorded His revelation: if they deny it, they are infidels, not Christians. I am to believe God, because the church accredits what He has revealed. I am to believe the church because Augustine accredits it; that is, the authority of God Himself (who, in sovereign grace, has spoken to us) is reduced to the opinion I may form of the judgment of Augustine. What a favourable position! as if God, when He has spoken, cannot give proof that He has, so as to bind the Christian's, nay, every man's conscience! Now I have a very poor opinion of the judgment of Augustine, and I shall tell you why; but what a foundation on which to rest belief-in what God has said! I must have Augustine's authority for its being true; for if the church accredits the scripture and Augustine accredits the church, the judgment and authority of Augustine is my stay, and the base of the whole. I say, if God has spoken, His word obliges to believe because He has spoken: woe be to him who does not! You plead Augustine's word, that though he has spoken (for you dare not deny this, or you are an infidel) -- though God has spoken, you would not believe Him unless the church guaranteed it. Is this faith? God speaks; I cannot believe what He says till some one else accredits it! It is as awful ground to go on as it is unstable and insecure; and this is all the ground that the Romish body can give as security of our faith!
The truth is, Augustine was first attracted by Ambrose's preaching, by his kindness and eloquence, and began to doubt his own Manicheanism; but he was converted by the scriptures, and established in the faith by the scriptures. "Therefore," he says, "as we were infirm in finding the truth by mere reason, and the authority of the holy letters was needful for us, I began now to believe that thou wouldst in nowise have given so excellent an authority to the scriptures in all lands, unless thou hadst written that by it I should believe in thee, and by it I should seek thee." This accordingly he did, passing through much conflict; and at last abandoning himself to tears under a fig-tree, he heard a voice saying, "Take and read, take and read"; and he arose, took up the Epistles to look at the first thing he opened at, and found a passage which was his deliverance. Such is his own account in his Confessions when he is relating the facts, not reasoning with Manicheans. He was not very nice in reasoning with these. He wrote a book against them early in his career; and when he could not make any proper sense out of the scriptures literally, or none could be made (so he says), he turned it into an allegory to get out of the scrape, hoping he might do better afterwards; and so, indeed, he tried to do in a treatise on Genesis according to the letter.
As to St. Vincent of Lerins (not Sernis), there is a sentence of his almost as famous as St. Augustine's. It is this, that we were to believe quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, what was believed always, everywhere, and by all. May I guess that you did not quote this famous rule, because you have only, as you allege, a majority -- really just half; the Greek church, older than you, thinking you all wrong, and the Protestants thinking you Babylon? If man's opinion and agreement is to be the ground of faith, according to Vincentius Lirinensis, we can have none at all in these days. But the passage you do quote is an unfortunate one, because it was just the very order of Pope Stephanus, which the holy martyr, and the African church, and Firmilian, and Asia Minor, and the East, resisted as subverting the church, and condemned by scripture, in a letter of which I have given an extract.
Allow me also to quote a passage of St. Jerome: "Hear another testimony, by which it is most manifestly proved that a presbyter is the same as a bishop" (Titus 1: 5, seqq.); and then he quotes other passages. "But that afterwards we should be shewn who should have the pre-eminence over the rest, it was done as a remedy for schism, lest every one drawing [people] to himself should break up the church of Christ; for at Alexandria also, from Mark the Evangelist to bishops Heraclus and Dionysius, the presbyters always named as bishop one chosen from among themselves, and placed in a higher grade." ... "Nor is the church of the Roman city to be esteemed one, and that of all the earth another. Both the Gauls, and Britains, and Africa, and Persia, and the East, and India, and all barbarous nations, adore one Christ, observe one rule of truth. If authority be sought, the world is greater than a city. Wherever there is a bishop, Rome, or Eugubium, or Constantinople, or Rhegium, or Alexandria, or Tanis, he is of the same worth, he is of the same priesthood. The power of riches and the humility of poverty make neither a higher nor an inferior bishop; but all are successors of the apostles." Am I attaching any authority to Jerome? The learned but irascible and superstitious monk is one of the last to whom I should; but it is just a proof that these Fathers said what suited them at the moment of writing, as other poor mortals do sometimes -- indeed rather more, so that there was a name for their way of reasoning. It was called economical; that is, they used reasoning proper to confute their adversary, without the least believing it was the truth themselves (like Augustine's allegories).
But we are arrived at the sacraments.
As to baptism, except Quakers, all own it as a Christian ordinance, so that the scriptures you quote for that are freely accepted. Moreover every true or even orthodox Christian admits we are all born in sin: only I do not admit the application of John 3 to baptism. There is an allusion to what you have quoted from Ezekiel, which has nothing to do with baptism; but from the very words you quote (and reading the whole passage makes it still plainer), it refers to the restoration of the Jews; and the figure of baptism refers to the reality; just as John 3 does also, where the Lord is telling Nicodemus that he must not marvel because He said to him that they, Jews, who thought themselves already children of the kingdom, must be born again. It was a sovereign operation of God, going like the wind, and hence could embrace Gentiles; but he, as a master in Israel, ought, from his own prophets, to have known that such new birth was needed for Israel, as the passage from Ezekiel, for example, shews. The Lord tells us that the water which really cleanses is the word: "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you" (John 12: 48; chapter 15: 3); and Paul, "that he might sanctify and cleanse it [the church] by the washing of water by the word," Ephesians 5. Baptism refers to this true cleansing, and so does John 3.
As to confirmation, you have produced scriptures which shew that the apostles, and apostles alone, conferred the Holy Ghost by laying on their hands; as to "the bishop, the successor of the apostles in the ministry," complete and absolute silence. In the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, in which, according to your system, we might have expected it, not a word is to be found. The laying on of the apostles' hands conferred it, and that it might be clear that Paul was as great an apostle as the rest (Acts 19), a case is recorded in which he also did so. You have quoted some other passages which prove anything but this. "He who hath confirmed or established us with you in Christ" -- was Paul confirmed along with them? This is too ridiculous. He, at least, says he never went near the other apostles to be confirmed, nor ever received anything from them. When, therefore, he says, "confirmeth us with you in Christ," it is pre-eminently clear he was speaking of nothing of the kind. Besides, bebaion is not the rite of confirmation. And further, it is God here, not an apostle or a bishop, who has done it.
As to anointing, we read, "Ye have the unction of the Holy one, and ye know all things." Again, why not finish Ephesians 1, "in whom also ... ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance, till the redemption of the purchased possession"? Is confirmation the earnest of the inheritance? But if you say that it is the thing itself which is, and that confirmation is the sacrament by which it is received, then the text speaks of the thing (as it surely does), and not of any sacrament at all. That is, it has nothing to do with the matter. Now that sealing and anointing are the reality of the thing, and not any rite, we have the certainty, because the word of God says, that "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power," Acts 10: 38. And again, speaking of Him, "Him hath God the Father sealed," John 6: 27. No one will have the folly to say it could mean a sacrament as to Christ.
The history of confirmation is clear enough; we hear of it first early in the third century, yet not separate from baptism, but conferred at the same time and with nothing to say to a bishop. In the next, however, it was soon left to the bishop to do. This separation of it from baptism, and leaving it to the bishop, was not established in the East nearly so soon. It continued an act of the baptizing minister, and is treated even by Jerome as that part of baptism by which the Holy Ghost is received, only left to the bishop in order to maintain his dignity. I give some quotations which shew this.
First, there is Tertullian (De Baptismo, 7, 8). Having spoken of the water, he says, "Next going out of the laver we are anointed with the blessed unction, according to the former discipline (that is, the Jewish), with which they were accustomed to anoint with oil out of a horn for the priesthood, with which Aaron was anointed by Moses, whence Christ has His name from chrism, which means anointing ... . Then the hand is imposed, calling and inviting the Holy Ghost, in the way of blessing." We see it is distinctly given as a part of baptism, without thinking of a bishop, and that the laying on of the apostles' hands as its source never entered his mind.
In a commentary, commonly attributed to Ambrose, in 4 Ep. ad Ephesians (given in Keble's note to Hooker), we read, In Egypt presbyters sealed or signed (that is, confirmed), if the bishop is not present. And in the Apostolic Constitutions, lib. 7: 43, 44 (cap. 28 in ed. J. G. Cotel.) the form of baptism and prayer to be used by the priest is given, and then it is said, And after this, when he shall have baptized him in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Ghost, he shall anoint him with myrrh, adding, Lord God unbegotten, etc., cause that this anointing may be efficacious in the baptized, so that the fragrance of thy Christ may remain firm and stable in him, etc. Afterwards there is a prayer for purity, vigilance, etc., by the coming of the Holy Ghost. Now, the Apostolical Constitutions are of the fifth century,+ so that the anointing and confirmation was still the baptizing minister's office. When they were composed, it is very possible they were Alexandrian, certainly Greek and Eastern.
+They are quoted farther on, as being of Clemens Romanus of the first; but that is a mere false pretence.
In Cyprian's time (256) they were brought in the west to the bishop, but on their baptism. Referring to the case of Samaria, he says, "which also is done among us now; that those who are baptized in the church are offered to the presidents of the church, that by our prayer and the imposition of hands they should obtain the Holy Ghost, and be perfected by the Lord's mark" (Ad. Jub. 73, page 202). And so much was it held to be a part of baptism, that (Ep. 72) the African council say to Pope Stephen, insisting that heretics should be rebaptized as well as have hands imposed, 'Then indeed at length they are fully sanctified, and can be sons of God, if they are born of both sacraments, since it is written, "unless a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."' Every one knows that all solemn acts or mysteries were called a sacrament in those days; there were seventy or even a hundred of them, for aught any one can tell, if we take the word. I cite this to shew that it was considered as part of baptism. Eusebius quotes a letter of Cornelius (Pope) to the same effect, as to a baptism of Novatus,+ on what seemed a death-bed; "for he," the dying man, "did not get the other things which it is necessary to receive according to the rule of the church, nor was sealed by the bishop; and not having got this, how should he get the Holy Ghost?" That is, this was the part of baptism by which, on their system, men got the Holy Ghost -- (Euseb. lib. 6: 43, page 244). We have already seen that these same bishops (to whom Cyprian says persons were brought to be confirmed and anointed, so as to receive the Holy Ghost), he also says, were running through all the provinces to make money by fraud. What a picture of the "Catholic church"!
But there remains a quotation from Jerome, which will complete the history of this rite++ -- "I do not, indeed, deny that this is the custom of the churches, that the bishop runs off to those who have been baptized, far from the greater cities, by presbyters and deacons, to lay on his hands for the invocation of the Holy Ghost." ... "But if you ask in this place why we, baptized in the church, should not receive the Holy Ghost, unless by the hands of the bishop, which we assert to be given in true baptism, learn that this rite descends from that authority, that after the ascension of the Lord the Holy Ghost descended on the apostles; and in many places we find the same practised ... . Otherwise, if the Holy Ghost came down only on the demand of a bishop, they are to be pitied who, baptized by presbyters or deacons, in small towns or castles, or in remote places, have fallen asleep before they have been visited by bishops."
+Novatus was sound in the faith, but separated from the so-called Catholic church for its low state of morals, which now began to trouble many consciences.
++Adverse Lucifer, col. 181, vol. 2.
Remark here, that he overthrows entirely the doctrine of Pope Cornelius, just cited from Eusebius. What a mess these Fathers make of it! "But sometimes the safety of the church depends on the dignity of the chief priests, for if a certain extraordinary power, eminent above all, were not given to him, there would be as many schisms in the church as priests. Thence it happens, that without anointing, and the command of the bishop, neither a presbyter nor a deacon has the right of baptizing, which, however, frequently, if necessity compels, we know to be lawful for the laity to do. For, as one receives anything, so also he is able to give it, unless also the eunuch indeed, baptized by Philip, is to be believed to be without the Holy Ghost." I quote this as shewing -- first, that it was a part of baptism; next, that the bishop did it merely as a matter of order and human arrangement, and that after all it was all as good without him, if need was, being reserved merely to maintain order and his dignity, and that even Jerome had not the smallest idea of his conferring the Holy Ghost exclusively as the successor of the apostles. He goes into the case of Samaria; but his reasoning, though to the point as to Lucifer, his adversary, has nothing to do with our subject. For this he only refers to its coming on the apostles (of course, therefore, without laying on of hands), and insists, if the bishop was not there, it was had all the same, quoting as a proof the eunuch of Ethiopia.
I thought a plain history of the facts would be the best means of dispelling the mists and halo which surround the word "Fathers." The earliest, Tertullian, "a most ancient writer, and a man of great erudition," according to the author, speaks of it as a part of baptism done in imitation of Judaism. Gradually this part was reserved to the bishops, for order's sake, but declared by Jerome not to be essential, but a matter of order, and got established gradually, like other superstitious corruptions of early practices, as it is now used. St. Jerome, "that most learned Father and doctor of the church," is unfortunate, for he very satisfactorily refutes on the point what the pope had laid down. Indeed, as I have said, you may prove anything but the truth by the Fathers. They said what suited them in their controversies.
But I have another little word to add here. The author, in the quotation alleged to be from Jerome, after the words, "And having invoked the Holy Ghost, lays his hands on them," continues, "Where, will you ask, is this written? In the Acts of the Apostles," etc. Not a word of this latter part is in what Jerome says; on the contrary, he goes on to prove it can be had without it. The author, I suppose from quoting secondhand, without reading the Fathers, has fallen into a sad mistake here. It is the adversary of the orthodox -- namely, Lucifer, or a Luciferian -- whom Jerome, under the name of "Orthodox," is confuting, who says this. It gives us such a due to the origin of these different rites, that I will quote it. Indeed, Lucifer has in many things, perhaps, the best of it. "Are you ignorant," says this honest but stern resister of Arianism in every shape (Jerome, it appears, rather agreed with Cyprian that heretics should be re-baptized, which the pope would not allow), "that this is the custom of the churches, that hands should be afterwards laid upon the baptized, and that the Holy Ghost should be invoked? Do you ask, Where is it written? In the Acts of the Apostles. Even if the authority of the scripture was not to be had, the consent of all the world on this point would have the force of a precept. For many other things also, which, through tradition, are observed in the churches, have assumed (usurpaverunt) to themselves the authority of a written law."+ That is just it. Lucifer was a very faithful, but, as it appears, rigid and somewhat violent man. He was banished by Constantius for refusing to condemn Athanasius. He refused to receive Arian bishops as bishops on retracting their error, and said they must come as laymen. However, Jerome is refuting him in the work quoted from; and the author has quoted Jerome's adversary as Jerome himself. What security for the faith!
+I may add that the learned editors of Vallarsius' edition, after the Benedictine, acknowledge that Jerome holds that a presbyter can confirm and do all, unless ordain; and they cite different passages I have referred to, and add Pope Innocent's declaration to the contrary, pretty much on the ground of the Luciferian. I add here, Cyril, in his catechism, shews that it was a part of baptism instituted after the analogy of Christ's, who received the Holy Ghost after his. It was always done immediately. See "Life of Basil," by Amphilochus Dionysius, St. Ambrose, Opatus, etc. In confirmation of what I have said of the Greek church, a canon is cited. A presbyter may not sign infants in the presence of the bishop, unless, indeed, he has been desired by the bishop to do it. Infants were confirmed at their baptism. I quote all this note secondhand from Bingham. See Gennadius de Dog. c. 52.
I turn to penance. Your quotations of scripture prove that you have as little consulted it as you have the Fathers. You say, "St. Matthew and St. John record the same event," namely, Christ's coming to His apostles after His resurrection. John states a part of the communication Christ made to His disciples at this interview -- the power of forgiving sins; Matthew another part -- the power of baptizing and teaching all nations whatsoever Christ had commanded them; and in conclusion, Jesus Christ assures them that He would remain with them to "the end of the world." This you do, in order to shew that the power to forgive sins remains to the end of the world. How can you expose your own ignorance to such a degree, or presume on that of others? The interview mentioned in John 20 was in Jerusalem, the day of the resurrection; and Matthew 28, in Galilee afterwards, the last thing recorded by him before the Lord's ascension. The whole fabric falls, being incorrect in every part.
Now how comes it that for other things the bishops are successors of the apostles, as you tell us? and here "a person must have a very perverse heart, and covered with a dense spiritual blindness," not to see that, on the contrary, all priests are their successors, proving both by the same text of Matthew, which says nothing about either, and thus can be arbitrarily applied to one as well as the other? Again, you quote, "Hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation," as referring to penance; 2 Corinthians 5. But the apostle declares that this was preaching the gospel. "Now we are ambassadors for Christ; as though God did beseech by us, we pray in Christ's stead be reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Yet you dare to say, "Can language convey more expressively, more definitively, or more clearly, the power which God gave to the priests, of reconciling the world to Him by the ministry of religion?" All this is foolish trifling. What do you mean by the ministry of religion? The apostle speaks of beseeching by the gospel in Christ's name; you of penance. Are you going to put the world under penance? Is this your embassy?
But, further, you have not given a correct account of penance, as Romanists teach it.
You say, "the necessary dispositions -- namely, contrition of heart, and a firm purpose of turning from his evil ways." This is not a real account of Romish penance. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, according to which you are ordered to teach your parishioners, states the contrary. The "integral parts are contrition, confession, and satisfaction." "We sin against God by thought, word, and deed; when recurring to the power of the keys, we should, therefore, endeavour to appease His wrath, and obtain the pardon of our sins by the very same means by which we offended His supreme Majesty. In further explanation, we may also add, that penance is, as it were, a compensation for offences which proceed from the free will of the person offending." Again -- "On the part of the penitent, therefore, a willingness to make this compensation is required, and in this willingness chiefly consists contrition." But still more clearly, after quoting the Council of Trent, it is said: "From this definition, therefore, the faithful will perceive that contrition does not simply consist in ceasing to sin, purposing to enter, or having actually entered, on a new life: it supposes, first of all, a hatred for sin, and a desire of atoning for past transgressions." You have left all this out. It is easy to talk of contrition of heart; but it chiefly consists in the willingness to make compensation, satisfaction -- to atone by one's own free will.
But there is another part of the doctrine you have omitted. "Contrition" (it is still the Catechism which is instructing us), "it is true, blots out sin; but who is ignorant that, to effect this, it must be so intense, so ardent, so vehement, as to bear a proportion to the magnitude of the crimes which it effaces? This is a degree of contrition which few reach; and hence, through perfect contrition alone, very few indeed could hope to obtain the pardon of their sins" (by that they could do without a priest or confession). "It therefore became necessary that the Almighty, in His mercy, should afford a less precarious and less difficult means of reconciliation and of salvation; and this He has done, in His admirable wisdom, by giving to His church the keys of the kingdom of heaven. According to the doctrine of the Catholic church -- a doctrine firmly to be believed and professed by all her children -- if the sinner have recourse to the tribunal of penance, with a sincere sorrow for his sins, and a firm resolution of avoiding them in future, although he bring not with him that contrition which may be sufficient of itself to obtain the pardon of sin, his sins are forgiven by the minister of religion through the power of the keys."
Justly, then, do the holy Fathers proclaim that "by the keys of the church the gate of heaven is thrown open," that is, to sinners who have not repented as they ought: those who have do not want the keys. Penance, then, is substitution for adequate and right repentance -- it is making the conscience easy when it has not properly repented, that is, hardening it. Who does not know this to be the case? A conscientious soul, grieved with sin, is miserable because it has not done its penance in a right spirit; a careless, sin-loving heart goes to confession in order to receive at Easter, as they say, and begins its score of sins again merrily, when the old one is wiped out. It is sorry, no doubt, for having committed them when they are over -- who would not be? -- and afraid not to receive when Easter comes round, and for the moment proposes to do no more such. Real, thorough contrition is not required; penance supplies its place. Contrition, he is taught by his "church," chiefly consists in this willingness to make satisfaction or compensation; and so he gets absolution for the past, and begins over again. Can there be a more iniquitous system? It is not a notion, taken up by the ignorance of these poor sinners, but established by the deliberate teaching of what calls itself the "church." Now, I believe that remission of sins is, or ought to be, administered in the church of God still: first, in reconciling the world -- which has nothing to say to the matter we are on now, even as to ordinances, because restoration or penance, whatever form it has, belongs to the church. Heathens are received by baptism, not by penance: whenever a poor Jew or heathen is received into the church, he receives, as to his present manifest standing, forgiveness; he stands before God as a forgiven man: all recognize that he enters by baptism. Further, if a person be justly excommunicated for sin, being a Christian, he is, on restoration, forgiven his sin as to his public standing before God; so that the forgiveness of sins, in this sense of the word, as to a man's manifest standing and condition on the earth, does continue, and will, as long as the church subsists.
The history of confession I have already given. Auricular confession is a very modern introduction; it was needed when an easy way of letting off sin was wanted coincidently with the growth of priestly power.+ The passage of James, "Confess your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed," is the plain proof that confession to a priest was unknown. It was a useful mutual exercise of charity, so that chastisement might be removed, when the heart was right before God. Was it to priests that many came and confessed their deeds in the passage cited from the Acts, when they burned their books of magic? The reason why baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is valid, and "I absolve thee from thy sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" is not, is a very simple one; it is this -- Christ positively ordained one, and did not so much as hint at the other. Besides, you know very well that in case of necessity a layman, nay, a woman, can baptize a child: will you allow the same power in penance? If not, why do you assimilate them, as if one proved the other?
You quote St. Chrysostom. But he wrote urgently against confession to a priest, as we have already seen. I do not deny that Christ gave power to His church to forgive sins in the sense I have explained it. I believe it to be a glorious truth, that whosoever is rightly in the church is enjoying the absolute, full, unlimited, forgiveness of all his sins. But we are talking of auricular confession to a priest, and of satisfaction and penance substituted for real full contrition, in order to have it.
I come now to the Eucharist. I have already remarked that you have not ventured to say one word for the mass; you seek to justify transubstantiation, not the sacrifice. You quote John 6. There are three points in this chapter as to Christ: He is the bread come down from heaven (that is, the incarnation); there is His flesh and blood (that is, His death); and His ascending up where He was before. In all we are to own Him. The Lord's supper most preciously presents Him in one of these. It presents a dead Christ, the body broken, and the blood shed. You say the Jews took Him literally; but they certainly knew nothing about the Lord's supper. "The disciples," you add, "knew likewise that Christ meant what He said." ... "The sublime mystery they did not comprehend." But then they did not understand Christ at all, but took Him quite wrong; and therefore the Lord corrects them, and says, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." He takes care they should understand He did not mean them to rest in the letter of what He said. They took Him according to the letter. They were quite wrong. Many, supposing He meant it literally, went away. The rest held to Him, because His words were eternal life.
+Leo shews this epoch when in the West they began to give up public confession for private (Ep. 136, 1, 719); yet he treats public as allowing more faith.
You urge that God could make man out of slime, Eve out of a rib, and a pillar of salt out of Lot's wife. No doubt; but when He made a man, he was a man in form. He did transubstantiate the mud. But a man was a man to all intents and purposes, not to all intents and purposes (save your telling us otherwise) unchanged mud. He did not look or taste like slime, remain unable to move, speak, think, and go on as before. So of Eve: nobody, when she was changed, could take her for a rib. God gave proof to man of the change. So in the case of Lot's wife. Here there is none -- no sign of God's power of any kind. We must believe, we are told, not reason. Yes, if God has taught it.
You quote John 6, and you quote, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven," words as plain as "this is my body." Am I to believe that Christ was transubstantiated into living bread? The words are just as plain, just as positive: why not believe them? Are we to eat Him incarnate and alive on earth? Where? Yet "he that eateth of that bread shall live for ever." In the Lord's supper I cannot, for His body is presented broken, not whole; His blood shed, not in His body. But again, the Lord declares that whosoever eats Him, as He describes, is fully and finally saved.+ They "shall live for ever." They "have everlasting life, and he will raise them up at the last day." "They abide in Christ, and Christ in them." That is, it is the real vital saving possession of Christ by faith in the perfect efficacy of His life and work, in which those who possess will abide, and Christ raise them up, consequently, at the last day. But this is confessedly not true of all who partake of the Eucharist. That is, the passage does not refer to it; it refers to what the Eucharist refers to. Further, the terms of the institution preclude the literal sense; for, whatever image He employed, it could not then be literally Himself; because His body was not yet given, His blood was not yet shed, and this is what it is expressly a sacrament of. The Lord plainly shews what He meant in saying, "This cup is the new testament in my blood," which is clearly a figure; and "I will not drink of this fruit of the vine," Matthew 26. Nothing can be plainer. But the Lord did not really hold in His hand a broken body and shed blood; for His body was not broken and His blood was not shed. Yet that is of the very essence of the truth, for it was shed for the remission of sins, and there was no remission without it. In a word, the testimony is as plain as possibly can be, that the literal sense is untrue and impossible; shed blood there was none. Now Christ is glorified. There is no dead Christ; it cannot be He in reality -- He in the letter; for there is no such Christ in reality as broken and His blood shed. He is alive for evermore. 1 Corinthians 10 is the plainest of all in reality;++ it speaks of the body as broken.
+Had not the Vulgate unquestionably given a false translation, another proof would here suggest itself: "Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood, ye have no life." In the Romish system they have life by baptism. The Vulgate reads, Ye shall have no life; still, as addressed to Jews, as it was, the force is the same. For it was not by the Eucharist they were to get life, but by baptism.
++The Vulgate, in all these passages, has unequivocally corrupted the text (at least translated it untruly), but it changes nothing of the substance of the argument. See the previous note. To say a Jew should not have life but by eating the Eucharist is denying his having life by baptism. Take it as feeding by faith on Christ's death, and all is clear.
As regards a mouse eating it, I am not fond of such arguments; because, though I do not believe lifeless bread to be my living Lord, save as faith realizes Him, yet it is a memorial of Him, and there is no profit in irreverent associations. Yet you have in nothing met the argument in the smallest degree. According to your system, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ are there; yet it cannot help itself against a mouse. The argument has the same bearing as Isaiah's. The idolater makes a fire with part of a tree, warms himself, roasts at it, and says of the rest, It is a god, and worships it. Here a mouse eats it; it is turned into corruption; and you adore the rest as God. The argument may be a painful one, but it is complete. He cannot deliver himself, says Isaiah: a deceived heart has turned him aside; he cannot say, I have a lie in my right hand. When the Lord says, "Do this in remembrance of me," it was saying it was a memorial of Him when He was gone, not His presence. But there is no life in the wafer. It is monstrous to say it is God, and eat it literally, let Fathers say what they may. It is not a living Christ; were it so, it were no sacrifice either, nor shedding of blood. I live by the life of a living Christ; I feed, commemoratively, on a dying one (such as, blessed be God, He can be no more, and is not now). Hence the cup, and drinking the cup, are essential to the import of the sacrament, and that the blood be nowhere else; for, if not shed, there is no remission.
And now mark the amazing import of this point. The Romanist as such does not partake of the cup. The reason, as is alleged, that it is all the same, is what is called the doctrine of concomitancy -- that each element contains all -- that in the bread the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ are all found. Now, if the blood be in the body, there is no sacrifice, no redemption, no remission of sins. Without shedding of blood, says the Holy Ghost (Hebrews 9), there is no remission. Now, if the blood be in the body, it is not shed. That is, the poor Romanist -- and with it I do not reproach him but what calls itself the Catholic church, and the enemy of souls -- the poor Romanist has the sacrament of there being no redemption, or no remission of sins; for, as he receives it, His blood is yet in the body. Think how the enemy has mocked his poor soul! No doubt the Fathers spoke of it as the flesh and blood of Christ; but they say plainly now -- I repeat I do not cite them as of weight, for there is no one less worthy of authority than they -- but, as an historical fact, they say sufficient (not certainly to shew that they were not superstitious enough, but) that superstition had not travelled in five centuries as far as it had in fifteen. It went faster with the people than even the clergy, in some respects, for they brought in their heathen habits. Of this anon. I will quote enough from them to shew that, when it suited them in argument, they say the contrary of Romish doctrine: it is very possible, when it suits them or their imagination is at work, they teach it too. It just shews what they are worth. The mere saying, "flesh and blood," means nothing.
But to the point. First; when the controversies as to the two natures of Christ were on foot, and yet earlier, on the possibility of His taking flesh, which the Gnostic heretics denied, they insist on the bread being there when He is spiritually or divinely present, as a proof that the two things can be together. Here their whole point was, that it was still bread; just as His flesh, as a living man, was true flesh, which the heretics denied. Thus Tertullian: "He made the bread, received and distributed to His disciples His body, saying, This is my body, that is, the figure of my body; but it would not have been a figure unless the body was truly such; for an empty thing, which is a phantasm, cannot have a figure." The reader must know that early heretics denied that Christ had a real body: Tertullian argues, from the Eucharist being a figure of His body, that the body must be real. Irenaeus argues in the same way, and is very positive as to the bread being there after the consecration, of which he speaks: "For when the bread, which is from the earth, receives the invocation of God, it is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, earthly and heavenly; so our bodies," etc.
So Augustine (after saying that people said Christ was immolated at Easter, and constantly, though He never was but once long ago, and could be but once) says, "For if the sacrament had not a certain similitude of these things whereof they are sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all; but from this similitude they receive, for the most part, even the name of the things themselves." What can be plainer? "For the Lord did not hesitate to say, This is my body, when He gave the sign of His body." "The feast at which He commended and delivered to His disciples the figure of His body and of His blood" (on Psalm 3). "He who abides not in Christ, and in whom Christ does not abide, beyond all doubt neither eats His flesh nor drinks His blood, although he eats and drinks for judgment on himself the sacrament of so great a thing" (in Joann. Tract. 26: 18). Chrysostom is quoted also, as saying, "Before the bread is sanctified we call it bread; but, divine grace sanctifying it through the ministry of the priest, it is freed from the name of bread, and judged worthy of the appellation of the Lord's body, although the nature of bread remains in it" (Epist. ad Caesarium).
This last quotation has a very curious history. It was quoted by Peter Martyr. The Romanists cried, Forgery. Peter Martyr deposited it at Lambeth. It was taken away in Queen Mary's reign. Bigot published it at Paris (he was a Romanist). The edition was suppressed, but the Archbishop of Canterbury got the sheets as they passed through the press, and published it in England; and others have done so.
These may suffice to shew that, rapidly as superstition grew, four or five centuries (that is, as long ago as Edward III) had not sufficed to obliterate the original doctrine of the church of God. It was made a dogma of the church only in the thirteenth century, in the Lateran Council, under Innocent III, the bloody instigator of the crusades against the Albigenses in the south of France, and the establisher of the Inquisition. In the tenth it was openly disputed, many prelates supporting the writer; and in the ninth was openly maintained, and the author not condemned as heretical at all, that transubstantiation did not take place. The reader may remark that several of the quotations I have given are from writers whom the author has quoted, shewing, when speaking soberly, how little they attributed to their own words the force which is attributed to them; or rather they spoke rhetorically about it in discourse, and shewed at other times it was only rhetoric. Again, what a ground to put our faith upon in order to receive it!
But I will add some other passages of the Fathers, shewing distinctly, as a learned Romanist has admitted, that, up to Chrysostom, the church did not really hold transubstantiation as a doctrine, however rhetorically individuals may have spoken. I attach no kind of importance to their opinion but historically, as the Romanists lean on them; it shews what a broken reed his way of assuring true doctrine is, and that is our point now.
The passage of Justin Martyr quoted by the author proves the contrary of that for which he cites it. Justin treats the Eucharist as bread, wine, and water, and as nothing else literally. The author has not, as so often has occurred, given the whole passage. "This food," he begins. What food? Hear Justin. "Those called among us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread, and wine, and water, over which thanks have been given, and carry it away to the absent, and this food is called among us Eucharist ... . For we do not receive these things as common bread nor as common drink; but in the same way." (This the author has entirely changed; I suppose, as usual, quoting from a text-book. How honest they are -- that is, the instructors of the Romish body -- we have seen by this time.) "As by the word of God, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, being made flesh, had flesh and blood for our salvation, so also the nourishment by which flesh and blood, through change [into them], are nourished, over which thanks have been given, through prayer of the word which is from Him, we have been taught to be the flesh and blood of that Jesus made flesh." Now here, whatever it was to their faith, it was really and substantially bread, and wine, and water, such as nourished the natural body. No Romanist could say that bread and wine and water were given to be partaken of by each person present, nor that they took what nourished their body, on being changed into it. Hence the author, or his text-book, omits it.
Theodoret, in answering the Eutychians who held that there was only one nature in Christ, says, "He that called His own natural body wheat and bread, and gave it the name of a vine, He also honoured the visible symbols or elements with the name of His body and blood, not changing their nature, but adding grace to nature" (Dial. 1, tom. 4, page 17). The Eutychian heretic Eranistes (Dial. 2, page 85, ed. Schulze 4: 126) says, "As the symbols of the Lord's body and blood are one thing before the invocation of the priest, but after invocation are changed, and become another thing, so also the body of our Lord, after its assumption, was changed into the divine substance." Theodoret replies, "Thou art taken in thine own net which thou hast made; for neither do the mystical symbols depart from their own nature after consecration, for they remain in their former substance, figure, and form," ousias kai tou schematos kai tou eidous. This is most unequivocal. Indeed, the controversy with the Eutychians and Monophysites, who confounded the divine and human natures in Christ, proves clearly that transubstantiation was not believed in. They used the fact of its being still bread and wine against the Eutychian doctrine, as they had against the Gnostics the fact of their being material creatures.
So Ephrem of Antioch, "The body of Christ which is received by the faithful does not depart from its own sensible substance, and yet it is united to spiritual grace; and so baptism, though it becomes wholly a spiritual thing and but one thing, yet it preserves the property of its sensible substance, I mean water, and does not lose what it was before." (Quoted by Photius, cod. 1: 229.)
Pope Gelasius writing also against Nestorians and Eutychians on the two natures in Christ, says, "Doubtless, the sacraments of the body and blood of Christ which we receive are a divine thing, on account of which, by them, we become partakers of the divine nature, and yet the substance or nature of bread and wine does not cease to exist." (Facund. lib. 9, c. 5.) "As the sacrament of His body and of His blood, which is in the bread and consecrated cup, we call His body and blood, not that the bread is properly His body, and the cup His blood, but because they contain in them the mystery of His body and blood. Hence the Lord also Himself called the bread He had blessed, and the cup which He delivered to His disciples, His body and blood."
This may suffice. The real historical truth is that, when they departed from the simplicity of scripture, they got into the doctrine of a union of grace and bread in the sacrament, and then into a kind of consubstantiation, such as Luther held. When Paschasius Radbert had taught something more than this, he was violently opposed by many church authorities. Berengarius, who taught the contrary, was at last, and indeed more than once (though supported by church authorities), being persecuted by Hincmar, forced to retract; and at last, as I have said, in 1215 transubstantiation was made a dogma of the faith, but never before.
Next we have extreme unction, for which you have not much to say. What has the account in the Acts, of the apostles healing the sick by anointing them, to do with extreme unction? Intimated by Mark, says Trent. Why intimated? Was healing the sick the sacrament of dying men, to go prepared into God's presence? This is too absurd. And James says, "Is any sick?" not when they are dying, but when chastened for sickness for sin -- "Let him send for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." That is, he was to be healed by their prayers; and, if sin occasioned it, be forgiven and relieved, not "prepared" to die. So the quotation you give from Augustine states -- "Will deserve to obtain the restoration of his health"; and it is most certain that for centuries, up to Bede's time, that is, the ninth century, it was looked at as a remedy to restore health. The Greek church so uses it still, and the Council of Trent says, it may be so interdum. Indeed there is nothing to be said for it, as the short article of the author shews.
And why, if extreme unction wipes away the very remains of sin, do people who have had it go to purgatory? What ineffectual means all the Romanist sacraments are! A man is absolved, but that will not do; he has his viaticum, the Eucharist, in which is remission, they say, but that will not do; extreme unction to wipe off the remains of sins -- "reliquias peccati abstergit" (Conc. Trid., sess. 14, C. 2.) -- yet the poor man goes to purgatory after all, to burn there for them himself; and then they say masses for him to get him out, though they could not keep him out. How different the peace of him who trusts the word of the living God, who believes His testimony! "The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth from all sin." "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." "Being justified by faith we have peace with God ... and the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us." "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Such is the peace given, and the certainty of divine love, by the faith of the gospel. We know no hard God, who will keep us down to the last farthing: Christ has paid it for us, bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. The Lord grant many poor souls labouring under this cruel bondage may know His love who gave His Son for sinners, and the salvation which is in Christ!
As to the sacrament of holy orders, you quote passages which prove that, by the laying on of the apostles' hands, gift was bestowed on Timothy: another, to shew that he was designated by prophecy. I do not doubt either. When you can shew me gift so bestowed, or a man marked out by prophecy for it, I shall own it with delight; but still you will not have proved that he is a priest. The scripture owns no priesthood now but Christ's, and that of all saints, in the sense in which all Christians are kings and priests. He "hath made us kings and priests to God and his Father." "Ye are a royal priesthood," says Peter.
But the New Testament has not the smallest trace whatever of priests as an order. The priesthood of Christ is exercised on high; all Christians follow Him there in spirit. Romanists have returned in this, as in all their system, to Judaism, and to Judaism after it is set aside; so that they are the beggarly elements of this world, just like heathenism, as which the apostle treats them in Galatians 4: 9-11. The New Testament speaks of a ministry as characteristic of Christianity -- apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Every true Christian blesses the Lord for it, however it may have been abused. But priesthood there is none, save of Christ and all true Christians; it is distinctive of, and essential to, Christianity that there is not, save as we all are priests. That is, we all go within the veil rent, directly and with boldness into the presence of God, where Christ is entered for us, into the holiest of all. The assertion of a priesthood (Christ apart) between us and God is a denial of Christianity. You do not attempt to quote anything till five centuries after Christ.
As to the word sacramentum, none in the least degree acquainted with the early ecclesiastical writers can attach the least importance to it, for they called every mystery a sacrament. Thus, one says there are three sacraments in baptism. Augustine says the number seventeen is a great sacrament; that one hundred and fifty-three, being three times fifty (the Pentecostal number), with three (the number of times it is given), has great weight, and if you begin with one, and go on adding each number up to seventeen, you will have one hundred and fifty-three (I leave my reader to try), and that is the meaning of the one hundred and fifty-three great fishes taken at the Sea of Tiberias. As I was on the word sacrament, I gave this one little example of Patristic matter, so that it may be understood why I said a child's book now would not contain such nonsense as they have: I think my reader will excuse my giving him any great quantity of it.
As to the obligation of marriage, it cannot be held too highly; instituted in paradise, and confirmed by the Lord Himself, its sanctity, I doubt not, is the providential bond of all moral order in the world. If, as the apostle teaches us, one be wholly given up to the Lord's work without any snare to himself, it is all well. After what I have said of sacrament, I shall not be expected to insist on the word one way or another. In Ephesians it is simply, in the original, "This is a great mystery, but I speak of Christ and the church." That is, the union of the church to Christ, as His body, is a great mystery -- she is His bride.
We are told that the pope's supremacy was defined in 1439! It is very possible. The world had passed through the dark ages; Christianity was overrun by Mahometanism in more than half its territory; and here was the true secret of it. The patriarch of Constantinople had then recourse to Rome. For a long time after the seat of the empire was transferred to Constantinople, the ecclesiastical chief of that city and Rome contended for supremacy. However, old Rome had precedency by decree of the Council of Nice, for ambition governed all these pillars of Christendom. You have still traces of this horrible ambition in Ireland, in the Archbishop of Dublin being primate of Ireland, and he of Armagh primate of all Ireland. I say they fought as to whether one should carry his cross -- what a symbol to use for it! -- upright or level when he went into the province of the other. My reader must forgive me if I forget how it was settled; but it was. The rivalry of Alexandria and Constantinople was the source of endless disputes -- one ever favouring the holders of doctrine condemned by the other, to make a party; and the emperor convening councils to quiet them, and banishing them often to keep the peace, or making decrees themselves on doctrines which only led to new disputes, till they became contemptible. They were discussing some of these points when the Turks besieged Constantinople.
The Constantinopolitan patriarch assumed at length the title of universal bishop, and was denounced by Pelagius II and Gregory, as antichrist, for his pains. The latter wrote to Phocas, who had murdered the Emperor Maurice and succeeded him, to congratulate him, Maurice having favoured Constantinople. Phocas acknowledged Rome as the head of all churches. Decretals were passed which gave the universal supremacy to Rome, everywhere owned to be forged now; and the eastern empire declining under the inroads of Saracens and then Turks, at last a union was proposed between the East and West, long opposed and rivals in doctrine and practices, as a proof of holiness and unity as marks of the true church. What a picture, to be sure, it all is of servants and followers of Christ, as they pretended! This attempt at union was under Pope Eugenius IV. It was a desirable distinction for Rome. A council was sitting at Basle at this time; Eugenius dissolved it; it would not obey, and deposed him; but he declared it null, and called another at Ferrara, which afterwards, because of the plague, was removed to Florence. The Council of Basle chose a new pope, Felix VERSE Most of Christendom owned Eugenius, but many universities Felix: however, he resigned when Nicholas V succeeded Eugenius.
But to return to the council at Florence. The Greek emperor came, and Josephus the patriarch; and the Greek divines, particularly Bessarion -- made cardinal afterwards-gave up the Greek doctrine on the procession of the Holy Ghost, for the Greeks deny the procession from the Son. They admitted purgatory, which they did not before -- now do not. Think of half Christendom not believing it for fourteen centuries after Christ, and agreed the pope should be the head of the church! But alas! they had reckoned without their host; for when they went back, the Greeks would not submit to the terms, and they themselves declared that all had been carried at Florence by artifice and fraud, and the separation has continued to this day. And this is the bride of Christ! It seems the pressure of the pope was worse in their eyes than the pressure of the Turks; that is, of the Council of Florence, which clearly sets forth the pope's supremacy. Less than a century after, it becomes intolerable to the West too, and the Reformation arrived. So much for universality. Of course, some ground must be found for the supremacy, when it is there. The forged decretals established it. Scripture must be forced to contain it. I have already discussed the passage in Matthew; I need not repeat it.
But some of the points are to be cleared up. First, it is exceedingly doubtful if Peter ever was at Rome. Scripture never shews him to have been there, and it seems to me impossible to reconcile what it does state with his having been there. I admit respectable writers think he was, but scripture speaks only of Paul. Peter certainly did not found the church there. There were many Christians before any apostle was there, and Paul was the first that went. In the free exercise of their ministry, as the Holy Ghost has recorded it and thought proper to give it to us, no apostle founded the church at Rome. Paul, who preached the full and blessed gospel to the Gentiles (which was not Peter's office, as we know he was apostle of the circumcision, or of the Jews) -- Paul went there as a prisoner. The gospel was never apostolically in Rome, save as in prison. It is possible that Peter closed his life there; but this is the utmost that can be historically admitted, because we have a divine account of what passed till then, and his presence is incompatible with that account. History is silent for a century afterwards, and then every country sought to have it believed to have been visited, and its chief see founded, by an apostle or apostolic man. John lived at Ephesus, yet he certainly did not found the church there, as we know from scripture. So history alleges that Peter founded the church at Antioch -- a statement entirely unfounded, because we have, in the Acts of the Apostles, a long account of the church at Antioch; and all that Peter had to do with it was to divide it, when it existed already, by leading away all the Jews by his dissimulation, so that Paul had to resist him to his face. It is just as little true that he founded the church of Rome. We have Christians at Rome two years at least before Paul went there, and Paul there two years, who began working with the Jews; and none of them, Christians, Jews, or Paul, know anything at all of Peter at Rome. He may have visited Rome to see the Jewish Christians after this, and been martyred there, but that is the utmost possible.
But we have in scripture a great deal of Peter and Paul, which is much more important than traditions about the former. And here let me state that I have not the smallest difficulty in saying that, in point of order, though all had the same apostolic authority, Peter was the first of the twelve. With Paul he had nothing to do; he had it during the life of Jesus, and God was mighty in him afterwards. He first introduced the Gentile Cornelius; but then this had a definite and specific direction. When the Jews had rejected the gospel, and put Stephen to death, the apostles did not leave Jerusalem, as we learn from the Acts; and Paul, miraculously raised up of God as an apostle in an extraordinary manner, does not go up to Jerusalem, but preaches at once in Damascus, and afterwards is sent out from Antioch directly by the Holy Ghost. Jerusalem, the true mother church, having been dispersed, and having ceased to be the source and centre of the gospel which the Jews would not receive, Antioch, not Rome, became the point of departure, and to it Paul returns. Long after, he sees the apostles at Jerusalem, and they agree that Paul and Barnabas should go to the Gentiles, and Peter to the circumcision, or Jews; that is, Peter was not apostle of the Gentiles at all. He taught the same gospel, of course, as to salvation; but his ministry had the Jews for its sphere.
God, says Paul, was mighty in him towards the circumcision, as in me towards the Gentiles; that is, the Jews were the sphere of Peter's ministry. His epistles are directed to the Christian Jews in Asia Minor. He was nowhere apostle of the Gentiles. Of the church, as founded among Gentiles, Paul was the divinely appointed master-builder -- Paul only in the account God has given to us. The apostles may have gone anywhere afterwards, and doubtless did; but God has given His account of the order He recognized; and there Paul is apostle of the Gentiles, and Peter of the Jews. He was nowhere the founder or origin, by his ministry, of the church among the Gentiles according to God. He was so feeble on the point of their admission and liberty in Christ, that Paul had to withstand him to the face.
As to Rome, no apostle founded the church there; Paul, the first apostle who went there, went there as a prisoner. This has been always the place a full gospel has had there. When the church fell into Judaism, which nothing but Paul's energy saved it from as long as he lived, then they naturally began to look for the apostle of the Jews, as their original founder, and Paul had the second place in their minds -- his gospel, as he calls it, none. But they should have gone to Jerusalem -- it was impossible -- it had fallen. Its principles, once instructive as figures, were really the same as heathenism now; and to that Christendom consequently gave itself up. It turned again, as the apostle speaks in Galatians, to the beggarly elements to which it had again desired to be in bondage. They kept days, and months, and years; Galatians 4. The Roman system is merely a return to heathenism founded on Jewish forms (which God has judged), and claiming the name of Peter, the apostle of the Jews. It is that against which Paul was struggling all his life, and foretold would come in when he was gone. Voluntary humility, worshipping of angels, keeping days, and months, and years, trusting in works, he has long ago pointed out and denounced as signs of abandoning Christ. Of these Rome is the source, and Rome has the heritage. It is a mystery of iniquity fully developed, which is fleshly religion; just as the great mystery of godliness is God manifest in the flesh, and the true people of God marked by boasting in Christ Jesus, worshipping God in spirit, and having no confidence in the flesh.
As to the keys of heaven, it is nonsense. He had the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and opened the door on Pentecost to Jews, and, in letting in Cornelius, to Gentiles. When Hilary says Peter believed first, the good man makes a mistake. It was Andrew (John tells us, in the first chapter of his gospel) who sought him, and brought him to Jesus. Jesus gave him the place of eminency he had among the apostles. Saint Ambrose owns that Paul was to learn nothing from him; but Peter, to know that the same power was given to him as to himself. The truth is, that Paul, and not Peter, had the doctrine of the church revealed to him -- its unity and union with Christ. This is not the subject of Peter's teaching. Paul declares he had it by express revelation, as a mystery and dispensation committed to him, and that he was minister of the church as well as of the gospel to fulfil, that is, complete, the word of God by this wonderful truth of the one body united to Christ from among all, Jews and Gentiles. See Colossians 1: 24, 25, 26; Ephesians 3: 1-10; Romans 16: 25, 26, and, indeed, other passages.
As to your reasoning, it has not much force. You see I admit that, amongst the twelve, Peter was the first, but this was evidently a personal pre-eminence. "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas." Pius IX is not Simon Barjonas. It was a personal gift and energy of faith which made the Lord call him a stone, as he called James and John sons of thunder. Every Christian owns that in the blessed apostle; but gifts, and God putting His seal on them, do not go down by succession; if they do, where is Paul's? where is John's? If popes have Peter's inheritance, who has John's and James's? If it is a principle of successors, with equal power and authority necessarily continuing, where are the other apostles' successors, with their authority? No; this is all nonsense. God was mighty in Peter, and God was mighty in Paul. But this was personal -- exclusively and entirely personal; and they say so, as it is evident. You cannot have a successor in gift, or it is not a gift. An office may have a successor in it. But that is not the case here, for there are no apostles now sent by Christ Himself directly from Himself. But gift and God's being mighty in one is confined to the one He is mighty in. To talk of a successor to that is at once nonsense and blasphemy. I have said Peter and Paul say so. Thus Paul speaks: "I know that after my decease grievous wolves shall enter in, not sparing the flock: yea, of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them; wherefore, watch," etc. Now here Paul most plainly declares that he looks for no successor, but that, when he is gone, evil will flow in; and then commends them to God and the word of His grace, which the Romanists certainly step in and deprive us of -- hinder us from going directly to God, and defrauding us of the word of His grace. Peter so little looked for a successor, that he writes, in his epistle, that he was writing to them because he would take pains that after his decease they should have the same things always in remembrance. So that these two great apostles never thought of having successors.
This is of the utmost force. Paul ordained elders for the care of the churches. As to successors, he so little thought of it, that he declares evil would flow in, and that in the last days perilous times and apostasy would come. But of this in a moment. No; there are two great systems: one leans on succession and ordinances, which the apostle denounces; the other on God and the word of His grace, to which he commends us, as able to build us up, and give us an inheritance among the sanctified. Rome has chosen the former; the true Christian blesses God for the latter.
Their reasoning is too absurd to dwell on. There is the consciousness of its weakness. You say the Pope of Rome is the successor of Peter; ... the pope, therefore, is by divine appointment Peter's successor. That is logic to be sure: can anything be more glaring? And to this you append (it is happy that you hang it on such a peg), "whoever, therefore, is not under the care and government of this one shepherd belongs not to Christ, is not of the one fold, and cannot be saved." We thank Rome for her tender mercies. We have read, "If thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." You will surely forgive us if we trust an inspired apostle more than yourself -- an apostle revealing God's precious grace to us poor sinners, more than Rome's anathemas, especially when they hang on reasoning such as this. The pope is the successor of Peter; therefore the pope is by divine appointment the successor of Peter; therefore whoever is not under him cannot be saved. If that is not convincing, what should be?
But your facts, however eloquently stated, are not much more solid. You say, Is there any institution in the world which has remained unchanged by the lapse and vicissitudes of nineteen hundred years, except the primacy and government of the Roman pontiffs? Now, first, the primacy of any bishop was violently denounced as late as Popes Pelagius and Gregory; and for centuries Rome exercised no jurisdiction out of what was called Libra; that is, seventy suburban sees. Many sought her influence as eminent, many resisted her as in error, and would never yield, as all Africa and Asia under Cyprian and Firmilian, who denounced the Pope Stephanus heartily (Cypr. Epp. 73, 74). In those days the primacy of Rome was unknown. It has never been owned in the Greek church. Only at Nice was it settled to have precedency of Constantinople. At the General Council of Chalcedon the pope's legates presided, but the council set aside the precedency of Rome. They state that, as Rome had been the imperial city, the Fathers had accorded precedency to it; but as now Constantinople was, it should be on an equality -- ton ison apolauousan presbeion. Leo's legates protested, and produced his orders that they should allow of no diminution of his importance, for it seems he expected it. They withdrew; but there the canon of an acknowledged general council is declaring them equal. The legates had produced the Nicene decree with an addition of their own, stating that Rome was the head of all churches; but the genuine canon was brought forward, so that that plea was overthrown. Pretty work for the successors of apostles! But think of all this horrible ambition being made the foundation of the church, so that a person cannot be saved who does not submit to it! Is this Christianity?
But when you say, "Has any institution," etc., you upset your own system. When you went upon apostolic succession, you gave us the succession of all the sees in the world as securing sound doctrine; now it is only at Rome, and nowhere else. Which is true? If it be only at Rome, the security you gave us for doctrine is entirely gone, and the universality and apostolicity of the church so called with it; you destroy your own groundwork. But further, "the name of every pope, from Peter to Pius IX, you tell us may be seen in every bookseller's shop." Nay, not only so, "but should any claim this dignity without being legitimately appointed, he would be hurled from the chair of Peter as a usurper by the united voices of the Christian world." Indeed! How came it, then, that for seventy years there were two (and half Europe obeying one, and the other half the other), and part of the time three? Which of these was legitimate? and are both of them in the lists in the booksellers' shops and Catholic libraries? Your foundations are rotten here, and your eloquence rash. The popedom is a great worldly prize. Already in the fourth century you will remember Damasus and Ursicinus contended for it, and there was what amounted to a civil war, and abundant bloodshed; and Damasus beat his opponent and was pope -- a strange successor to Peter, though he be such in the booksellers' shops!
Peter's apostolic position, then, I own, as apostle of the circumcision, and first among the twelve; but that the command was given to every successor of Peter to the end of the world is a mere chimera. Scripture excludes the idea. It is Barjonas who was blessed, because of the revelation of the Father to him.
You justify next the invocation of saints and angels. In vain has Paul denounced the worshipping of angels (it is not latria, but threskia, all religious deference or service whatever) as a voluntary humility, saying, that it is leaving Christ the head. In vain has he declared that there is but one mediator, the Man Christ Jesus. Rome will return to heathenish ways and Jewish superstitions, for such they really are; and, in order to do so, she has consecrated books of Jewish superstitions, as if they were the word of God; and has dared to do it in the sixteenth century -- a deed never ventured on before.
We will examine this point. First, Genesis is quoted: "The angel that redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." Here, then, Rome is bold enough to teach us that angels redeem us from evil, that angels can bless us. But we can never get whole passages from Rome. All is garbled. Here is the whole, "God, before whom my fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." The angel was the God of his fathers. Are you ignorant that angel is applied to all those manifestations of God in favour of His ancient people? Do you not know that Stephen says that Moses was with the angel in the bush, who said, I am that I am? Do you not know that Hosea says that Jacob wrestled with the angel and prevailed; yet Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, because he had seen God face to face? that God had called his name Israel, a prince with God, because he had wrestled with God and with man and had prevailed? See numberless other passages; and are you not ashamed to quote this passage? You quote Zechariah. Here, too, we find the same angel of the covenant, the angel Jehovah, Malak Jehovah, interfering for Jerusalem -- that angel who could say, as we have seen, "I am," and before whom, consequently, Zechariah shews us Joshua standing to be judged, and Satan at his right hand to resist. Will you say that angels are to judge too? Anyone the least acquainted with the Old Testament knows who this angel of the covenant is.
The cases quoted of Jacob, and so of Manoah, shew that this angel was Jehovah Himself, He who appeared to Abraham and to Isaac, the Word of God, the second person in the blessed Trinity. That Michael the archangel will stand to accomplish God's will in favour of Israel in due time, I doubt not -- all angels do this; but it has nothing to do with the matter. The angel in Revelation 8 and 10 is also undoubtedly the Lord Himself, acting as priest in chapter 8; and in the glory of the Lord taking possession of the earth in chapter 10.
You quote one figurative passage of the twenty-four ancients presenting as figurative priests the incense, according to a Jewish image, on high. The church in glory will be composed of kings and priests; and here it is prophetically set forth in this character in figure; but it is when it is complete in glory. Hence twenty-four, because there were twenty-four classes of priests established by David. And the whole is a symbolical vision -- no statement of what goes on now at all, but shewing (what scripture tells us plainly) we are made kings and priests; and hence they were on thrones and crowned. Now this takes place only in resurrection, and all have yet to wait for that. Have you nothing but a prophetical symbol of resurrection glory to base your worship on, when the resurrection is not come?
You quote Tobias also: that is, the Apocrypha. This is one of the terrible sins of Rome. She has pretended to authenticate as scripture what was never owned as such till the middle of the sixteenth century, and what the very person who made the translation which she declares to be authentic states not to be scripture at all. Over and over again he (Jerome) declares there are twenty-two books, excluding thus the Apocrypha from the canon; and in particular, in his preface to Tobias, says it was not in the Hebrew scriptures. In his preface to the Books of Solomon he says, "As, therefore, the church reads, indeed, Judith and Tobias, and the books of the Maccabees, but does not receive them among canonical scriptures, so also let her read these two volumes, for the edification of the people, not to establish the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas." He refers to Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom. Athanasius reckons them up also, twenty-two, both in the Synopsis (if it be his, for some have doubted it), and in the fragment of the Festal epistle, giving them, he says, because some would dare to mix apocryphal books with divine scriptures, and speaking of Tobias and others as read, but not canonical.
Origen tells us the same, Eusebius also. But, to be brief, Christ never cites these books, nor are they found in the Hebrew at all. They were never owned by the Jews as part of their scriptures. Josephus is distinct as to what was received, and says there were none after Artaxerxes; that there were others, but not canonical, and that the prophets gave their sanction to books as forming part of the canon. He owned they have no kind of authority whatever; and all authority, Jewish and Christian, declared they were not of the canon till the Council of Trent. Now, the oracles of God are committed to the church, as of old they were to the Jews. The church gives them no authority -- it cannot to what God has spoken; but when God had given them, He entrusted them to the church to keep -- only watching over it in all His providence -- and Rome has proved herself not the church by deliberate unfaithfulness to this, by setting up as scripture what all Jews and the church, and all witnesses, declare with one voice is not. She is self-condemned here. See what is said in Maccabees: "If I have written well, and as befits the story, that is what I wish; if ill, it is to be pardoned me." Why, it is blasphemy to ascribe such words to the Holy Ghost; and of that blasphemy Rome is guilty.
Lastly, no passage has been even attempted to be quoted of addressing saints or angels. But I will here also give the history of this matter. The first commemoration of the saints was praying for them, that they might speedily see the face of God. Gradually, between rhetoric and Jewish and heathen practices, the saints took the place of the heathen demi-gods. But Romish practice goes farther, because they found prayers on the merits of the saints, as may be seen in the Roman Missal (as on Patrick's day, for example, March 17). As to praying one for another on earth, it is clear and simple, and the New Testament teaches it, and shews it practised -- never to saints absent. As to the Virgin Mary, the Holy Ghost, who knew what would come in, has recorded for us that she never asked anything of the Lord, without being rejected in her request, the Lord saying, What have I to do with thee?
The great and dreadful evil of this doctrine is this: the grace of the gospel shews us two great things: first, that Christ has wrought so great and glorious a work, that I can go directly to the Father, in His name, certain that He hears me, and have boldness to enter into the holiest by His blood; secondly, that Christ in His rich grace came down here, was tempted in all points as we are, without sin -- that He is touched with the feeling of my infirmities, and knows, having learned here below, how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. He has shrunk from no suffering, no humiliation, that I may have confidence in His love, and readiness to help. The invocation of saints and angels comes to deny all this. He is too high, too exalted; His heart not tender enough! Saints who never shared our place are to be more trusted; the tender mercies of the Virgin Mary, who never shed her blood for me, is to be more trusted. It is all shameful dishonour put upon Christ's grace and tenderness. I know no one so kind, so condescending, who is come down to the poor sinner, as He. I trust His love more than I do Mary's, or any saint's; not merely His power as God, but the tenderness of His heart as man -- none ever shewed such, or had such, or proved it so well. None entered into my sorrows, none took a part in them, as He; none understands my heart so well; none has inspired me with such confidence in His. Let others go to saints and angels, if they like; I trust Jesus' kindness more. If it is said, He is too high, I answer, He became a man that we might know His tenderness; and He is not changed. And why go to them? Why, in Jesus' name, not go straight to the Father? The need of all this troop of mediators only shews that men do not believe the gospel. They cannot go to God Himself. Now Christ has brought us to God; suffering, the just for the unjust, He has brought us to a God of love, our Father, having put away our sins. Rome would turn us out again, to leave us trembling at the doors of the saints. I would rather go to God Himself. He, I know, loves me; He has given His Son for me. Which of the saints has done that? As to angels, they are ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation. Looking to them is treated as apostasy in scripture.
If you will have Fathers, here is a quotation for you -- Ambrose, on Romans 1: "Men are accustomed, when feeling shame for having neglected God, to use a miserable excuse, saying that by them (the saints, etc.) they can go to God, as by counts (officers of the court) people go to the king. Away then! Is any one so mad, or so unmindful of his salvation, as that he should give the honour of the king to a count, when, if any should be found to treat of such a matter, they would rightly be condemned of high treason? And so they think they are not guilty who defer the honour of the name of God to a creature, as if anything more could be kept for God. For therefore men go to the king by tribunes or counts, because the king, after all, is but a man, and is ignorant to whom he ought to trust the common weal; but to find favour with God, before whom nothing is hid, for He knows the merits of all -- there is not need of one to plead for us (suffragator), but of a devout mind." I might quote many more from Origen, using not latria, but honour and do homage to. So Eusebius from Dionysius I reverence the true God alone, and none else. So continually in the early conflicts with the heathen; and the well-known passage of the epistle on Polycarp's martyrdom, when the Gentiles refused his body, lest they should do homage to him; "Not knowing," they say, "that we could neither abandon Christ, who suffered for the salvation of the whole world of the saved, nor reverence any other. For to Him, being indeed Son of God, we do homage; but martyrs, as disciples and imitators of the Lord, we love deservedly, because of the great love they have shewn to their own king and leader, with whom we would be partakers and fellow-disciples."
Ambrose thought, then, though saints were used only to go to God by, it was high treason against Him; and the saints round Polycarp's martyr-pile, that it was abandoning Christ to reverence them (sebein). Alas! ere long the high treason was committed, and Christ indeed abandoned; while Fathers condemned, Fathers sanctioned, and scripture was forgotten. As to the latter, the statement that it is clearly set forth in it is totally without foundation. Invoking saints is not found even in the passages the author has quoted. In genuine scripture the case is found of a saint in his confession going to do homage to an angel; but the angel positively forbids it, ordering him to offer it to God, for he was his fellow-servant. But what says Rome? -- Heed.
The invocation of angels was forbidden by the Council of Laodicea which calls it a secret idolatry. Athanasius uses the invocation of Christ as a proof that He is God; and says, "no one would say God and an angel bless me" (exactly what the author attributes to Jacob); and so other Fathers. And, as I have said, they were prayed for as not yet in the presence of God, that they might speedily arrive there. There was superstition enough, but not Romish doctrine. We learn that Theodoret recommended that, to win the Gentiles, they should present to them the saints and martyrs in lieu of their demigods. It is just what has happened -- there are curious facts connected with this. As soon as the Council of Ephesus had decreed that Mary was the mother of God, temples, with all their worshippers, dedicated to the gods, passed over to Christianity as a profession, and Mary took her place as Cybele had before.
I will give the account of this transformation, as given us by M. de Beugnot, a very learned Romanist, whose work was crowned by the Institute of France. "After the Council of Ephesus the churches of the East and West offered to the adoration of the faithful, the Virgin Mary, victorious over a violent attack (she had been decided to be mother of God then). The peoples were dazzled by the image of this divine mother, uniting in her person the modesty of the virgin and the love of the mother -- emblem of gentleness, of resignation, and of everything that virtue presents of sublime; who weeps with the unhappy, intercedes for the guilty, and never shews herself, but as the messenger of pardon or of kind succour. They received this new worship with an enthusiasm sometimes too great, since, for many Christians, this worship became the whole of Christianity. The heathen did not even endeavour to defend their altars against the progress of the worship of this mother of God. They opened to Mary the temples which they had kept shut against Jesus Christ, and confessed themselves conquered. It is true they often mixed with the adoration of Mary those heathen ideas, those vain practices, those ridiculous superstitions, from which they seemed unable to separate themselves. The church, however, was delighted to see them enter into her bosom, because she knew well that it would be easy for her, with the help of time, to purify from its alloy a worship whose essence was purity itself." M. de Beugnot, Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme en Occident, vol. 2, 271. His illustration of the fact is in the following note: "Among a multitude of proofs I chose only one, to shew with what facility the worship of Mary swept before it the remains of heathenism, which still covered Europe. Notwithstanding the preaching of St. Hilarion, Sicily had remained faithful to the old worship (heathenism). After the Council of Ephesus (that which declared Mary the mother of God), we see its eight finest pagan temples become in a very short space of time churches under the invocation of the Virgin. These temples were, first, the temple of Minerva at Syracuse; second, the temple of Venus and of Saturn, at Messina; third, the temple of Venus Erycina, on Mount Eryx (it was said to have been built by Aeneas); fourth, the temple of Phalaris, at Agrigentum; fifth, the temple of Vulcan, near Mount Etna; sixth, the Pantheon, at Catania; seventh, the temple of Ceres, in the same town; eighth, the sepulchre of Stesichore. The ecclesiastical annals of each country furnish similar testimonies." And that is pretended to be Christianity!
The truth is, all this system is a mere mixture of Judaism and heathenism. The heathen temples were built over the relics and tombs of heroes and demigods. They sprinkled themselves with holy water on going in, for which they had a place at the entry. They had their images, which they justified in the same way -- their priests, their chancels. They believed that every admirable man had gone to heaven, and there interested themselves in the affairs of those who prayed to them. Their temples were built in a similar manner. Rome has not been able to exclude Christ,+ but it has overwhelmed Him with heathenism, as far as possibly can be, the clergy having accommodated it to popular customs to win the people. Thus the direction given to Augustine, when sent to the Saxons, was to adopt their feasts and customs as much as possible, and give a Christian turn to them. Christmas day is a curious example of this. No one knows the day Christ was born. The Greek church kept His birth and baptism together on the 6th of January, called Epiphany. Hear again M. de Beugnot, 2: 265: "The Romans had acquired in their religion an excessive passion for public festivals; and Christianity, far from opposing a disposition which required only to be directed with more wisdom, adopted a part of the ceremonial system of the old worship. It changed the object of the ceremonies, it purified them of their old filth, but it retained the epoch at which many among them had been celebrated. It is thus that the multitude found in the new religion as much as in the old the means of satisfying its ruling passion."
+In the Confiteor, recited for obtaining absolution, He is totally left out as Christ.
Think of the blessed Lord sitting at the well of Samaria, and teaching that men should worship in spirit and in truth, for the Father sought such to worship Him, and the "church" taking care the ruling passion for shows should be gratified! The author adds in a note, "The Saturnalia (a festival of unbridled joy) and many of the festivals were celebrated in the calends of January. The Nativity (Christmas) was fixed at the same epoch. The Lupercalia, pretended festivals of purification, took place in the calends of February. The Christian purification was placed on the second of February. For the feast of Augustus, celebrated in the calends of August, was substituted that of St. Peter, de Vinculis, fixed on the first day of that month." So, he adds, to the Ambarvalia, St. Mamert substituted rogation days for country people; so numberless temples became dedicated to worship called Christian. At this day the Pantheon (that is, the temple of all the gods) is dedicated to all the saints. It is well known that the statue of Peter at Rome was a statue of Jupiter Olympius, and they took out the thunderbolt and put in the keys. It all hangs together.
Nor is it merely so modern an author as Beugnot, however learned, who speaks of the corruption of Christianity by the influx of heathenism. Augustine gives us very precise information as to it. He thus writes in a letter in which he is recounting to Alypius, Bishop of Thogostan, the manner in which he had put down the drunken feasts, which were held to celebrate the martyrs (for such was the case in Africa; and so determined were the people to have them, that the clergy had winked at it), and would now explain how he had excused to the people those who had let it go on, by shewing how it had risen in the church, for he must needs excuse the clergy. "Namely, after so many and so vehement persecutions, when, peace being made, crowds of Gentiles, desiring to embrace the Christian name, were hindered by this, that they were accustomed to consume festive days with their idols, in abundance of feasts and drunkenness, nor were they easily able to abstain from their pernicious and so very ancient pleasures, it had seemed good to our forefathers, that they should let this part of their infirmity pass, and that they should celebrate other festal says after those they left, in honour of the holy martyrs, or not with similar sacrilege, although with similar luxury."
17 Is this the holy Catholic church, which, to get in crowds of Gentiles, suffers them to go on, without the least moral change, with their feasting and drunkenness, only substituting holy martyrs for idols? It is not I that make the charge, or account for it thus; it is the sober historical account of Augustine, Presbyter. He says they called it laetitia, joy, endeavouring in vain to hide the name of drunkenness. He told them that not even the carnal private people were found publicly drunk in the name of religion. In another letter he says to Aurelian, Bishop of Carthage: "But since these drunkennesses and luxurious feasts are not only wont to be believed to be honours rendered to the martyrs, but also a solace of the dead [they did not think of praying to them, at any rate], it would seem more easy that they may be persuaded then from that filth and baseness, if it should be prohibited out of the scriptures, and offerings for the spirits of them that sleep, which it is to be believed really help somewhat, over their memories (that is, when buried or celebrated), should not be sumptuous," etc. And Chrysostom advises his hearers to partake of the meal to be appointed in honour of the martyr, besides his martyrium, under a fig-tree or vine, instead of joining in the heathen feasts in Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, where was a famous temple to Venus with all sorts of wickedness.
Can one doubt for a moment of the heathen character of all these feasts in honour of martyrs and saints? But what a picture of the state of the church! The holy Catholic church setting them to get drunk in honour of a martyr, because it was sacrilege to get drunk in honour of an idol, and they would get drunk somewhere! No wonder a priest did not include practice in the elements of her holiness. But I anticipate the last point. It was invocation of saints led us to these festivals in martyrs' memories.SECOND ADDRESS TO HIS ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN BY A MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL
J. N. Darby.ROMANISM: OR AN ANSWER TO THE PAMPHLET OF A ROMISH PRIEST, ENTITLED "THE LAW AND THE TESTIMONY"