DR.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

ANTAGONISM TO PAPAL POLITICS.

MINER in the later years had become apprehensive of the designs and, in certain particulars, of the achievements of the Catholic Church. He saw in its attacks upon the public schools, in its withdrawing of the children of Catholic parents from the public into parochial schools dominated by the priesthood, in its scheming to get a division of the school fund that a part of it might be diverted to its own uses, and in its meddlesomeness with political and civil affairs, a growing danger, and one that must be promptly met and overcome, or else the rule of the people by the people would become the rule of the priesthood in the interests of the Papal Church. As long ago as 1855, in his Boston Fourth of July oration, he publicly committed himself to a position against the Catholic Church, in reference to these particulars. The impregnability and seriousness of the situation grew upon him as he reflected upon it, and in the last decade of his life it seemed to him the most momentous question of the day,-that of the suppression of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors alone excepted. These are his words, quoted from the printed oration:

"I can by no means be indifferent to the intolerant attitude of the Romish Church. Free thought is confessedly her foe.

She does not present herself as an educating, a paternal counsellor, a help to Christian discernment, but as a ruler,-as Christ's Vicegerent among men, as an authoritative commander. In denying the right of private judgment she assumes despotic power in the citadel of highest interests; her history abundantly shows that, in harmony with the assumption, she has never been reluctant to take under her especial guardianship the whole circle of human interests. Her intolerance is thus intrenched in the very heart of her system."

In no one particular did Dr. Miner antagonize so many of his brethren as in the persistence and cumulative vehemence with which, "in season and out of season," in his pulpit, in Convention, on even temperance platforms, in the meetings of his ministerial brethren, he followed up the course of conduct which the orator of forty years ago prophesied and outlined.

The truth of Christianity being assumed, the assumption includes its rightfully authoritative supremacy over all the interests and the conduct of rational and moral beings. The truths it communicates none may presume to gainsay. The law of righteousness it declares and exemplifies, and it commands the obedience of the individual, of the community, of the nation. Christianity is-if we concede its truth"Christ's vicegerency among men"; it is "an authoritative command"; it does "assume despotic power" in the sense that it is not to be questioned "in the citadel of highest interests." In the estimation of its devotees, and in all of its many and variant interpretations, Christianity is all of this, or it is nothing. In fact, every Protestant minister, as well as every priest, commands men as individuals and

also as nations-of course, never as speaking for or from himself, but as the exponent and channel of the truth and the will of God in Christ Jesus.

What, then, is the peculiarity of the Catholic Church? Wherein does its word of authority savor of priestly assumption, while the Protestant word of authority is every way legitimate and proper? The distinction which these questions imply is vital. It must be distinctly apprehended at the very beginning of all discussion of the Catholic question, else all statements on the general subject will be "confusion worse confounded." The ablest champion of the claims of the Catholic Church which the century has produced, the late Orestes A. Brownson, made the statement, with the approving consent of his bishop, that Christianity and the Catholic church are convertible terms; that neither implies the other, but each is the other; that, while we may truly say of the human soul that it has a body, we cannot truly say of the Christian truth that in the Church it has an organism, for it is the organism and the organism is it. While, therefore, the Protestant by his own concession simply gives an interpretation, the Catholic Church is the truth, and apart from it interpretation is precluded. When the Protestant speaks, he may be gainsaid. When the Catholic Church speaks, it is the voice of God.

Now, to all this, Dr. Miner raised no objection other than this, in its way indeed very serious but quite legitimate, he did not believe it. Argumentatively, he thought it preposterous; but he thought the same of Calvinistic orthodoxy, even of Arminian orthodoxy. In his own way of stating his position, he habitually

insisted that he had no other than an argumentative quarrel with Catholicism. That Church had as good a right to its opinions as he had to his own. The question whether either set of opinions is true is a wholly distinct matter. The right of private judgment was just as precious to the Catholic, even if in theory he waived. it, as it was to himself. He often said that certain of the Catholic dogmas, particularly that of purgatory, he deemed far more reasonable, far less philosophically objectionable, than that of hopeless doom fixed at death. What, then, was the peculiarity of the Catholic in which the offensiveness, the matter that justified apprehension, inhered? Simply this: The Catholic Church claims the right TO COERCE the obedience which it commands. Christ commanded, but told Peter to put up his sword. He commanded, but never sought to enforce obedience by physical force. He commanded, but for compliance relied exclusively on the self-executing power of the truth itself.

It cannot be denied that if the appeal be made to history as to the coupling of the rightful moral command with outward coercion, with arbitrary penalties and pains, the departure from the example of the Master is by no means wholly on the side of the Catholic: the Inquisition may not be wholly matched by the persecution which drove the Puritans into exile, nor by the cruel oppressions practised upon the Dutch Arminians by the Calvinistic party in power. The evil which makes so much of ecclesiastical history a scandal, in its essence is neither Catholic nor Protestant, neither Anglican nor Scotch; it is human nature unenlightened

-human nature professing the Christ the spirit whereof it does not feel or understand.

Again, what is the offensiveness peculiar to Catholicism? It is the enforcing of commands deemed moral by outward compulsion in a hierarchy that, like the Mede and Persian law, cannot change; that is firmly held by decrees which are pronounced infallible; that by its fixed constitution cannot consistently admit new ideas.

So much for the principle; but here is a serious incident the Church is a unit, and can concentrate all its powers upon any particular policy. Protestantism is scattered force, kept so by sectarian jealousies, and hence as weak for evil ends as confessedly it is for those which are good-the particular ends, let it be understood, which it may seek by outward policy.

Very likely Dr. Miner, in the heat of controversy, in the mental disturbance occasioned by some papal manifesto that came to him with a special sting, may have let some utterances escape his lips not in full accord with the general statement here submitted: his critics will insist that he did; his champions, apologists if they are to be so called, need not deny the impeachment. Yet is it certain that had exactly such a statement as is here outlined been submitted to him in his life in the flesh, he would have accepted every word without demurring. The twofold peculiarity, as it is here analyzed and defined, would, to his judicial judgment, have been ample ground for, ample justification for, any demand that he should make, all the strictures he was accustomed to make, in his impeachment of political Catholicism, and of his intense warnings to beware of the foe that walketh