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These impotent denunciations against the Protestant churches are very consistently followed up with a deliberate and solemn profession of idolatrous faith in the Virgin, the favourite object of worship in the Church of Anti-Christ, which, it has been remarked, might with more propriety be termed the Marian Church than the Christian.

Sed ut omnia hæc prospere ac feliciter eveniant, levemus oculos manusque ad Sanctissimam Virginem MARIAM, quæ sola universas hæreses interemit, Nostraque maxima fiducia, imo tota ratio est spei nos

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It is true, Jesus Christ has the compliment paid him, in the close of the paragraph, of being Auctor et Consummator Fidei; but neither the honour due to him as Mediator, nor the trust which he claims as the Son of God, is ascribed to Our Lord by this Pontifical head of Apostate Christendom; both are given to another. The Mediators invoked are, Peter, Prince of the 'Apostles, and his co-apostle Paul.' The Hope and Trust of Pope Gregory is the Virgin Mary.

We must surely consider such a document as an authentic republication of the Roman Catholic faith; and we agree with Mr. Mendham, that it exhibits that faith as neither changed nor improved. If, in any country, Roman Catholics are no longer chargeable with holding the superstitious and abominable tenets taught and prescribed by the Church to which they professedly adhere, we must seek an explanation in other circumstances than any change in Popery itself. It has always been one distinctive feature of superstition, that it allows of an esoteric and a vulgar creed, and presents to those who soar above the implicit credulity of the priest-led multitude, the philosophy of its fables, which gratifies the pride of reason without making any demand upon the faith. Hence, a decent scepticism has always afforded shelter from the grossness of idolatry to men of letters and science, from the days of Socrates down to the time of Julian, and not less so within the pale of nominal Christianity. The esoteric faith of the Romish Church is a refined or concealed deism, which has at all times extensively prevailed among the higher orders of its hierophants. Hence, the liberality of enlightened Romanists is, too often, only the liberalism of unbelief; differing as widely from Christian charity, as does credulity from faith. The Romish Church, in teaching doctrines not merely without evidence, but at variance with it, shuts up its votaries to the alternative of an

* But that all may have a successful and happy issue, let us raise our eyes to the most Blessed Virgin Mary, who alone destroys heresies, who is our greatest hope, yea, the entire ground of our hope.'

implicit reliance upon her own authority, or a pathless scep ticism.

Faith, superstitious belief, and disbelief, are the only three conditions in which the minds of men can, so to speak, subsist. Where true faith or the spiritual perception of revealed truth has not been produced, either the conscience must find repose in a false religion, or must harden itself in irreligion,—in some modification of atheism. All the various systems of belief resolve themselves into one of these;-true religion, based upon faith and a sense of accountableness to God; superstition, based upon fear and accountableness to the priest; and scepticism, accompanied with the notion of irresponsibility. The Romish superstition, in its vulgar form, meets the case of the ignorant, the unintelligent, and those in whom the passions and animal nature preponderate over the reasoning powers. To such persons, it offers a welcome relief from cheerless doubt, a religion soothing to the imagination, and operating as a narcotic upon the conscience. Unregenerate man finds it an easier and pleasanter thing to be saved by a priest, than to depend upon an Invisible Saviour. Priestcraft, therefore, is the effect, rather than the cause of the corruption of true religion; for human nature is the author of its own delusions. Nothing can possibly prevent the springing up or the spread of false religion, where the light of Scriptural truth has not quickened the spiritual principle; and we see in that deposite of the dark ages, Popery, the ultimate form into which the natural superstition of the human mind has a constant tendency to settle. Popery was, in fact, the relapse of society into a masked paganism, which, in all ages and all countries, is the natural religion of mankind, varying only in costume and nomenclature. It borrowed from the ancient idolatry, its altars, its mass, its hagiology, its virgin goddess, its miracles, its purgatory, and its priesthood. Rome is nearly as Pagan now as in the days of Augustus. The religion of Italy, Sicily, Spain, Portugal, and Austria, is genuine Popery; and that of Turkey and Persia is not less Christian.

But, while we fully admit that Popery is what it ever was, it is impossible to deny that there has sprung up, within the pale of the Romish Church, especially in Protestant countries, a religion calling itself the Catholic, and acknowledging the authority of the symbols of the Romish Church, but differing widely indeed from Popery. Not to go back to the times before the Reformation, when a remnant, who had not bowed the knee to Baal, were found witnessing for God in the darkest times, amid the surrounding apostasy, we may refer to the Jansenists of France as affording a striking instance of the phenomenon in question. In our own country, the English Catholic has always differed very characteristically from the genuine Roman Catholic. The

very soil and climate would seem to have exerted a modifying influence upon the exotic superstition of the South. The pantomime and spectacle of Popery, and its Virgin worship, are far better adapted to the sensual and voluptuous nations of the Mediterranean, than to the phlegmatic and robuster inhabitants of Northern Europe; just as the worship of Krishna and Kali appears unsuited to the temperament of the Tatar tribes north of Imaus. But besides this, the free circulation of knowledge, the character of our political institutions, and the reflex operation of Protestantism, have powerfully contributed to render English Romanism a very different thing from Cisalpine Popery.

With some controvertists, the whole difference is resolved into deception. Not only is every Roman Catholic held responsible for all the errors and abominations of his Church, but his disavowing any of them is represented as either a dishonest pretence, or the result of delusion and ignorance. In acknowledging the infallible authority of the Church, he stands pledged and bound, it may be said, to subscribe to all the doctrines which are clearly taught in its authorized documents. And the attempt to conceal or explain away the points offensive to Protestants, is but a Jesuitical artifice, worthy of a Church which teaches that no faith is to be kept with heretics. Or, if there are Roman Catholics who are deceived by the specious glosses under which the errors of Popery are veiled, they are the dupes of sacerdotal fraud.

Now we must confess that we cannot satisfy ourselves with this summary explanation. In the first place, it is irreconcileable with facts. The Jansenists were neither knaves nor dupes, and yet they openly contended against the doctrines of Popery, while clinging to the false Church. And many of the early reformers were slow in disclaiming allegiance to that authority with which they found themselves brought into collision. It is not less true than strange, that men will give up every doctrine of their Church, before they will renounce the authority that prescribes those doctrines, or forsake the communion in which they have been accustomed to worship. How reluctant were the Nonconformists to leave the bosom of the Church of England, from which they were ejected! And how large a proportion of those who regard themselves as true Church of England men, disavow those very doctrines which constituted the original grounds of Nonconformity ! Nay, what Churchman of the present day really holds and observes all that his Church teaches and prescribes, not merely in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Rubric, but in the constitutions and canons ecclesiastical, which are still binding on every clergyman, although no part of the law of the land? How unfair would it be thought, to describe, as the belief of each individual member of the Church of England, every point for which the authority of that Church might be cited! Candour and justice

require, then, that a similar distinction should be allowed, between the public faith of the Church of Rome and the private faith of numbers who are still retained within its communion, though disavowing the grosser errors of its creed.

Secondly, the imputation, applied to bodies or communities, of fraud, hypocrisy, or insincerity, which are personal qualities, will be found, on examination, alike absurd and ungenerous. Dissenters, who are accustomed to be assailed with such aspersions in the gross, ought to be particularly on their guard against countenancing such sweeping charges against persons of other communions. A general conspiracy in hypocrisy is impossible: if it could exist, it must be betrayed. Frauds may be practised as a part of priestcraft, so long as the vulgar can be imposed upon; and an esoteric faith, which it is thought unsafe to divulge, may be held by an initiated few. But, speaking of whole communities, we must admit that no sentiments can be truly held, which are generally and constantly disavowed; that no bodies of men can be suspected of concurring in an insincere and fraudulent disavowal; that hypocrisy cannot be rationally suspected, where there is nothing to be gained by it; and that it is a contradiction, to suppose that men are anxious to propagate doctrines which they repudiate and disclaim.

And, once more, by imputing to all Roman Catholics the gross creed of the papal vulgar, and by refusing to admit their own statements of the doctrines they hold, we not only must wholly fail to convince them of the errors they actually adhere to, but tacitly decline a contest with them upon their own ground. A dangerous concession, that even that refined and modified Romanism, widely as it may differ from genuine Popery, is capable of enduring the test of Scripture or of fair argument! Yet such is the concession which may be thought to be implied in the line of argument usually adopted, which refuses to take cognizance of the received explanations of the Romish tenets.

The Roman Catholic superstition is bad enough in its mildest form; and in that form it is the more dangerous, as being so seductive. Those Protestants who, forming their notions of Popery exclusively from ecclesiastical history, regard it only as a monster to be execrated for its impiety, or feared for its cruelty, are ill prepared to combat the specious arguments with which a dexterous Romish casuist would defend his opinions, or to resist the fascinations with which, to certain minds, the ancient and so called Catholic faith is invested. We have no apprehensions as to the spread of the Romish faith in this country. And yet, the cases of individual conversion which have occasionally taken place among the higher orders, both in England and in Germany, as well as its alleged advance in the United States, might serve to shew that Popery is not without attractions, and that it can at

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times transform itself into an angel of light." It is as well for us to be aware, too, how the alleged misrepresentations of the Roman Catholic faith by Protestants are made to serve the purpose of an argument against them, and how injuriously they operate. For instance, in a little tract, entitled "Fifty Reasons, or Motives, which induced His Most Serene Highness Anthony Ulrick, Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, to abjure Lutheranism, and embrace the Roman Catholic Religion," we find the following Considerations.

'CONSIDER. XXIX.-I read several authors, who had written against the Roman religion, and I could not but take notice, how in all their arguments they labour to prove, what Catholics do not deny, but on the contrary allow without any difficulty: but they hardly touch upon those points which Catholics hold for articles of faith. For instance, they will bring you a multitude of texts from scripture, to prove that God only is to be adored, and honoured with divine worship; which Catholics are so far from denying, that they believe it to be a sin of idolatry to pay divine worship to any creature whatever, Again, they cite many places in scripture, which makes honourable mention of marriage; but what is all this to the purpose? Catholics condemn not marriage; so far from it, that they put it in the number of their sacraments. Their doctrine in this particular amounts to no more than what St. Paul taught them, 1 Cor. vii. 38, that he that giveth his virgin in marriage, doth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage, doth better. Again they speak much of our Saviour's merits, and of the satisfaction he has offered for our sins. Very good. But what then? Do not Catholics likewise teach, that our Saviour's merits are of infinite value, and that his satisfaction suffices for the sins of the whole world? Must this hinder them from giving ear to the voice of St. Peter, 2d Epist. i. 10, Brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure by good works: or to that of St. Paul, Rom. viii. 17, If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him. They give us great encomiums on faith. And so do the Catholics. But may they not believe St. James, when he says (chap. ii. 24,) Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only or St. Paul, when he pronounces of himself, (1 Cor. xiii. 2,) Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. In fine, our adversaries inveigh most bitterly against the dissolute lives of some of the clergy: but how does this better their cause? Catholics detest it as much as they but then they admire in the generality of them, that angelical chastity which they preserve both in body and soul.

'CONSIDER. XXX. -I observed not only in these authors, but likewise in the sermons and discourses, both public and private, of other ministers, that their main talent lay in slandering and blackening the Roman Catholic Church. And this alone was enough to persuade me they were but ill provided with arguments against her. For when men in the heat of their disputes fling dirt at their adversaries, it is a certain sign their arguments want an edge. Moreover, calumnies are

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