IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

1.0 ^

I.I

I JO

IIM

ilM

;, 4

lllll^

IIM

1.8

1.25

1.4

1.6

^ 6"

►

'el

^m °> ■ >

§s

Photographic

Sciences
Corporation

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, NY. 14580

(716) 872-4503

CIHM/ICMH

Microfiche

Series.

CIHM/ICIV!H
Collection de
microfiches.

Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions InstitJt Canadian de microreproductions historiques

1980

Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notes techniques at bibliographiques

Th(
to

The Institute has attempted to obtain the best
original copy available for filming. Features of this
copy which may be bibliographically unique,
which may alter any of the images in the
reproduction, or which may significantly change
the usual method of filming, are checked below.

n
n
n

D
D
D

Coloured covers/
Couverture de couleur

Covers damaged/
Couverture endommag^e

Covers restored aiid/or laminated/
Couverture restaurde et/ou pellicul^e

Cover title missing/

Le titre de couverture manque

Coloured maps/

Cartes gdographiques en couleur

Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/
Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire)

Coloured p'ates and/or illustrations/
Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur

Bound with other material/
Relid avec d'autres documents

Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion
along interior margin/

La reliure serree peut causer de I'ombre ou de la
distortion le long de la marge intdrieure

Blank leaves added during restoration may
appear within the text. Whenever possible, these
have been omitted from filming/
II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajout^es
lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte,
mais, lorsque cela dtait possible, ces pages n'ont
pas 6t6 film^es.

L'Institut a microfilm^ le meilleur exemplaire
qu'il lui a 6t6 possible de se procurer. Leb details
de cet exemplaire qui sont peut-dtre uniques du
point de vue bibliographique, qui peuvent modifier
une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une
modification dans la mdthode normale de filmage
sont indiquds ci-dessous.

Coloured pages/
Pages de couleur

Pages damaged/
Pages endommagdes

Pages restored and/or laminated/
Pages restaur^es et/ou pellicul^es

Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/
Pages ddcolor^es, tachetdes ou piqu^es

Pages detached/
Pages d^tach^es

Th
pa
of
filr

Ori

be
th(
sic
oti
firs
sio
or

□ Showthrough/
Transparence

I I Quality of print variei;/

Quality in^gale de I'impression

Includes supplementary material/
Comprend du materiel supplementaire

□ Only edition available/
Seule Edition disponible

Th
shi
Til
wl

M<
dif
en
be

"9
ra(
m«

Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata
slips, tissues, etc., have been refilmed to
ensure the best possible image/
Les pages totalement ou partiellement
obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure,
etc., ont §t6 film6es d nouveau de fapon d
obtenir la meilleure image possible.

□ Additional comments:/
Commentaires suppl6mentaires;

This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/

Ce document est filmd au taux de reduction indiqu§ ci-dessous.

10X

14X

18X

22X

26X

30X

12X

16X

20X

24X

28X

32X

tails

du
sdifier

une
nage

The copy filmed here has been reproduced thanks
to the generosity of:

National Library of Canada

The images appearing here are the best quality
possible considering the condition and legibility
of the original copy and in keeping with the
filming contract specifications.

Original copies in printed paper covers are filmed
beginning with the front cover and ending on
the last page with a printed or illustrated impres-
sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All
other original copies are filmed beginning on the
first page with a printed or illustrated impres-
sion, and ending on the last page with a printed
or illustrated impression.

L'exemplaire film6 fut reproduit grdce d la
g6n6rosit6 de:

Bibliothdque nationale du Canadcs

Les images suivantes ont 6t6 reproduites avec le
plus grand soin, compte tenu de la condition et
de la nettetd de I'exemplaire filmd, et en
conformity avec les conditions du contrat de
filmage.

Les exemplaires originaux dont la couverture en
papier est imprimde sont film^s en commengant
par le premier plat et en terminant soit par la
dernidre page qui comporte une empreinte
d'impression ou d'illustration, soit par le second
plat, selon le cas. Tous les autres exemplaires
originaux sont film^s en commenpant par la
premidre page qui comporte une empreinte
.'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par
I. dernidre page qui comporte une telle
empreinte.

The last recorded frame on each microfiche
shall contain the symbol -^ (meaning "CON-
TINUED '), or the symbol V (meaning "END "),
whichever applies.

Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la
dernidre image de chaque microfiche, selon le
cas: le symbole — »- signifie "A SUIVRE", le
symbole V signifie "FIN".

Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at
different reduction ratios. Those too large to be
entirely included in one exposure are filmed
beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to
right and top to bottom, as many frames as
required. The following diagrams illustrate the
method:

Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent etre
film6s d des taux de reduction diffdrents.
Lorsque le document est trop grand pour gtre
reproduit en un seul clichd, il est film§ d partir
de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite,
et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombrt
d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants
illustrent la m6thode.

irrata
to

pelure,
n d

□

32X

1 2 3

4 5 6

mm"'

mm::

Sf^

'iff.

This book, if borrowed by a friend,
Right welcome shall he be.
To read, to study,-not to lend,
But to return to me.

Not that imparted knowled|e doth

Diminish learning's Store.

But books I find, if often lent,.

Return to me no more.

:^.QiM^

■'. mmta.

r^-

CATHOLIC VERSUS ROMAN;

OR,

SOME OF THE FUNDAMENTAL POINT.S OF DIFFER-

ENCE BETWEEN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

AND THE ROMAN CHURCH.

TEJSr LECTUBES,

DELIVERED IN ST. LUKE'S CHURCH, a'ORONTO, IN 1885.

KEY. J. LANGTEY, M.A.

RECTOR OF ST. LUKe's.

TORONTO:

HUNTER, ROSE & COMPANY.

1886.

CANADA

NATIONAL LIBRARY
BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE

l3X \1-U5 L2> reijtf^fz.

Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year one thou-
sand eight hundred and eighty-six, by Rev. J. JjAngtry, M.A., in the
office of the Minister of Agriculture.

■ -J !

PRINTED AND.BOtJND BY

HUNTER, ROSE & CO.,

TORONTO.

*:"X-

- V

PKEFACE.

tlicu-
n the

THE ten lectures contained in this book were called
forth, as is explained in Lecture I., by an unpro-
voked and very misleading attack made by Archbishop
Lynch in a lecture entitled, ' The Difference Between the
Catholic Religion and the Protestant Religions," which
was published in the Toronto papers on September the
28th, 1885.

There is nothing new in that lecture. For fifteen years
past the archbishop, or some of his fellow- workers have
made precisely similar attacks at frequently recurring in-
tervals. There has been nothing either in the public
press, or the circumstances of the times to account for
this. They have been altogether gratuitous and unj^ro-
voked attacks. They have contained the same perversions
of history, the same misrepresentations of facts, and the
same grossly insulting remarks and insinuations about
the English Church as the offspiring of Henry the VIII.'s
adulteries, or as the creation of the English Parliament.

_ {

PREFACE.

For many years past, no one of these charges has been
allowed to pass unchallenged; and in every instance
where the press has allowed full and free discussion, the
Archbishop and his satellites have been driven off the
field — their charges disproved, their perversion of facts
and Fathers brought home to them, and the truth vindi-
cated to the no small discredit of the Roman com-
munion.

This has, however, made no difference in their policy.
Defeated and driven out of the public press — their own
chosen field, they have had recourse to their own private
religious papers, or have remained silent only till they
have thought that their former disccmliture was forgotten,
and then have issued forth again, repeating the same mis-
representations and calumnies, as though they had never
been disproved. It may be that this course has been pur-
sued for the purpose of reassuring the faltering faith of
their own people, or it may be that they have learned
by long experience the power over many minds of
positive and oft-repeated assertion.

. I have assumed in these lectures that the Archbishop
has been sinning against light and knowledge in his mis-
representations of the position and history of the Church
of England, but I have been told that that is not the most
charitable construction to put upon his Grace's conduct.
That a truer explanation is to be found in the fact that
no Roman Catholic, clerical or lay, is allowed to have re-
course to the original sources of knowledge ; that they
have no acquaintance with the actual facts of history,

PREFACE,

and no knowledge of patristic theology or testimony, ex-
cept such as may be obtained through cooked compen-
diums and corrupted texts, and that the misrepresenta-
tions and calumnies which they are forever repeating
have been so ingrained into their minds that, however,
disproved, they cannot but believe them true. However
this may be, they profess to be immensely surprised that
any one should see anything insulting in their gross in-
sinuation?, misrepresentations and perversions of history.
With deliberate policy, and in the teeth of the palpable
facts of the Church's history they assume with un-
hesitating persistency that the Roman Church is the
Catholic Church, and as that was the name given from
the very earliest times to the church which Jesus Our
Lord founded, to which He gave His promises, and which
He constituted as the temple and dwelling place of His
Holy Spirit, they seek by repeated assertions to impress
upon the public the conviction that all the powers and
privileges of that original Catholic and Apostolic Church
have descended to them alone. That whatever rights or
gifts that historic church which Jesus founded may be
proved to possess, can be found nowhere but in the Ro-
man communion. It is a suicidal, but almost universal
custom among non-Roman Christians to concede this
arrogant claim, and to speak of the Roman Church as the
Catholic Church, and of Romanists as Catholics. Catho-
lics they are not, except in the one point of the historical
continuity of the Roman Church, but in constitution, in
doctrine, in spirit, and in practice they have departed

PREFACE.

toto ccfilo from the Catholic Church of the first ages. And
we are doing a positive and serious injury to the Church
of Jesus Christ in conceding that honourable, early, and
evangelical designation, to what can only be properly de-
signated as Papaiism or Romanism. Roman Catholics
profess to feel greatly insulted by being called Papists or
Romanists, but it is only because such a designation is a
repudiation of their claims to be Catholics. They are
not very particular about the insults they heap upon us.
And there is no reason why a true nomenclature should
be departed from, because it suits their pretensions to see
insult in its use. At all events, if they are to be spoken
of as Catholics at all, it ought never to be done without
the addition of the distinguishing adjective Roman,
which the Council of Trent has formally adopted as
their proper and legal designation.

At one of the April sessions of the Vatican Council
the bishops were in hot debate about the title of their
church. In the Schema it was called Moniana Catholica
Ecclesia. Several desired the removal of the limiting ad-
jective Romana. Among them an English bishop, who
told them that in his diocese land had been left by will
to the Catholic Church, and the Anglicans had appro-
priated it, on the ground that they were the Catholic
Church, and that the proper legal designation of his
church was Roman Catholic. In spite, however, of his,
and other protests the majority clung to the word Ro-
man, which is now by the voice of infallibility pro-
claimed as their proper title.

PREFACE.

Vll

The lectures were undertaken, as T have stated, at the
request of laymen. I had no intention at first of oc-
cupying all the ground which they cover, and thought
three lectures at most would di.spose of the points which
the Archbishop had raised. The extension to ten forced
itself upon me by a logical sequence. I have in conse-
quence been all along constrained for time, and have
treated many points with meagre brevity, and all with a
mechanical baldness of statement, which would probably
have been avoided had I not been striving to condense
and finish as speedily as possible.

It will be seen from this, that I have had no thought
of taking up the whole Roman controversy. I have
merely discussed the central and fundamental departures
of the Roman (Jhurch from Catholic faith and practice.

The first four lectures were published i'^ the Mail at
the time of their delivery. When that journal closed its
columns the Orange Sentinel and the Dominion Church-
man continued the publication of the eight lectures that
were delivered. Two lectures in this volume, that on
the Inquisition, and that on Further Departures of the Ro-
man Church from Catholic doctrines were not delivered
and have not been published before. I had no intention
of any publication, beyond that which the newspapers
spontaneously undertook, but I ha^'^e had so many soli-
citations from all parts of Canada and the United States
to give the lectures to the public in a book or pamphlet
form, that after long delay, I have determined to yield to
a very widely expressed desire.

r^ii

viii

PREFACE.

If they flhall serve in any measure to dispel the delu-
sions which Rome is ever practising, to open people's eyes
to the actual facts of the case, and to win them to an in-
telligent acceptance of the truth, I shall be more than re-
paid for the no little toil which the preparation of e^'en
so small a volume as this entails.

J. L.

LECTURE I.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: HER CONSTITUTION AND MODES

OF ACTION.

Walk about Zion, and go round about her ; tell the towers
thereof.

Mark ye well her bulwarks^ consider her palaces ; that ye may
tell it to the generation following. — Ps. xlviii., 12, 13.

BY Zion is meant the Church of the livmg God. The
text calls God's people to examine ^ er structure,
to consider carefully her principles, to see that they have
a right knowledge of her strength and spaciousness as a
safe and ample dwelling-place for His people, and to
transmit, to the generations to come, a true conception,
and accurate knowledge of those characteristic features
by which she may be known. I do not intend to say
more in the way of exposition of the text, or of its appli-
cation to the subject I am about to treat. That will
become apparent to your own minds as we proceed. The
subject, you will remember, as I announced last Sunday
evening, is the difference between the Catholic Church
and the Roman Church. I told you that I had been
impelled to take up this subject by the covert and utterly

THE CATHOLIC CHURC!H

I I

(

misleading attack, of Archbishop Lynch, upon the Church
of England, in his lecture lately published in the papers.

I only wish to say, before proceeding, that in the now
more than thirty years that I have been in the ministry
I have never, to the best of my recollection, directly or
indirectly assailed, in the pulpit, the belief or practice of
any body of professing Christians. And although. I was
very indignant when I read this fre^h and unprovoked
assault, I should not have gone into this discussion, had I
not been entreated by instructed and intelligent laymen,
not to allow, what they characterized as this ignorant
and insolent assault to pass unrebuked.

In the lecture to which I refer it is assumed, as is usual,
with Roman controversialists, that the Roman Church
is the Catholic ChuT-ch ; and all who do not obey the
Church of Rome,' that is the Pope of Rome, are huddled
together '.nder the general designation of Protestants,
and sneeringly referred to as standing all upon prec'sely
the same footing ; as deriving their origin either from
Henry VIII. or from some one who has lived since his
time. The Archbishop knows that thir, is an utter
perversion of the truth. As a necessary result of this,
the lecture is somewhat confused ; and I shall not
attempt to correct its misleading statements in the order
in which they occur, though I shall reply to most of them
as these lectures proceed. v.^ v "■ ^ ^

Following the Archbishop's lead, I shall take a wider
scope.and call attention to some of the characteristic points
of difference between the Catholic religion and the Ro-
man religions — I say religions, for, in spite of the Arch-
bishop's boasting about the peace and union of the Roman

HER CONSTITUTION AND MODES OF ACTION.

communion, I shall be able to show that there is more than
one religion believed in and allowed in the Roman obedi-
ence. ' ■'■■'' '- '■'' ■''■■"- ''' ■

But some one will sa}'^ Why bother about the Catholic
Church ? What we want to hear is the difference be-
tween the Protestant Church and the Roman Church,
and the reason for that difierence. We don't believe in
the Catholic Church, and we don't care what it teaches.
All I can say is, that we do. And we solemnly ])rofess
that belief every time we meet for public worship. We
earnestly piay for the good estate of the Catholic Church
every day. We hold ourselves bound by its faith and
practice. And what is more, we claim to be the Catholic
Church of this Realm, and maintain that the Roman
Church, in addition to its manifold heresies, is a schism
and an intrusion in this land. But what, then, you say,
is this Catholic Church of which you speak ? I will do
my best to explain, and I must ask you to be patient this
evening. Many of you will, no doubt, be disappointed.
We shall not reach much that is polemical to-ntght. I
shall have to occupy most of the time at my disposal
with very elementary statements.

There is no subject about which men's minds, at
the present day, are in such utter confusion as about
the meaning of the simple word " Church." There
are a multitude of meanings attached to that word,
and I charge the ultimate origin of this uncertainty
and confusion upon Rome. It is due to her distortion
of the Divine ideal, her invasions of the divinely-
constit ated authority and order of the Catholic Church
of the first days, that men, in the frenzy of an out-

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

raged reason and conscience, have not known what to
think or believe. I shall not, however, occupy your time
with a detailed consideration, of even a few of the most
influential, of the theories that are held at the present
time about the Church. I ask you just to take your
Bibles in your hands and go with me in learning tirsc
from its pages, and then from the testimony of the imme-
diately subsequent ages, what the Church of the New
Testament — the true Church, the Catholic Church —
really is. It is necessary that we should have this point
clearly in our minds before we proceed to contrast it with
the Roman Church.

It is evident, then, even to a casual reader of the
New Testament, that our Lord Jesus Christ became
incarnate not only to make an atonement for sin —
not only to teach men the truth concerning God and
themselves — not merely to leave them an example as to
how human life ought to be lived, but that, in addition
to this, He came to found a Church or kingdom, to be
the instrument of conveying to men the benefits of His in-
carnation and death, to be the witness and keeper of His
Word, the ground and pillar of His truth. I say a Church
or kingdom — for there can be no question but that by
the phrase kingdom of heaven, or kingdom of God, our Lord
means His Church on earth. He Himself uses these terms
as interchangeable or convertible terms in St. Matthew,
xvi., 18, 19. Under this title the Church had already
been foretold in Daniel's great prophecy of the King-
dom of the God of Heaven, which shall never be destroyed.
Both the Baptist and our Lord proclaim the setting up
of this kingdom as the immediate result of His coming.

HER CONSTITUTION AND MODES OF ACTION.

Out of the 39 parables which He spoke, 19 are parables
of the kingdom ; and it is evident beyond dispute that
by the kingdom of Heaven in them He moans the Church
in its present imperfect and mixed condition. The
propagation and. reception of that kingdom is described
in the parable of the sower ; its condition, as having bad
people in it as well as good, in that of the tares and
wheat ; its small beginning and rapid extension in that
of the mustard seed ; the hidden transforming working
of the Spirit of God in it, in that of the leaven. The net
describes the intermingling of the good and bad in this
kingdom of beaven even till the end. And, finally, that
by this term he means the Church on earth is placed
beyond discussion by the declaration that at the end of
the world the angels shall gather out of His kingdom all
things that offend and them that do iniquity. There are
none that offend or do iniquity in the kingdom of glory ;
no tares or bad fish mingle with the good there. The
description can only apply to the present probation state
of that kingdom, in which good and evil are forever
commingled and forever struggling for the mastery.

But though the Lord usually speaks of the society which
He was founding under the title of a kingdom, it is to
Him that we owe the word by which in all times, from
the Apostles downwards, it has been most usually called.
Upon this rock, that is, of Peter's confession of his deity,
as most of the Fathers interpret it, " I will build my
Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it." Again, He directs that an offending brother who
refuses to listen to private admonition is to be reported
to the Church ; but if he neglect to hear tlie Church he

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:

is to be treated as a heathen man and a publican. The
word translated Church means a body called out of the
general mass of the people. Just as Abraham and his
seed were called out of the rest of mankind and formed
into a separate Church, so individuals are called out of
all nations and formed into a distinct Christian society
This society is not made up of a number of people living
in the world, merely holding Christian doctrine, and
bound together in nothing but by a community of
sentiment. They who belong to it are called out of the
world, the kingdom of darkness, and translated into the
kingdom of light (col. i., 13).

It is not an invisible, unorganized brotherhood made
up of all good people. For it was organized into a king-
dom by our Lord Himself, and He is its head and king.
It has, moreover, its subordinate officers, its laws, its
badges of authority, its oaths of allegiance, its mode of
admission, its tests of loyalty, and it is invested with
power to extend and perpetuate itself.

It is not an invisible company of true believers, for
it is made up of good and bad men.bers ; some that
offend and do iniquity, who will not, and cannot, be
gathered out till the harvest, the end of the world, is
come. If the Church described in the New Testa-
ment, which our Lord founded, and to which He gave
His promises, be invisible, then clearly every visible
thing on earth, caFing itself a church, is not only
unscriptural and wrong — but is guilty of fraud — of a
wicked attempt on the part oi a mere human society by
appropriating a name which does not belong to it, to
delude people into a notion that by joining it, they will

HER CONSTITUTION AND MODES OF ACTION.

secure to themselves the promi'"3s and privileges which
belong to another society altogether. It is the same sort
of dishonestj'^ as would be perpetrated by a new firm
taking the name of an old and well-established house, in
order to gain for itself the credit and custom that belong
to the old and secure establishment.

The term Church is used more than a hundred times
in the New Testament, and is never once used as the
name of an invisible brotherhood, but always as the
name of that visible organized body to which Christ
himself applied it. On the very day after His bap-
tism He began to call His Church out and gather it
around him. Shortly afterwards He proceeded to or-
ganize it into a visible society by the appointment of
the twelve apostles, whom He sent forth to proclaim,
as He Himself had done, " The kingdom of heaven is
at hand." He appointed other seventy to aid them
in their work. He promised to be with them always,
even unto the end of the world. He declared, " As
Mv Father hath sent Me even so send I vou." He as-
sured them that they should be indued with power from
on high to fit them for their work. He invested them
with authority to bind and to loose. He appointed a
definite outward form, Christian baptism, for admitting
new members into his kingdom ; prescribed laws for their
government when admitted, and laid down principles for
the guidance of their life. This Church thus called out
and organized began its supernatural life, of the one spirit
in the one body, against which the gates of hell shall not
prevail, in the upper chamber in Jerusalem on the day
of Pentecost. The Lord had prepared it a body in the

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:

!"i

I r*''

hundred and twenty who were gathered together at
Jerusalem waiting the fulfilment of Christ's promise of the
Comforter ; and as the Holy Ghost breathed into Adam's
body the breath of life, and he became a living soul, so
the same Holy Ghost came upon the infant Church,
filling it with supernatural life, and sending it forth on
its great mission to evangelize the world. A.nd every-
where they that gladly received the Word were baptized
by the one Spirit into the one body.

This body is divine in its constitution, for Christ
organized it. It is divine in its life, for the Holy
Spirit dwells in it as its creator, incorporating it into
Christ. It is declared to be the body of Christ. Christ
Himself is the Head of the Church, which is His body.
His Church is declared to be the bride of Christ ; it is
the Lamb's wife ; figures which declare that she is joined
to Him in the closest and most indissoluble union. And
the voice of inspiration tells us that as there is only one
Spirit, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and
Father of all, so there is only one body to which these
high privileges and promises belong.

You can see, then, from your New Testament that the
shallow boast of Roman Catholics that their Church was
the first Church, the mother and mistress, therefore, of
all Churches, is simply not true. The first church was
the Church of Jerusalem, and all its members were Jews.
From Jerusalem it extended to other places. First,
Philip preached the truth in Samaria, and established a
Church there by admitting his converts into the one body
by baptism. Then the Gentile proselyte, the treasurer
of Queen Candace, was admitted into this society in the

HER CONSTITUTION AND MODES OF ACTION.

same way. Then the Gentile Cornelius and his house-
hold. The Church has spread until it embraces Jews,
Samaritans, proselytes, and Gentiles, And still Jerusalem
is the centre of interest, the Mother Church of the
world.

After this the Sacred History tells us that the Church
was next established at Antioch, the great and luxuri-
ous capital of Syria ; then in Cyprus. Then Barnabas
and Saul, who had been separated for this special mis-
sion, passed over into Asia Minor and preached in
Pisidia, Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, ordaining
elders everywhere to take charge of the new churches.
Then in a second journey Paul and Silas passed west-
ward, through Galatia, founding new churches, until,
guided by a vision, they passed over into Macedonia,
the first apostolic heralds of the Gospel in Europe.
Gathering congregations and y^lanting churches in Mace-
donia and Greece, at Phillippi, Thessalonica, Baerea,
Athens, and Corinth, they finally returned to Asia.
Then after two years' residence at Ephesus and two
years' imprisonment at Cfesarea St. Paul went as a
prisoner to Rome, more than twenty years after the
Church in Jerusalem was founded. And it appears, from
Ror^i, XV., 21 and 22, that neither had he himself been
there before nor had any apostle preceded him. He
found there a considerable communitv of Christians, who
had probably been brought to a knowledge of the truth
by the strangers of Rome at Jerusalem who were con-
verted on the dav of Pentecost.

And so we see, in ever-widening circles, either by
the ministry of the Apostles themselves or of those

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

1^ !i||

whom they ordained in every ci'vy, the church was
founded and congregations multiplied in one land after
another, till the whole known world was permeated
with this new leaven, filled with the spreading branches
of this rapidly-developing mustard tree. Thus, while
these things were transpiring, or at a very early date,
missionaries from Ephesus founded flourishing churches
in Gaul, at Marseilles and Lyons, And we read that
when the first persecution fell upon them with devas-
tating fury, vast numbers of Christians fled and hid
themselves in the forests of the west. Large numbers,
passing over the sea to the islands of Britain, sought
refuge among their Celtic kinsmen in England and
Scothind. And whether they were the first heralds
of the Gospel there or not, they were at least, in all
probability, the instruments by which the Gospel was
made known in those parts of Britain thai: were
inaccessible to Roman arms, where Tertuilian, living in
the next century, tells us there were vast numbers of
Christians in his day.

During the apostolic days this body thus extended
was everywhere designated by the one substantive
word, the Church. It is called the Church more than
seventy times in the Acts and the Epistles. After a time
it was thought desirable to add the adjective Catholic
— meaning universal, or for all — for the purpose of
distinguishing the Church which was intended to ex-
tend into all lands and to embrace all peoples, from
the Jewish Church, which was meant for one race and
confined to one small corner of the earth. Before long
this word Catholic took on, as is not uncommon in

HER CONSTITUTION AND MODES OF ACTION.

the history of language, a second meaning, and was
used to distinguish those who held the whole truth
from the heretics who chose, as their name implies,
parts of the truth as their creed. Another adjective,
Apostolic, was added to the description of the Church,
as in the Nicene Creed, to distinguish the Church
which continued in union and communion with the
Church which the Apostles founded and presided over,
from those bodies which separated themselves and took
the name of their founder or favorite doctrine. This
Church also received local designations from the cities
or countries in which it was established, as the Church
of Jerusalem, of Samaria, of Egypt, of Rome, of Gaul,
of England. Then in ordinary conversation the other
distinguishing adjectives were dropped, and it was spoken
of merely as the Church of Rome, of France, or of
England, or more generally merely as the Church ;
everybody knowing that the body meant was the .
Catholic Apostolic Church of Gaul, Rome or England.
' But everywhere it was the same body, organized in the
same way, ruled by the same officers and general laws,
animated by the one Spirit, preaching the one Gospel,
professing the one Faith : the Church in one land owning
and owing no subjection to the Church in another, but
all co-operating in the one great effort to win the world
to Christ. If difficulties arose or new doctrines were
preached, they were either composed by the bishop or
reported to a council like that in Jerusalem described in
Acts XV. These councils were either diocesan, provincial,
or general. To the provincial councils the bishops and
clergy of the province were summoned. If the difficulties

THE CATHOLIC' CHURCH:

i t

were of sutticient importance, those of the whole Christian
world were summoned, that by their testimony the truth
might be settled and difficulties removed. Archbishop
Lynch says " tlu re must be a visible head and chief
director, some man on earth to be the liead ruler of His
Church on earth." All I can say is that centuries passed
away before anybody discovered that necessity — or even
thought of it. The Catholic Christians of those days
had no such easy method as Archbishop Lynch describes.
They had no supreme ruler and director to whom they
could appeal to teach them new doctrines or to define
old ones. They had to summon the bishops itnd clergy
from all pai'ts of the world, to undertake long and
perilous journeys : to come together to establish the truth
and quiet heresies.

And when they had assembled together in council,
what was their mode of proceeding ? Did they, as
Romanists assert, only assemble at the call of the Pope,
or by his permission ? Did they only deliberate un-
der his presidency ? Did they patiently await and
meeklj'' accept his announcement of new doctrines or
definition of old ones ? Not a bit of it. The Bishop
of Rome, unless all testimony deceives, no more called,
or was asked for his sanction to summon, one of those
six great general councils, which promulgated the creeds
and formulated the doctrines of the Church, than the
Bishop of London called or sanctioned them. He was not
present at any one of them. His expressed wish — nay,
his enti'eaty — as to where two of them were to be held,
was utterly disregarded and overriden. His Church was
hardly represented at all. His judgment was not asked

HER CONSTITUTION AND MODES OF ACTION.

for or referred to ; and yet he accepted, like: the other
bishops of the Christian world, not his decisions without
the council, but the council's decisions without him.
(See note A).

How, then, did these councils proceed in determining
the truth ? They did not proceed to settle thts points in
dispute by asking this bishop or that presbyter what his
opinion about it was ; but setting the Scriptures upon a
throne in their midst, as containing the truth of God,
they collected the testimony of the Church, asking first
one bishop or presbyter, and then another, as to the in-
terpretation that had been handed down to them from
the beginning with reference to the matter in dispute.
Thus was the one faith once for all delivered, detined
and confirmed while the interpretation of apostles and
inspired men was still living- and remembered in the
Church. Such, my brethren, in brief outline, was the
Catholic Church when the name Catholic was first given
to her. Such her condition as she emerges through the
dust and turmoil of her earliest encounter with an unbe-
lieving world into the clear light of historic times. A
spiritual kingdom owing obedience to her invisible Head
and Lord, and yet herself visible — a vast organized
democracy — her bishops in every diocese invested with
the same authority and standing upon a footing of
perfect spiritual equality ;* her doctrines defined and
defended, and her discipline settled by a church parlia-
ment representing the diocese, the province, or, when
need arose, the whole world.

I shall show on Sunday evening next how the Homan
Church has departed from this Apostolic ideal, and by

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:

her doctrines of supremacy and infallibility has over-
turned the constitution of the Catholic Church. May
God restrain us from all passion, giiide us into a clenrer
knowledge of his truth, and a heartier obedience to His
will.

NOTE A, LKCTURR I.

*Thi8 fact alone subverts the whole Roman theory of the Pope's supre-
macy and autocratic headship over the whole Church. That theory involves
tho asHurtion which is freely made, that the Pope alone has authority to
summon or preside at a General Council of th^ whole Church. And bj,
while it is undeniable that the Emperor Constantine summoned the first
General Council at Nice (a.d. .325), and that Hosius, Bishop of Cordova,
in Spain, presided at it, modern Roman controversialists assert, without
the shadow of authority from any cotemporary records for the assertion,
that the Emperor summoned the Council in obedience to the Pope's com-
mands, and that Hosius attended and presided as his representative and
legate. Neither the records of the Council nor its Synodal epistle, nor any
of the cotemporary, or nearly cotemporary, historians, Eusebius, Socrates,
Sozomen or Theodoret give even a hint of the truth of these assertions.
There is no earlier authority for either of these statements than that of
Gelasius of (^y/icus, a writer of the fifth century, when the Bishops of
Rome were already setting up extravagant claims, and he, by common
consent of Roman Catholic writers, is an utterly untrustworthy witness.
The careful Dupin calls him a sorry compiler, who gathered all he met with
. . . without examining whether it was true or false. Natalis Alexan-
der condemns the work as overflowing with mistakes. Velenus rejects it
as "containing much spurious matter and falsehood." In proof of the un-
truth of the unsupported assertion of this fifth century writer, we have the
declaration of the historian Socrates [Bk. V., preface], that "the greatest
synods have been, and still are, convened by the determination and appoint-
ment of the Emperors," a declaration which is established by the fact that
though Pope Ijeo I. implored the Emperor Theodosius to summon a General
Council at Rome, the Emperor obstinately refused ; and that when the
Emperor Marcian did summon the Council, he, too, utterly disregarded the
same Pope's request that it might be held in Italy, and summoned it, solely/
in the Einperor'a own navie, to meet at Calcedon. In further confirmation
of the truth of chis statement, we have the fact that in the prefaces to the
acts of the first six General Councils, reaching up to a.d. 680, no mention
is made of any other authority for summoning them than that of the Em-
perors.

HER CONSTITUTION AND MODES OF ACTION.

1 over-
May

jlewrer
His

But more than thi«, we have the Emperor's own declaration : " Jiy the
suggestion of God, / aummoned to Nice most of the BiHhopH with whom
. . . . I undertook the investigation of the truth. — SocrateH I., \).

Again, in the Synodal Letter of the (Vmncil, Rent to abttent Binhopa and
distant ( -hurch'^s, we read : " Since by the grace of God, and the favoured-
of-God, King l^'onHtantine, collecting ub from different cities and provincea,
the great and holy Synod wan celebrated at Nice.— SocrateH I., 9.

Again, Socrates says (I., 8), "When therefore the Emperor beheld the
Church unsettled, ... he convolced a General Council, summoning
all the Bishops to meet him at Nice."

Again, Sozomen nays (I., 17), ** Constantine called together a Synod at
Nice, in Bithynia, and wrote to the superintendents of the ('hurches in
every country, directing them to be there on an appointed day.'

Theodoret says of Constantine (I., 7), "He proceeded to summon the
celebrated Council of Nice."

EpiphaniuH, who was 15 years old when the council of Nice was held,
says (LXIX.,11, Heresies), "The Emperor, taking care for the Church,
summoned the (Ecumenical Synod of 318 Bishops, whose names are still
preserved."

In a letter by the Emperor Justinian, rend before the Second Council of
Constantinople, a.d. 5.5.3, and approved by the Bishops, it is stated (Collat.
I.), "Wherefore Constantine, of pious memory, when Arius was blaspliem-
ing, congregated at Nice, from different dioceses, 3J8 Fathers."— (Labbd,
torn, v., col. 419.)

But not only did the Emperor summon the Council of Nice ; it was he
who opened the solemn session of the Council. Constantine acted as
honorary president at the first, and tbeii ceded his place to the ecclesiasti-
cal president (Euseb. , Vit. Const. III., 12, I'.i), and so Pope Stephen the V.
speaks of the Emperor as having in fact presided at the Council of Nice
(Hardouin V., 1119). With regard to the representatives of Rome we have

the following testimony :

Socrates (I., 8) says, "The Prelate of the Imperial City was absent
through age, but his presbj'ters were present and filleti his place."

Sozomen (I., 17) and Eusebius (Vit. Const. III., 7) bear exactly the same
testimony, and mention the names of the two presbyters who came as re-
presentatives of the aged Bishop of Rome.

Theodoret (I., 7) says " The Bishop of Rome sent two presbyters to the
Council for the purpose of taking part in all the transactions."

After the withdrawal of the Emperor, his friend and counsellor, Hosius
of Cordova, on whose advice he had summoned the Council, presided, and
as president his name stands first in the signatures to the Nicene creed, as
follows : " From Spain, Hosius, from the City of Cordova. I believe thus
as it is written above,"

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

The next signature is *' Vito and Innocentius Priests. We have signed for
our Bishop, who is Bishop of Rome. He believes thus as is written here."
Hosius signed for himself, without a word about representing the Pope.
The Pope's representatives sign for him, without a word about Hosius.
Lastly, as regards the formal confirmation of the acts of the Council.
This, too, was the work of Constantine alone, and no hint of the Pope
having any authority or right to be consulted appears in the ancient records.
It is the Emperor, too, who writes to the Bishops (the Pope among the rest)
to enforce the decrees, to improve and erect]churches, and to impose penalties
for fostering Arianism [see his five letters in Socrates I., 9] ; so that the
whole story of the Pope summoning the Council through Constantine, and
of Hosius presiding as his representative, is a manifest fiction, invented to
support pretentions that had not been put forth till long after the Council
of Nice was held.

The foregoing condensed evidence is extracted from the Rev. J. M.
Davenport's pamphlet (Papal Infallibility, pages 96-97).

NOTE B, LECTURE I.

*It has been objected by a Roman Catholic writer that to describe the
Church as a visible body without a visible head, is to represent it as a
"monstrosity." But it has been well said in reply, that if this be a mons-
trosity St. Paul, and not Mr. Langtry, is responsible for it, since he says,
" Christ is the Head of the Church, and the Saviour of the body ; " and it
has been pertinently asked, "would a body with two heads, one visible, the
other invisible, be less of a monstrosity?" Pope Gregory I. has formally
enunciated the very same doctrine, declaring "that Christ is the one only
Headof the Church,"

LECTURE II.

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ROMAN CHURCH
AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CONSTITUTION
AND GOVERNMENT.

IN endeavouring, last Sunday evening, to follow out the
duty here enjoined, of examining with unceasing care
the structure, strength, and glory of the Church of God;
we learned from the plain statements of God's own Word,
and the earliest uninspired records concerning her, that
the Catholic Church, when the name Catholic was first
given to her, was a vast, visible, organized society ; or,
if you prefer it, a constitutional monarchy, with its King
in the mother city. Heaven ; with universal suffrage, ard
universal representation in those parliamentary councils
by which her faith was formulated, her doctrines defined
and her discipline regulated. That she knew of no supreme
visible head, no man who was chief ruler and universal
teacher, to whom she could go for instruction in doctrine
and correction in morals and in discipline. That she pro-
ceeded in those councils to deliberate and lefjislate and
define without the call or permission or presence of the
Bishop of Rome, or any other particular bishop. That the
B

■l«Hi

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

Bishop and Church of Rome, like all other bishops and
churches of Christendom, accepted both the doctrinal and
disciplinary decrees made, not by the Pope without the
council, but by the council without the Pope. For in-
stance, at the Second (Ecumenical Council, in 381, which
decreed the most important definition of faith since the
Nicene, by first formulating the doctrine of the Holy
Ghost, the Church of Rome was not represented at all ;
and the decrees were communicated to her just as they
were to other Churches, and were accepted without op-
position or demur. And so it went on for centuries. The
Catholic Church knew of no other way of defining doc-
trines and settling disputes but by the testimony of the
Church, through the agency of her councils.* " For the
first thousand years of Church history not one question
of doctrine was finally decided by the Pope. The Roman
bishops took no part whatever in the discussions and'de-
liberations which the numerous Gnostic sects, the Montan-
ists and Chiliasts, produced in the early Church. Nor can
a single doctrinal decree issued by one of them be found
during the first four centuries, nor a trace of the exist-
ence of any. Even the fierce controversy about Christ,
kindled by Paul of Samosata, which occupied the whole
Eastern Church for a long time, and necessitated the as-
sembling of several councils, diocesan and provincial, was
carried on and terminated without the Pope taking any
part in it whatever. So, again, in the chain of controver-
sies connected with the names of Theodotus, Artemon,

* Bossuet, in his Notes on the Synodal letter of the Council of Constanti-
nople, says : " From this it is clear that questions of faith are settled solely
by the consent of the Churches.

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

Noetus, Sabellius, Beriyllus, and Lucian of Antioch, which
troubled the whole Church and extended over 150 years,
there is no shred of proof that the Roman bishops acted be-
yond the limits of their own local Church, or accomplished
any doctrinal result." (Janus).

There were three great controversies during this early
period in which the Church of Rome did take part,
viz., about Easter, about heretical baptism, and about
the penitential discipline. But in all these the will
and judgment of the Popes were rejected, and the other
Churches maintained their own views and usages with-
out its leading to any permanent division. Several
African and Asiatic synods decided against the validity
of schismatical baptism. Pope Stephen took the op-
posite view, and tried to compel these Churches into
agreement with himself by excluding them from his com-
munion ; but it only drew down on him the sharp cen-
sure of St. Cyprian, of Carthage, and St. Firmiliaa, of
Csesarea, ft)r his insolence in presuming to dictate doc-
trines to other Bishops and Churches ; and the great St.
Augustin justified and upheld them in their action.

In the great Arian controversy, which engaged and dis-
turbed the Church above all others, and was discussed in
more than fifty .synods, the Roman See for a long time
took no part. Popes Julius and Liberius (337-366) were
the first to take part in this great struggle ; but it was only
to involve themselves in heresy, which the Church and sub-
sequent Popes of Rome acknowledged and denounced.
During the fourth century councils alone decided all dog-
matic questions, and nobody else was thought of as having
a right to do so. So well was this known that Pope Siri-

BPH

•I

i^i .1

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

cius (384-398) declined to pronounce upon the false doc-
trine of a bishop, Borosus, when requested to do so, on
the ground that he had no right to do so, and must await
the sentence of the bishops of his Province, And so, when
Pope Vigilius first approved, and then, to please the em-
peror, condemned what is known as the three chapters,
and then in fear of the Western bishops again approved
them, the Fifth General Council excommunicated him ;
and he finally submitted to the judgment of the council,
declaring that he had been a tool in the hands of Satan.
Upon this whole national churches, those of Africa, North
Italy, and lUyria, held councils and axcommunicated
the Pope, whom they denounced for having sacri-
ficed the faith.

" Again, Pope Honorious was unanimously condemned
by the Sixth General Council as a heretic, for haying
publicly sided with the Monothelite heresy, and offi-
cially taught it in dogmatic pontifical letters in reply
to a formal application from the Eastern Patriarchs to
him as Pope to declare his opinion. The legates of his
own successor. Pope Agatho, took the lead at that
council in anathematizing him ; and a successor of his,
Leo II., wrote to assure the Spanish bishops that Hon-
orius and his acccomplices in heresy were certainly
damned. The seventh and eighth so-called General
Councils repeated the sentence, while every Pope for
several centuries had to renew the sentence at his cor-
onation, and declare his infallible predecessor a heretic.*'
(Littledale). (See note A at the end of this chapter).

So, again, the Western Church alone, on its own
authority, in its councils, deposed Popes John XII.,

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

Benedict IX., Gregory VI., Gregory XII., and John XXII.
the last in express terms as simoniac, sorcerer and heretic.
And these depositions by councils have been all along
acknowledged as perfectly valid, and the Popes set up in-
stead of the deposed ones as lawful tenants of the Roman
chair, instead of being regarded as they would now have
to be regarded, as blasphemous rebels against the vicar of
God on earth, and the new Popes as schismatic intruders.
It needs no arguments of mine to prove to the simplest
mind that these facts establish beyond dispute : 1st.
That the councils, and not the Popes, were up to this date
known and recognized as the supreme legislative and
governing bodies of the Church. 2nd. That the claim of
Papal supremacy, if put forth, was utterly rejected and
disregarded by the whole body of the Church ; and 3rd.
That they flatly contradict and sweep out of existence the
very possibility of Papal infallibility. For if Yigilius,
Honorius and John XXII. fell into deadly heresy, where
is the infallibility ?

The same inference follows from the Council of Veru-
lum (St. Albans), A. D. 793, which was called with-
out the consent of the Pope, and which denounced
the image worship, to which the Pope had lately com-
mitted himself, as " a thingr which the Church of God
utterly abhors.' And so the great Council of Frankfort,
which assembled at the call of the Emperor Charle-
magne in A. D. 794, and which was attended by large
numbers of bishops from France, England, Germany and
Italy, including the Pope's legates, and which in spite of
their opposition, condemned as " execrable in the Church
of God all worship, adoration and service of images," and

rnisasKssmmsmimmim

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

I
9i

)

this though they knew that the Pope had publicly com-
mitted himself to that worship and was urging upon them
its enforcement upon Christians. And Pope Adrian did not
venture to do more than offer a verbal opposition. Once
more the bishops assembled at the great Synod of Paris
in 824 did not hesitate when discussing this subject to
denounce " the absurdities of Pope Adrian, who, they
said, had commanded an heretical worship of images." So,
again, when Charlemagne urged Pope Leo III. to accept
the " Filioque " clause in the Nicene creed, which the
Synod of Aix authorized, Leo replied that the doctrine
was true, but that the decision of such questions belonged
not to him but to an (ecumenical council.

From what has been said we get the following pic-
ture of the organization of the Primitive Catholic Church :
" Questions of primary importance or those affecting^^e
whole Church, are settled by the Church Universal
through her representatives in oecumenical council as-
sembled. All other questions are settled on the spot
either by the bishop of the diocese or by the bisnop
and his synod, or by the provincial or national synod ;
for the Church is organized into dioceses, provinces,
patriarchates, and, as the empire broke up and formed
itself into the modern nations, into national Churches ;
each of these manages its own affairs with perfect free-
dom and independence, and maintains its own tradi-
tional usages and discipline, subject only to the govern-
ment of the whole Church. Laws and articles of faith
of universal obligation are issued only by the whole
Church concentrated into an oecumenical council." So
thoroughly was this constitution en wrought into the tex-

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

ture of the Church's life, that for centuries after the Papal
claims were put forth and formulated, and even widely ac-
cepted, the Church still proceeded to legislate through her
councils and synods, often without the Pope's concurrence
orpermissionbeingsoughtfor,and often in direct opposition
to his will and pronounced judgment. Even during those
last dark days of Papal rule which preceded the Reform-
ation movement, when, as Dr. DoUenger tells us, for two
hundred and fifty years the whole of Europe wsls crying
out for a reformation of the intolerable corruption of
doctrine, discipline, and morals that was strangling the
spiritual life of Europe, it was not to the Popes of Rome
that anybody turned for help. The cry of Europe was
for a free general council of the whole Church. To such a
council Luther and his followers, to whom the notion of
a permanent separation from the ancient Church had not
occurred, made their appeal. To such a council the
English Church offered to submit her dispute withRome,
binding herself to accept the result, because she was sat-
isfied thatthe truth would be brought to light. And that
appeal remains unrevoked to this day.

Such was the constitution of the Catholic Church
in the beginning ; and, in spite of the prolonged struggles,
for centuries after the name of Catholic was given to
her. How does the Church of Rome of the present day
correspond with this picture, or rather how widely does
she differ from the primitive constitution and order of
the Catholic Church ? This difference is briefly ex-
pressed in Cannons iii, and iv. of the Vatican Council,
which bind all Roman Catholics now. Cannon iii. af-
firms, " If anyone shall say that the Roman Pontiff has

■I

POINTS OF DIFFER KNCE.

only the office of supervision and direction, but that
he has not plenary and supreme power of jurisdiction
over the whole Church, not only in things which per-
tain to faith and morals, but also in those which pertain
to the discipline and goverrnnent of the Church spread
throughout the world, or that he has only greater parts
and not the whole plenitude of this supreme power, or
that this power is not ordinary and direct, or over all
and singular churches, or overall and singular pastors and
faithful, let him be anathema." A clause of Canon iv.
says : — " We teach and detine as a divinely revealed
dogma that the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra,
that is, when he is discharging the office of pastor and
teacher of all Christians, he defines by his supreme apos-
tolic authority, through that divine assistance promised
in the Blessed Peter, a doctrine to be held by the whole
Church concerning faith or morals, he possesses that in-
fallibility which the Divine Redeemer willed that His
Church should be intrusted with for defining doctrines
concerning faith and morals, so that these definitions of
the Roman Pontiff thus delivered are of themselves, and not
because of the consent of the Church, irreformable. If any-
one presumes to contradict this our definition, let him be
anathema." The points are plain. The parliamentary coun-
cils are nowhere. The Pope has plenary and absolute
power of jurisdiction. He, and not the council, defines
the doctrines that are to be held by the whole Church,
not only in matters of faith and morals, but in matters
of government. And that these doctrines are irreform-
able, not because they express the consent and concur-
rence of the whole Church, but because they are delivered

«1

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

hy the Pope. The contradiction of primitive Catholic
teaching on the subject of the definition, defence and pro-
mulgation of the faith — confirmed, as I have shown that
teaching is, by more than one Pope — is direct and abso-
lute. The overthrow of the Catholic organization and
government of the Church is complete. The organized
democracy, the constitutional monarchy, has been sub-
verted, and an absolute autocracy, ruled with irresponsible
and plenary power by one man has been substituted for it.
To him all alike, layman and clei'ic, king and beggar, are
equally and absolutely subject. The ancient office of tlie
Church, to witness to and define and defend the truth, has
been swept away. The Pope is the universal pastor and
teacher of all Christians. He alone defines and declares
the faith. He is the supreme head and governor of the
whole Church. No one has any rights before him, and
all authority in the Church and in the world is an ema-
nation from his, a mere deputed power that may at any
moment be recalled. The Church, according to Cardinal
Cajetan, " is the slave of the Pope ; neither in its whole
nor its parts (national Churches) can it desire, strive for,
approve, or disapprove anything not in absolute accord-
ance with the Papal will and pleasure." He, as Bellar-
mine has not feared to express it, is " vice-God ; " and the
Civilta, the Papal organ, asserts that " all the treasures of
divine revelation, of truth, righteousness, and the gifts of
God are in the Pope's hand. He carries on Christ's work
on earth, and is in relation to us what Christ would be
if He were still visibly present to rule His Church. The
Pope it calls " the summum oraculum — which can give
at once an infallible solution of every doubt, speculative
and practical."

POINTS OF DTFFEUENCE.

t |i

A Roman Catholic writer of the liberal school, speak-
ing in reitjionce to this, says, when once the old notion
of adhering to the organization and teaching of the
ancient Church is broken through, the horror of new
doctrines got rid of, and the well-known cannon of truth
formulated by St. Vincent — " quod semper, quod uhiqne,
quod ah omnibus " — is altogether set aside, then every
Pope, however ignorant of theology, will be free to make
what use he likes of his power of dogmatic creativeness,
and to erect his own thoughts into the common belief
binding on the whole church. We say advisedly, how-
ever ignorant of theology, for the Jesuit theologians have
already foreseen this contingency as being not an unusual
one with Popes, and one of them. Professor Ebermann, of
Mayeiice, has observed, " A thoroughly ignorant Pope
may very well be infallible, for God has before now
pointed out the right way by the mouth of a speaking
ass." And then he adds, " Whoever, after the adoption
of infallibility as a dogma, dares to question the plenary
authority of any new article of faith coined in the Vati-
can mint, will incur, according to the Jesuit interpretation,
excommunication in this world, and everlasting damnation
in the next. Councils will, in the future, be superfluous.
The bishops will no doubt be assembled in Rome now and
then to swell the pomp of a papal canonization, or some
other grand ceremony ; but they will have nothing more
to do with dogmas. If they wished to confirm a papal
decision itself the result of direct divine inspiration, this
would be bringing lanterns to aid the light of the noon-
day sun." (See note B at end of this chapter).

And yet, to prove the dogma of papal infallibility

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

from Church history, nothing less is required than a com-
plete falsification of it. The declarations of popes which
contradict the present doctrines of the Church of Rome,
or contradict each other (as the same pope sometimes
contradicts himself), have now to be twisted into agree-
ment, so as to show tliat their mutually destructive en-
unciations are at bottom sound doctrine, and not really
contradictory of one another. But they will not find much
difficulty here. The creatures of the Papacy, and especially
the Jesuits, nevei* had any particular difficulty in manu-
facturing church history. They have performed most
incredible feats in this line. They have forged, and falsi-
fied and invented until no ordinary Roman Catholic,
priest or layman, has any true notion of the facts of the
past. The whole fabric of papal supremacy and in-
fallibility is built upon a foundation of the most
bare-faced forgeries and lies. But no forgeries or inven-
tions will help them to explain to the common sense of
mankind this strange phenomonon : " That a dogma which
requires us to believe, on the pain of damnation, that
Christ, from the beginning of the Gospel, made the Pope
of the day the one vehicle of his inspirations, the pillar
and exclusive organ of Divine truth, without whom the
Church is like a body without a soul, deprived of the
power of vision, and unable to determine any point of
faith ; that this dogma which is now the primary article
of the faith, the keystone of the whole Roman system of
doctrine and practice, was not certainly ascertained to
be true until the year of grace 1869 " ; nay, that it was so
far from being believed to be true that Keenan's contro-
versial catechism, endorsed by the whole Irish episcopate,

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

forinally approved by the four Roman Catholic bishops
in Scotland in 1S53, and since authorized by Archbishop
Hu<ijhes, of New York, says, in answer to the question,
" Must not Catholics believe the Pope himself to be infal-
lible ? " " This is a Protestant invention. It is no article
of the Catholic faith. No decision of his can bind on pain
of heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teach-
ing body, that is by the bishops of the Church." And,
so, too, the book entitled the " Faith of Catholics," by
Messrs. Kirke and Berington, a standard authority with
the old Galilean party, though lately manipulated by
Mgr. Capel, so as to bring into harmony with Vaticanism,
asserted before it had undergone this manipulation, Prop.
XIV.: " It is no article of the Catholic faith to believe
that the Pope is in himself infallible, separated from the
Church even in expounding the faith ; by consequence
Papal definitions or decrees, in whatever form pronounced,
taken exclusively of a General Council on acceptance by
the Church, oblige none, under pain of heresy, to interior
assent." A formal contradiction this of the Vatican dogma.
Prop. XV.: " Nor do Catholics believe that the Pope has
any direct or indirect authority over the temporal con-
cerns of states, or the jurisdiction of princes. Hence,
should the Pope pretend to absolve his Majesty's subjects
from their allegiance on account of heresy or schism, such
dispensation they would view as frivolous and null." A
direct contradiction of the XXIII. proposition of the
Syllabus. For thirteen centuries an incomprehensible
silence on this now fundamental article reigned through-
out the whole Church and her literature. None of
the ancient confessions of faith, no catechism, none

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

of the patristic writings composed for the instruction
of the people, contain a syllable about the Pope, still
less any hint that all certainty of faith and doctrine
depends on him. I have said enough to show you
that the Roman Church differs widely from the Catholic
Church in her organization, government, and mode of
diffusing and propagating the truth ; and that in tlie
fundamental article of her belief she is in fiat contra-
diction to the voice of the whole Catholic Church, and
of her own teaching till quite recently. I had hoped to
have time to trace in this lecture the origin and progress
of this divergence of the Roman from the Catholic Church,
but I must leave it for another lecture. I have used strong
language about the foundation upon which this depar-
ture rests. I promise to justify that language abundantly.
May God defend the right and maintain His own truth
amid all the strife and errors of human frailty and passion.
May He ever purify and defend His Church, and bring
us all by His own mighty power to a knowledge of and
agreement in the truth.

NOTE A, LECTURE II.

* As the truth of these statements is recklessly denied in Ryder's reply
to Littledale, the following statement of the case by the Rev. J. M. Daven-
port (Papal Infallibility, pp. 89-90-91), will enable the reader to judge :

"The case of Honorius is so stubborn a fact that Roman apologists have
been driven to many strange expedients to get rid of it. (I condense from
Church Quarterly Review, April 1879, p. 18) :

1. Baronius alleged the insertion of Honorius' name to be an interpolation
and forgery. Driven from that position by closer enquiry, it was said —

2. Honorius was really orthodox, and was condemned by the Council in
error ; or that

8. He was condemned only in his capacity as a private doctor, since hia
letter to Sergius was not put forth ex cathedrd ; or

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

4. He was condemned, not for heresy, but for apathetic negligence in
suppressing the heresy of other'^.

Pfere Grktry has fully exposed the ludicrous nature of these shifts to con-
tradict plain history. Letters to Decharnps.

One or tv/o quotations from the Acts of the sixth Council will best reveal
what the Church thought which condemned Honorius, The council said,
Sess. xiii. : " We, taking into consideration the dogmatic Epistles which
were written by Sergius, Patriarch of the Imperial City (Constantinople
at that time), both to Cyrus, who was the Bishop of Phasis, and also 'jO
Honorius, Pope of Old Rome, and likewise the Epistle in reply from him,
that is, Honorius, to the aforesaid Sergius, and finding them to he in all re-
spects alien from Apostolic doctrine, and from the definitions of the Sacred
Synods, and of all the Fathers of repute, but following the false doctrines
of the heretics, we wholly reject them, and pronounce them accursed as hurtful
to souls. . . . With these, we have provided that Honorius, who was
Pope of Old Rome, he cast out of the Holy Catholic Church of God, and he
anathematized, because we have found, by the writings which he addressed
to Sergius, that he followed, his opinion in all respects and affirmed his impious
tenets, "

In another place, after much the same preamble, they anathematize Hon-
orius : " Since we find in his letters to Sergius that he follows in all respect
his error, and authorises his impious doctrine."

SesB. X VT, — occur the words. " Anathfimn. to Theodore the heretic, ana-
thema to Sergius the heretic, anathema to Cyrus the heretic, anatliema to
Honorius the heretic, anaohema to Pyrrhu3 the heretic."

SesK. XVII, — we read, "But since there has never, from the beginning,
ceased to be an inventor of evil, who found the serpent to help him, and
thereby brought poisoned death on mankind, and so finding suitable tools
for his own purpose, —we mean Theodorus, . . . and also Honorius,
who was Pope of Old Rome."

These decrees were signed, without any objection being raised, by the
legates of the Pope AgaJio, and by all the 165 Bishops present.

The anathema of Honorius was expressly repeated in the letter of the
Council to the Emperor, and in its other letter to Pope Agatho, hoth signed
by the Papers legate^.

Next Leo II., Agatho's successor, wrote to the Emperor on May 7, 683
A.D., a formal letter in which he says, amidst much else: "We likewise
anathematize the inventors of the new error; that is, Theodore, . . .
Sergius, . . . and also Honoring, who did not keep this Apostolic Church
pure with the doctrine of Apostolic tradition, but endeavoured to overthrow
the unspotted faith by his profane betrayal."

Either Honorius fell into deadly heresy and so was not infallible, or Leo

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

II., and at least twenty other popes who anathematised him aa a heretic
were not infallible.

None of these, we see, charge Honorius with mere negligence, but with
positive error.

Again, Leo II. renewed this anathema in his letter to the Spanish Bishops,
inviting them to accept synodically the decrees of the Council, in which he
tells them that " Honwius is damned to all :ternity."'

Le Page Renouf, a Roman writer, has drawn attention to a fact which quite
disposes of the plea, that the sixth Council condemned Honorius in ignor-
ance. At the fourth session of the Lateran Council, held only eleven years
after the death of Honorius (viz , a.d. 649), under Pope Martin I., !n a
dogmatic letter from Paul, the Patriarch of Constantinople (who was con-
demned as a heretic), Paul claimed Sergius and Honorius as teaching the
same heresy as himself. Labb^ Cone, Tom vi., col. 227. Both Pope and
Council heard this read, and not a word of contradiction was offered ; *' a
sure sign," says Renouf, " that the cause of Honorius was no longer held to
be defensible."

Honorius' name appeared in the Breviaries among the heretics till the
sixteenth century : his name was then omitted in new editions, and many
of the old manuscript copies were mutilated with a knife. That rather
looks as though the Ultraraontanes of those days thought his condemnation
made against Papal Infallibility.— Church Quarterly Review, Vol. viii., p. 20.

It may be well here to observe that in the most authoritative modern
defence of Honorius, most of the old positions are foraaken. Pennacchi's
treatise "De Honorii, etc.," which appeared at Rome in 1870, and was sent
to all the Bishops of the Vatican Council, is fortified by two important
" nihil obstata" and two *' i nprimuturii," and is moreover recommended by
Cardinal Manning to his clergy. Pennacchi, by his admissions, completely
cuts away the ground from under the feet of the majority of his co-apolo-
gists. He admits the genuineness of all the documents once called in
question. He admits that Honorius wrote his letters to Sergius, not as a pri-
vate person, but as Pope, with all the authority which that position could
give him ; that they were constantly appealed to by Monothelites in support
of their heresy ; that Honorius was actually condemned and anathematized
as a heretic by the sixth Council in precisely the same sense as the other
Monothelito heretics were condemned. He admita that the distinction be-
tween the Pope speaking as Pope ex cathedra and as a private person is of
modern invention. He admits that language occurs in the Epistles of Hon-
orius which, had they been written tj/ a heretic, nothing in the world could
save from being accounted undoubtedly heretical. ("Siquidem si Epistolie
Honorii, a Monothelitis scriptse simt, ab hieresi excusari non possunt.")
But he avoids the conclusion which would naturally be drawn from tliis,
by taking for granted that Honorius was not a heretic, and that therefore.

■PPPRH

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE.

1^ '

the language of his letters cannot be heretical. Fallacies and assumptions,
to a very large extent, do duty for arguments and proofs.
He attempts to establish three points ;

1. That the letters of Honorius are not, as a fact, heretical, i.e., tney are
patient of a Catholic interpretation.

2. That the sixth Council exceeded its powers in condemning Honorius,
and that therefore the condemnation in null and void.

3. That Leo II. condemned him, not for heresy, but for negligence.

A remarkable specimen of the ^mter's ability for making language mean
just what at the moment he wishes it to mean, occurs on p. 164, where he
explains Honorius' assertion— " We confess one will in our Lord Jesus
Christ to be equivalent to an acknowledgment of two wills, only in dif event
language." In the process of saving Honorius, the reputation of the Fathers
of the sixth Council and of several Popes, suffer considerably. (See Willis
on Honorius, Appendix). Thei-e is no reason, if Pennachi's line of argu-
ment be sound, why the rest of the heretics condemned with Honorius
should not be whitewashed, or why we should accept the sentence of any
Council whatever on any heretic in the past, and not re-open every judg-
ment. The new "Catholic Diction^.'-y " (so-called), bearing the imprimatur
of Cardinal Manning, treats the case of Honorius much in Pennaccni's
fashion. After admitting the facts of his condemnation by Council, Papal
Legates, and Popes, the author struggles to prove him orthodox \that the
Council in fact did not know what it was about) ; that the Council lacked
such Papal authority as would make its decisions binding ; that Honorius
was not teachieg ex cathedra, because he abstained from definitely imposing
his own belief on the Church.

This article, like Pennacchi's treatise, will doubtless go down with those
who are anxious for some way out of the difficulties, but it cannot satisfy
thoughtful persons, whether Roman, Greek, or Anglican.

NOTE B, LECTURE II.

*Connolly, Archbishop of Halifax in his speech prepared for the Vatican
Council and afterwards published by himself said in speaking against the
infallibility dogma. " We Bishops have no ri^ht to renounce for ourselves
and our successors the hereditary and original rights of the Episcopate— to
renounce the promise of Christ I am with you to the end of the world.
But now they want to reduce us to nullities, to tear the noblest jewel from
our pontificial breast-plate, to deprive us of the highest prerogative of cur
office, and transform the whole Church and the Bishops with it into a
rabble of blind men . Among whom is only one who sees. So that thev
must shut their eyes and believe whatever he tells them."

.l.„.,M.

LECTURE III.

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

Walk about Zion and go round about her ; tell the towers
thereof.

Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces ; that ye may
tell it to the generation following. — Psalm xlviii, 12, 13.

IN following out this injunction we have ah-eady seen
that the Catholic Church as she came forth from
the hands of apostles and apostolic men was a visible,
organized spiritual kingdom, with constitutional govern-
ment, all her bishops being invested with equal spiritual
authority and jurisdiction, and all her doctrines defined
and maintained, not by one man for all, but by the testi-
mony and judgment of all for each individual. We saw,
too, that the Church of Rome differs now, fundamentally,
from this original const 'tution and order; that she has
subverted this representative government, has silenced
this universal testimony, and has swept away this legis-
lative control of all questions of morals and of discipline.
For this she has substituted an absolute autocracy ruled
by one irresponsible head, who has plenary and absolute
power, not only over the whole Church, but over the

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

whole world. For Gregory the Great (Pope Hildebrand)
maintained (and the Roman Church is committed to his
position) that the Pope is by Divine right the universal
and paramount lord of the world ; that all monarchs held
their dominions as fiefs of the Holy See, and that the
bishops and clergy formed the court of the suzerain Pon-
tiff. In virtue of these assumed powers the Bishops of
Rome claimed the right, and, by taking advantage of the
necessities of kings and princes, were allowed, in many
lands, the right, not only to control the appointments of
bishops and pastors, and to interfere in the affairs of
national Churches, but to depose kings and princes, to
take away their dominions, and to bestow t'lem upon
whomsoever they would.

The question for to-night is, How was this change
brought about ? How did this power grow up ? And
why was it suffered to exist and to exercise such
influence, as it unquestionably did exercise, both in the
Church and in the world ? Manifestly, from what has
been said, it did not spring into being all at once. And
it manifestly did not exist from the beginning. This
is placed beyond dispute by an authority to which our
Roman Catholic brethren must bow. For when that
which was afterwards known as the Papal system was
first broached, in words only, in the year 598, it was re-
pudiated with horror by Gregory I., the best and greatest
of the Popes. When John of Constantinople, who was
eager to be acknowledged as primate of the Christian
world, had assumed in a public document the title of
oecumenical or universal Bishop, Gregory, burning with
indignation, wrote : — " The one sole head of the Universal

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

Church is Christ, and I confidently affirm that whoever
calls himself or desires to be called Universal Bishop is in
his pride the forerunner of Antichrist." (Ad. Imp. Maur.,
vii, 33.) " No one," he says, " of my predecessors ever
consented to use so profane a term." (Epp. Lib. v. 43, ad.
Eulog.) " Therefore," he says, " presume not either to
give or to receive letters with this false title of universal.
Far from Christian hearts be that blasphemous name, in
which the honour of all priests is taken away, for on this
theory the Pope has the plenitude of power, all other
bishops are only his servants, from him all power is
derived, and he is concurrent ordinary in every diocese,
for oecumenical Bishop means sole bishop. If, therefore,
the oecumenical Bishop should err the whole Church
would fail."* This was the judgment of Pope Gregory
on the doctrine of the Papal supremacy in its ecclesiasti-
cal aspects merely. It proves beyond dispute that the
claim to this supremacy had not been put forth at the
very end of the sixth century. And as all Popes,
according to the Vatican decree, have been alike infallible,
when speaking on questions of docti'ine, it therefore
follows that all the Popes who since the time of Gregory
VII. have claimed this title and headship have, according
to the judgment of their infallible predecessor, been
forerunners of Antichrist. The Papal system was evi-
dently unknown at the time of even the sixth and last
general council, A.D.. 680. It is not referred to or
thought of in any of those great councils, or in the

•This ex cathedra utterance of Gregory I. is according to the Vatican de-
cree infallible, and contradicts in explicit terms the infaUibity decree of that
council.

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

w •)

provincial councils held in England, France and Ger-
many. And the same is true of the earlier North Italian
and African councils.

And yet there is no doubt that the germs out of which
this huge system has been developed are discoverable at
an earlier period than this. The claim grew out of the
Roman primacy. Our Lord tells us that His kingdom is
not of this world ; it does not seek to usurp the powers
of earthly kingdoms, or use their methods or pursue their
ends ; and so the Church did not set itself to overturn
the orders of human society or to subvert human govern-
ments. Its object was to leaven them with its own
regenerating principles, and thus to purify and elevate,
and strengthen and reform them. It therefore conformed
itself as far as possible to the usages of the different parts
of the empire and of the other nations into which it
spread, and for the purposes of its own government
adopted their civi) divisions. The synods of the different
nations, or provinces, or larger divisions of the empire,
assembled at the metropolis or capital city of each. The
bishop of such a city would naturally be given precedence
and elected chairman of the council. Hence there grew
up a system of metropolitans. And in process of time
the bishops of the capitals of the three great continental
divisions of the empire, Antioch, Alexandria and Rome,
were by a sort of tacit consent accorded the presidency
of the councils which from time to time assembled at one
or other of these great centres. Their bishops were early
entrusted witli the guardianship and enforcement of the
canons adopted at these councils, and with a certain
supervising power over the other bishops in their

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

respective divisions. After a while they were called
Patriarchs, though not till after the time of the first
Council of Nice, which recognized the order that had
grown up ; and as questions of precedency had begun to
be agitated, the council fixed the limits of each of these
metropolitical sees and confined that of Rome to the city
and suburbicarian provinces — that is, to Southern Italy,
Corsica, Sardinia, and to Sicily — to which by a decree of the
general Council of Nice the legitimate jurisdiction of
the Bishop of Rome is still confined.

At the same time a primacy of honour and precedency
was accorded to Rome, not because, as is now claimed, it
was the See of St. Peter, but simply and solely because Rome
was the capital of the empire. This origin of the prece-
dency accorded to Rome among the other patriarchates is
distinctly stated on the highest possible authority, viz.,
that of two general councils, Constantinople and Chalce-
don, to have been political and not religious. It was
because Rome was the capital of the empire, " the mistress
city," and not because it was the see of Peter, that the
primacy was given to it. And when Constantinople
became the second capital, it was raised by the second
general council to the honorary dignity of a patriarchate,
and precedency was assigned to it over Alexandria and
Antioch, and next after Rome, " for as much as it is New
Rome." But this primacy of Rome was entirely titular
and honorary. It did not entitle the Bishop of Rome to
interfere in any other patriarchate than his own. The
Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch had each the
same authority; over their respective provinces as he of
Rome had over his. The metropolitan jurisdiction was

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

1i! ^1!

the same which every metropolitan exercised in his own
province. Milan was another metropolitan see in Italy ;
and while Ambrose was archbishop there, it entirely
overshadowed Rome. Aquilia and Ravenna were two
other metropolitan sees and centres of ecclesiastical
government in Italy. And each was entirely independent
of Rome, acknowledging only a primacy of honour in that
see. This primacy of honour, however, soon began to be
pressed by the occupants of the Roman see into one of
right and jurisdiction.

In very early times the Churches which had been
founded by the Apostles themselves were looked up
to with considerable and natural respect as a sorb of
models of apostolic faith and discipline. It was natu-
rally assumed that the mind and teaching of the Apostles
would be better known and remembered in these Churches
than elsewhere; and so when difficulties or disputes
arose, they were naturally referred by mutual consent
to these apostolic Churches for solution ; and as Rome,
in addition to being the capital city of the empire,
was the only apostolic see in the Western Church, these
appeals from the west were naturally made to her. But
as Rome stretched her pretensions she asserted herself to
be the apostolic see, and claimed to be invested with
appellate jurisdiction, and to be a court of final appeal
for the whole Church. Some of the fathers had made
reference to this respect for apostolic sees, and councils
had recognized appeals to them. Rome endeavoured in
later days to fortify her pretensions by the falsification of
these evidences, making them speak of the apostolic see
instead of the apostolic sees, as they actually did. (Mansi
concil ix., 716 and 732.)

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

The absence of the Emperors and the court from
Rome during the time that Christianity was becoming
the religion of the masses — added to the ruin of the
empire with its ancient families by Alaric and Attala
— left the bishop beyond question the greatest person-
age in Rome and one of the greatest in Italy. And
as his influence, so his pride and ambition grew apace.
The imperial city was sinking into insignificance, and
some other and more persuasive foundation for the
assumed superiority of the Bishop of Rome was sought
for. Then the theory that the primacy was based upon
the alleged primacy of Peter among the apostles was put
forth and made the basis of the claim of the Papacy to
univsrsal supremacy. That theory was manifestly an
afterthought. It assumes (1) that Christ gave St. Peter
the supremacy over the other apostles ; (2) that St.
Peter's see was at Rome ; (3) that the supremacy which
Christ gave to St. Peter was to descend to his successors
in that see. We reply that there is no evidence in Holy
Scripture or primitive antiquity that Peter possessed any
such supremacy. It was St. James and not St. Peter who
presided at the first great council in Jerusalem, and who
formulated and declared the decision, the very office
which even liberal Roman Catholics now attribute to
Peter's assumed successor. Would any ordinary apostle
have presumed to preside anc' give judgment in the
presence of the Prince of the Apostles, the infallible head
and universal teacher of the Church ? Would any ordi-
nary bishop ? Would Archbishop Lynch presume to
preside, or be allowed to preside, in a general council,
while the Pope sat by speaking and voting as an ordi-

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

nary member ? "Would any bishop of the Roman obedi-
ence now withstand the Pope to his face, and proclaim to
the world that he was to be blamed in his teaching on a
point that involved both doctrine and discipline ? As St.
Paul tells us, he withstood and denounced St. Peter.
Would any Roman Bishop declare now that he was not a
whit behind the very chiefest bishops, including the
Pope ?

There are three texts which the Roman controver-
sialists adduce to support the assumed supremacy of
St. Peter : 1st. " Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will
build my church." (Matt, xvi., 18.) The rock, however,
does not mean Peter ; and if it did it would not prove
that St. Peter was universal bishop and supreme ruler of
the Church. But the word translated Peter does not
mean a rock at all. For just as there are two words in
English, viz., stone, meaning a detached piece of rock,
great or small, and rock, meaning a solid mass, so there
are two corresponding words in Greek. Now, if the Lord
had meant to say that He would build His Church on
Peter, He would have said, thou art Peter, Petros, a
stone, and upon this Petros, stone, I will build My
Church. But He changed the word to the feminine
Petra, thou art Petros, a stone, and then not upon this
stone, but upon this Petra, this rock which thou hast just
announced, this Christ, this Son of the Living God, will I
build My Church.

It has been said in answer to this that our Lord spoke
in Syriac, as some say, or in Syro-Chaldaic, as others, and
that in that language He c^id not change the word from
stone to rock, but used the same word in both clauses,

THE ORKIIN OF THE PAPACY.

saying, Thou art Cepha, and upon this Cepha I wil) build
my Church. The repiyia that this rests upon mere guess
work, for it is not known now whether our Lord spoke
at that time in Greek or in Syriac.

2ndly. If this unproved assertion first made by Bel-
larmine were true, still we should be obliged to accept the
variation of the Greek, for the inspiring Spirit caused the
truth which our Lord uttered to be recorded in that
language for the guidance of all generations. But 3rdly.
It so happens (though Bellarmine did not know it) that
both the Hebrew and the Syriac word, when it means
rock is feminine, but Cephas, denoting a man's name,
is masculine, and on turning to the passages in the Syriac
version, we find that the feminine pronoun is actually
united to the second pronoun, and not to the first.

Again 4thly. No Roman Catholic can use this plea.
He is shut out from it because he is bound by the
Decrees of Trent to accept the Latin vulgate Bible ds his
only guide, and that version uses two different words,
Petrus and Petram, making 'the same distinction be-
tween a stone and rock that is found in the Greek.

But further, no Roman Catholic teacher, be he bishop,
pope or priest, can iccept or urge upon others the inter-
pretati .n upon which the Papal claims are now made,
wholly to rest, viz., that the rock means Peter, without
involving himself in the guilt of perjury. For the Coun-
cil of Trent decreed, and " we are bound by a solemn
oath," says Professor Dollinger, " which i myself have
twice sworn to accept, to explain the Holy Scriptures not
otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the
Fathers." Ryder, in his reply to Littledale, seeks to

THE OKiaiN OF THE rAI'ACY.

escape from this difficulty by a very disingenuous
device. In pretending to quote from Littledale he
reverses the requirement of Trent, and makes it read that
no one is to teach any thing that contradicts the unanim-
ous consent of the Fathers, and then adds : " Before
unanimity can be contradicted it must be obtained." as
though it were the same thing to say, " Now, you j
not do anything which your Father forbids you to uo,"
as to say you must not do anything, except what your
Father tells you to do. The rule of the Conncil of
Trent is that the clergy must be guided in their
interpretation by the teaching of the Fathers. The rule
of Ryder is that they may teach whatever they like, so
long as it does not contradict the unanimous consent of the
Fathers which he implies cannot be obtained. The learned
Roman Catholic author of Janus asserts that not one of the
Fathers has explained the rock or foundation on wl ' ^b
Christ will build His Church, of the office given to ."
to be transmitted to his successors, but they understood
by it either Christ Himself, or Peter's confession of faith
in Christ, or often both together, or St. Peter person-
ally to whom the incommunicable privilege of laying the
foundation of the Church by admitting first Jews and
then Gentiles into it was granted. This last interpreta-
tion disposes of every one of the patiistic witnesses which
Father Ryder quotes against Littledale. The Roman
Catholic Archbishop of St. Louis (Kenrick), in a speech
prepared for the Vatican Cour3il, and published at
Naples in 1879, declares that Roman Catholics cannot
establish the Petrine privilege from Scripture, because of
theclause in the Creed of Pius the IV., binding them to in-

THE ORI JIN OF THE PAPACY.

terpret Scripture only according to the unanimous consent
of the Fathers. And he adds that there are five different
patristic interpretations of St. M;t.tt., xvi., 18 : (1) That
St. Peter (personally) is the Rock taught by 17 Fathers ;
(2) That the whole Apostolic College represented by St.
Peter is the Rock taught by eight ; (3) That St. Peter's
Faith is the Rock taught by forty-four ; (4) That Christ is
the Rock taught by sixteen ; (.')) That the Rock is the
whole body of the Faithful. Several who teach the (I)
and (2), also tea.ch the (3) and (4), and so the Archbishop
sums up thus, " If we ar'> to follow the greater number of
the Fathers in this matter then we must hold for cer-
tain that the word Peter means not Peter professing the
Faith, but the Faith professed by Peter.''

And as if to shut the mouths of Roman Catholics, the
Council of Trent has decreed that the Nicene Greed, " the
Symbol of the Faith is the one JirTn foundation against
which the gates of Hell hall not prevail." (Sess., iii).

Again in the Roman breviary the collect for the
vigil of St. Peter and St. Puul has the prayer, " Grant, we
beseech Thee, Almighty God, that Thou wouldst not
suffer us whom Thou hast established on the Rock of the
Apostolic Confession to be shaken by any disturbances."

But again, even if the Roman interpretation of these
passages were accepted as conferring upon St. Peter the
same supremacy over the othei Apostles as the Pope now
claims over all the bishops of the world. Then I ask by
what process of reasoning can it be made out that the
words " Thou art Peter " confer upon every occupant
of the Roman See this assumed supremacy. If in the
teeth of the all but universal patristic teaching, the

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

words confeiTed upon Peter a transmissible office, then
how was it transmitted ? How is anv ecclesiastical
office transmitted ? Does the place in which an apostle
exercised that office, or the chair on which he sat, or the
house in which he lived, acting like a charm, confer the
office upon every one who may be elected, or who, like
Damasus, may elect himself to live in that house, or sit
on that chair ? Or is it not the case that if Peter had
this office it could only be conferred by his own act and
ordination.

But if, as Roman Oatholics maintain, St. Peter was
himsc.f the first bishop of Rome (" fixed his see there ")
and was martyred while he held that office. Then,
clearly, he did not confer his own office by the lay-
ing of his own hands upon the second bishop of Rome,
who could not be elected till after his death, and if
Peter did not confer this supremacy on his successor in
the Roman see, who did ? Was it one or more of the
bishops who were not themselves possessed of it ? Could
they give to another what they had not themselves ? But
if to escape this fatal fiaw it be maintained without
a shred of evidence or authority for it, that St. Peter
consecrated his succ3ssor before his martyrdom, and con-
ferred his supremacy and infallibility upon him, that will
only remove the difficulty one step further on, for that
su .cessor did not oidain or consecrate his successor. No
Pope does. He is ordained and consecrated and enthroned
by other bishops and cardinals who have not the supre-
macy, and who cannot give it, unless it be contended that
the gift repides in the whole Church, which acts through
these men, and not in the successors of St. Peter, and that,

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

of course, subverts the very idea of the Papacy. But if it
be contended that the place, the throne, the see confers this
supremacy, then what have the words " thou art Peter "
to do with it ? The see of Rome is not the Rock, or the
Stone. To make that passage in any way capable of the mean-
ing which Roman Catholics attach to it, it ought to have
been said, " thou art Peter ; upon thy see I will build my
Church, and that see shall confer thine own infallibility
and supremacy upon any man, be he murderer, o.' adul-
erer, or Simoniac, or thief, who may secure possession of
that throne ?" But even so, how can it be known without
any divine revelation or authority, that the see of Rome,
and not the see of Antioch, where, according to the
explicit statement of Pope Gregory, I., St. Peter re-
sided as bishop for seven years, before he moved to Rome.
How can it be known that the chair of Peter at Rome,
and not that at Antioch, is the one to which this talis-
manic power of charming the man who sits on it into this
supreme ruler and infallible teacher of the Church resides ?
But even this does not end the difficulty. Suppose it
could be proved, or must be believed without any proof or
authority whatever, that the chair of St. Peter at Rome or
his see located there has this power of acting like a charm,
and making men supreme rulers of the church of Christ,
what then becomes of the Avignon Popes who never
touched the chair of St. Peter, never occupied the see ?
Where did they get their infallibility and supremacy; was
it from the French Kings ? or the German Emperor ? Or,
has the chair of St. Peter at Rome the power of acting at
a distance ? And, if so, according to whose will or inten-
tion does it act ? The will of secular princes or of the men

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

■ li

j !

J.
I
i
il

|i
I

■

themaelves who wanted to be Popes ? Or must it be con-
ceded to inexorable loo^ic that the Churcn during that
whole 70 years, as well as during the Harlot reign, was
as Cardinal Baronius declares without any visible head,
any supreme ruler and infallible teacher. And if for
150 years at one time, and 70 years at another time,
she was without an infallible teacher and guide, what
assurance can we have, on Roman Catholic principles, that
she did not fall into deadly error, and that the very doc-
trine of infallibility and supremacy, which was greatly
developed during these times, is not itself a delusion and
a snare. It seems to me not an unreasonable inference
that if in the Providence of God the Church was left for
230 years at least without any visible head or infallible
teacher, then no such office was ever intended or consti-
tuted in the Church of God, and she has been without it
from the beginning, and is so now.

The text (Luke xxii,, 31-32), "When thou art converted,
strengthen thy brethren," does not surely constitute Peter
the one authoritative and only infallible teacher of the
Church ; it is merely an exhortation to follow the natui'al
religious impulse expressed in Psalm li., 12-13. As to
the declaration, " I will give unto thee the keys of the
Kingdom oi Heaven," most of the Fathers explain it as
being not the act of gift, but only the promise of that
gift of binding and loosing, which Chiist conferred on all
the apostles in common (John xx., 22-23), for they held
the symbol of the keys to mean just the same thing as
the figurative expression of binding and loosing. " Yet*
as Our Lord was pleased to address these words to Peter
only, the better way is to believe that they have a mean-

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

ing applicable to St. Peter alone. And what that mean-
ing is, is declared by Tertullian, the most ancient, and
indeed for some centuries the only Christian writer who
discusses the question. He says that St. Peter was
granted the incommunicable and unrepeatable privilege
and glory of being the first to unlock the doors of the
Kingdom of Heaven to both Jews (Acts ii., 14-41) and
Gentiles (Acts x,, 34-48). And as this was done once for
all, it cannot be done over again by anyone, so that there
is nothing left for the Pope to be special heir to, any
more than the heirs of Columbus, if any be alive, could
enjoy a monopoly of continuing to discover America."
(Littledale.) And indeed, so little satisfied were the
early claimants of papal supremacy with their preten-
ded divine authority fo^ their assumed lordship over
the Church and the world, that they called in the devil
to help them to establish those claims. I am speaking
advisedly and soberly. Cardinal Manning, while he was
still a member of the English Church, said truly, " Men
who use fraud or falsehood or violence or equivocation or
deception to accomplish even righteous ends, do in the
most real and effectual way fall down and worship the
powers of darkness, and make themselves lieges and
worshippers of the devil." Now, it is palpable on every
page of history that when once the Roman pontiffs,
blinded by worldly greed and ambition, conceived the
plan of establishing an absolute ecclesiastical imperialism
over the whole Church, that they presistently resorted to
fraud, and falsehood, and violence of the most inconceivable
wickedness, to overturn the ancient constitution of the
Catholic Church, and to establish their own papal auto-

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

» :\

cracy in its place. Read " Ranke's History of the Popes."
Read " Thierry's History of the Norman Conquest." Read
Finery's " History of the Church." Read the book en-
titled "The Papacy," by the Abbe Gatt^e. Read Pere
Gratry's " Letters to Dechamp." Read " The History
of the Inquisition," or if you have not time for this,
read the book entitled "The Pope and the Council."
Read Dr. Littledale's "Plain "Reasons," and if you do
not stand aghast at the authenticated proof there given
of the deliberate, systematic falsehood and forgery that
were practised, the unscrupulous bartering of every spiri-
tual interest for political power or worldly gain, then it is
because you have no conscience left that can be shocked
by the most unmeasured wickedness.

This work of forgery began before the idea of papal
imperialism was conceived. The very first attempt to
stretch the prerogatives of the primacy into the right
of hearing appeals from other Churches was based
upon a forgery. The great African Church of the
fifth century, with its more than five hundred bish-
ops, had passed a decree forbidding any appeals to be
carried outside its own boundary. Appiarius, a priest of
bad character, had been deposed by an African council.
And he, in spite of the canon, appealed to the Bishop of
Rome, and the Pope, Boniface I. tendered proof through
his legate from the oanonsof the Council of Nice, giving
the Pope a right to hear appeals from foreign churches.
The bishops assembled at Carthage were amazed ; they
had never heard of such a Nicene canon. They had
authenticated copies of the Nicene canons sent from
Alexandria and Antioch, and found that there was no

''jm.

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

trace of such a law there, that the pretended canon wa« a
mutilated copy of a canon passed at the local synod of
Sardica, which was never accepted by the Eastern and
African churches. And so the Synod wrote to the Pope,
rebuking him for the attempted fraud, and telling him
that nothing should make them tolerate such insolent
conduct on the part of the Papal envoys, that is in fact on
his own part, as they were only discharging his com-
mission. (Epist Pontif (Ed Const) p. 113 non sumus
jam istum typhum passuri). This letter was signed,
amongst others, by the illustrious St. Augustin. In
spite of this the same fraud was attempted for the
same purpose by Celestine, 424. And the African
Synod again forced the proof of the fraud upon him,
and emphatically repudiated his claim to jurisdiction.
(Cod. Eccl., Afric, cxxxviii.) The same fraud was at-
tempted by Leo the Great, and for the fourth time
by Felix III., in his attempt to coerce Acacius of Con-
stantinople. \^Fleury, Hist, Eccl., xxvii , 43) Again,
the Roman legates at the Council of Chalcedon, 451, pro-
duced a forged copy of the Nicene canons, containing in
the sixth canon, the words, " the Roman see has always
had the primacy," of which there is no syllable in the
original, The fraud was exposed in the council to the
confusion of the Roman legates by reading the original.
It is narrated by St. Jerome as a matter of history that
Constantino the Great was baptized on his death bed in
Nicomedia, an Asiatic city, by Eusebius, the bishop.
Nevertheless a fable was invented at Rome in the fifth
century, that the Empc )r was a leper and was healed cf
his disease by means of baptism administered lo him by

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

.♦111

Pope Sylvester ; and this falsehood, invented for a poli-
tical purpose which it effectually served, holds its place in
the Roman Breviary and is read by every priest on De-
cember 31st of each year. Other fabrications followed in
the sixth century, e. g., the forged acts of the council of
Sinuessa, and the legend of Pope Marcellinus, the forged
constitution of Sylvester, the forged gesta of Liberius and
Pope Xystus III., the pretended history of Polychrymous,
exhibiting the Pope, 435, judging an Eastern patriarch.
Then the forged letter of the council of Nice to Pope
Sylvester, and his reply, and the acts of the council held
by him. Then the famous passage in St. Cyprian's book,
on the unity of the Church, was amended by a fabrication
which first appears in Pope Pelagius II.'s letter to the
Istrian bishops. St. Cyprian said that all the Apostles
received from Christ equal power and authority with
Peter. This was too glaring a contradiction of the papal
claims that were now being put forward, so the Pope
interpolated these words, " the primacy was given to
Peter to show the unity of the Church and of the chair.
How can he believe hioiself to be in the Church who for-
sakes the chair of Peter ? " This forgery was quoted as
genuine by Archbishop Lynch or by one of his priests, in
a controversy with] myself a few years ago. Then fol-
lowed, in the year 730, the first edition of the Liber
Pontificalis, every historical notice of which is false.
Its special object was to represent the Pope as teacher
of doctrine and supreme judge of men. This book
thoroughly misled our own Bede and prepared the way
in the west for the reception of the fabrications of
Isidore. After the middle of the eighth century the

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

oli-
ein
De-
i in
1 of
rged

fable about the baptism of Constantine by Pope Sylvester
is enlarged into the pretended donation of Constantine, a
forgery which was successfully palmed oft' on Pepin, king
of France. In 754, Pope Stephen III. forged a letter
(still extant, in the name of the Apostle Peter) to Pepin,
his adopted son, king of the Franks, in consequence of
which that monarch bestowed on the Pontiff" a large terri-
tory containing more than 20 cities. And this was the
foundation and beginning of the temporal power of the
Pope, Fleury, in recording this event, describes it as an
artifice witout parallel before or since in church history.
And another eloquent Roman Catholic writer says it was
a falsification which for strangeness and audacity has
never been exceeded.

But in spite of these dishonest attempts to push
the claims of the Papacy, no change had taken place
at the beginning of the ninth century, in the constitu-
tion of the Church, as I have described it, and es-
pecially none as to the authority for deciding matters
of faith. But about the middle of that century, 845,
was put forth the fabrication of the Isidorian decretals
— a forgery before which all its predecessors sink into
insignificance, and which gradually resulted in that com-
plete change of the constitution of the Church which
1 have described. About a hundred pretended decrees
of councils and formal official letters of the earliest
Popes were fabricated in the West of Gaul by Isidore
Mercator and were eagerly seized upon by Pope Nicholas
I., and were used both by him and his successors — especi-
ally by Gregory VII. — as genuine documents to support
the new and extravagant claims which they put forth.

>!T ,^

•- i!'

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

Dr. Li ledale says "that Pope Nicholas I. solemnly and
publicly lied about these forgeries, assuring certain
Frankish bishops that the Roman Church had long pre-
served all these documents with honour in her archives,
and that every writing of a Pope was binding on the
whole Church, knowing as he must have known that not
one of these forgeries was or ever had been laid up in
their archives." Not only so, but though these forgeries
have been known and acknowledged as such for more
than three centuries, as, for instance, by Cardinals Baron-
ius and Bellarmine, the two greatest Ultramontane
writers, and by Pope Pius VI. himself, who said they
ought to be burned; yet they are still wrought into the
whole texture of the Roman canon law, which is largely
made up of them. They are quoted as genuine in Liguo-
ri's " Moral Theology," the chief text book on this subject
in the Roman Church, to prove Papal Infallibility, and
they have been inserted in a new edition of the Breviary
by the above-named Cardinals, who knew that they were
false. I think I have said enough to justify my strong
language about the forgeries. I can multiply proofs a
hundred-fold to any who may desire it, for the system
thus audaciously begun was imitated with unfaltering
step by man}'' successors, and has been carried on up to
our own time. Cardinal Wiseman was deeply involved ;
and even Cardinal Newman, the soul of truth and honour
when with us, has not escaped this terrible contagion and
guilt. Forgeries and lies go hand in hand, and are alike
the foundation of Rome's practical system to-day. Dr.
Littledale, who has searched this subject through and
through, says : — " Nevertheless, the Roman Church, which

THE ORiaiN OF THE PAPACY.

and
irtain
; pre-
hives,
n the
Eit not
up in
•geries

more
Baron-
ontane
d they
ito the
largely
Ligno-
subject
ty, and

professes to worship him who said, ' I am the truth,' is
honeycombed through and through with accumulated
falsehood, and things have come to this pass that no
statement whatever, however precise and circumstantial,
no reference to authorities, however frank and clear, to
be found in a Roman controversial book, or to be heard
from the lips of living controversialists, can be taken as
true, nor accepted, indeed, without rigorous search and
verification. The thing may be true, but there is not so
much as a presumption in favour of its proving so when
tested. Truth, pure and simple, is almost never to be
found, and the whole truth in no case whatever. Nor is
this to be wondered at when Liguori, the most authorita-
tive teacher of morals in the Roman Church, lays down that
equivocation is certainly lawful at all times, and may be
confirmed with an oath for a just cause, any cause being
just which aims at retaining any good things that are
useful to body or spirit, while mental reservation, so long
as it is not pure, that is not such unqualified lying as
leaves the hearer no possible loophole through which he
may, by exceptional shrewdness, guess at the truth, is
always lawful for a just cause ; and as no cause would be
more just in Roman eyes than to win a convert, it follows
that every security exists for the use of deceit in contro-
versy." The Rev. E. S. Foulkes, who, in the early days
of the Oxford movement, verted to the Church of Rome,
but after seventeen vears' trial came back to us again in
utter horror at what he had proved the Roman practical
system to be, writes : — " I have occupied the greater part
of my life in the study of ecclesiastical history, first as a
member of the Church of England, and then as a member

(52

THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPACY.

.■si I

of the Roman communion, and the deliberate conviction
to which I was constrained to come, while yet a member
of the Roman Catholic body, was this : That if ever there
was a system that deserved to have the words 'man-
slayer' and 'liar' branded on the most conspicuous part
of it, in indelible characters, it is the existing system of
the Roman Catholic Church." This charge is more than
proved by Pere Gratry in his letters to Decharap, which
to the utter confusion and dismay of the Papal court
were published at Rome during the session of the Vatican
Council, page after page teems with instances of the falsi-
fication of Fathers, of the decrees of Councils and Popes
of false deduction of garbled passages (chapter and verse
given for each), so that he does not hesitate to say, It is a
system utterly gangrened by fraud. I have been cramped
all through for time. I have, however, said enough to
show, not only that the Roman Church differs, in consti-
tution, but that in its inner spirit and life it differs toto
ado from the Catholic Church.

On Sunday evening next I will go with Archbishop
Lynch in examining the practical results of the system
that rests upon this foundation. May the Holy Spirit of
Truth descend in all his illuminating, convicting power
upon those who thus come to us demanding our sub-
mission with a lie in their right hand. May He lead
them back into the land of righteousness and truth, and
give them repentance true and deep for the sin that they
have sinned, not only against their brethren, but against
the God of truth, whom they profess to serve.

LECTURE IV.

THE PEACTICAL RESUJ.TS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY AND INFAL-
LIBILITY.

Walk about Zion and go round about her ; tell the towers there-
of.

Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces ; that ye may tell
it to the generation following. — Psalm xlviii, 12, 13.

IN endeavouring to follow out the duty to which we are
here called, we saw last Sunday evening that the Papal
system of the present day is not the Catholic Church ;
that it is a mere disfiguring excresence on the organiza-
tion of the Church, hindering and discomposing the
action of its vital powers, and bringing manifold evils in
its train. Further that it is an excrescence which had no
existence at the beginning — which in its faint outline was
rejected with abhorrence by Pope Gregory the Great, at the
very end of the sixth century, and which only gradually
developed itself into its present portentous proportions,
and won its way to acceptance in the tenth and following
centuries. It based itself first upon the invention of the
untenable Petrine claims, and then upon forgeries and
falsifications endless, which from the sixth century for-

V I

! ■

^4|f'

KESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

ward were put forth and used in the interests of the
Papacy, and became its chief instruments in deceiving,
and then enslaving one after another the nations of West-
ern Europe. No one acquainted with the history of the
times can for a moment doubt that the Pajjal sovereignty
over tlie Church and the world, as proclaimed by Hilde-
brand and his successors, grew ou ' of and rests upon these
forgeries.

We would naturally suppose that men could not thus
lay unauthorized hands upon the ark of God ; that they
could not thus, according to Cardinal Manning's teaching,
call in the devil to help them to re-fashion thr Catholic
Church without the Divine vengeance overtaking them
sooner or later. Archbishop Lynch, however, tells us
that the reverse of this is the case ; that the house whose
walls were thus built up of forgeries and falsehood stands
before us to-day as the very ideal of perfection and sta-
bility, the owned of God, the admired of men, the one
only refuge for sinners. The Scripture, he says, interpreted
by the teaching body of the Catholic Church, that is, by
the Pope and bishops in council, " is unity and doctrine.
No two Catholics can differ from one another ; the same
doctrine is preached in Rome, China, Australia and
America." And over against this picture is exhibited in
bright light the confusion and contradictions that prevail
amongst those who claim to interpret the Scriptures
according to their own private judgment. And no- .s^t
the contrast as painted by the Archbishop ^''■ v.iv
sive to many minds. Thoughtful peopl oi c. he
divisions and strifes among Christians area hame nd a
weakness, and plain people can see from their owi !Vibles

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

that this alienation of those who believe in the one Lord
Jesus Christ and worship the one God and Father is not
according to the mind of Christ Jesus ; nay, that it is a
direct contradiction of His will. And many a distracted
soul has longed for some voice of authority that could
command and quell the strife, some infallible teacher that
could proclaim the truth without the possibility of mistake
or error, and in very weariness of the strife some — not
many — have resolved to stifle their own reason, and con-
science and knowledge of the facts of history, and seek to
divest themselves of their own individual responsibility
by submitting unconditionally to him of Rome, who claims
to be divinely appointed and inspired to discharge this
very office among men.

The idea is a fascinating one. It seems to attain by the
shortest road, in the simplest way, and with the least
waste of time, what the ancient Church spent so much
trouble upon, agitated and discussed for so long a time,
and only settled at last by the slow and expensive process
of a council. If infallibility can be accepted as a rule of
faith, it becomes a soft cushion on which the mind, as
well of cleric as of layman, may repose and abandon itself
to undisturbed slumber. It is so much easier to hand the
whole matter over to one individual to settle tor us,
than to be always " contending for the faith," always
" examining ourselves whether we be in the faith," always
" taking heed to ourselves and to the doctrine," always
"proving all things that we may hold fast that which is
good." But the fact that it would be easier for us if the
Roman claims were true, does not prove that they are true.
The ostrich, wearied with the race, thinks that it would

■''II

M-4 :l

'-'^/j

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

be easier just to hide its head in the sand than to toil on
any longer. The young dreamer thinks that it would be far
easier if someone would leave him a large fortune than
for him to have to earn his bread all his days in the sweat
of his brow. But God, who knows what is best, has de-
creed that it is better for him and for the vast majority of
fallen men to have to toil on to the end to secure a subsist-
ence. So, too, it would be easier to be put in possession at
once of all knowledge £ id all truth. But God has willed that
for the exercise and improvement of our faculties, for the
trial of our faith, for the increase of our spiritual life, we
must attain to the one and the other by study and thought,
and toil and care ; and in the exercise of that study and
toil His Church, in w^hich the Holy Spirit dwells, as the
one only Vicar of Christ upon earth, is our infallible
teacher, lighting us on our way by her testimony through
all her history to those great truths which she has wit-
nessed to and defined in her general councils, and pro-
claimed in her creeds.

But to return to Archbishop Lynch. He tells us that
the Holy Scriptures are to be interpreted by the teaching
body of the Catholic Church, that is, by " the Pope and
bishops in council." The deBnition, you will observe, is
an odd one. It is not the Roman Catholic definition.
" The bishops and council " are thrown in for Protestant
ears. The Vatican decree is that when the Pope, without
any reference to bishops or council, discharges " the office
of pastor and teacher of all Christians, he is possessed of
infallibility in defining doctrines concerning faith and
morals, and that these definitions are of themselves irre-
formabie, because they are the decrees of the Roman

ntlSULTS OP PAPA.L AtfTOCRACY.

ihat

lung

Pontiff, and not because of the consent of the Church."
That is without reference to either the bishops or council
which Dr. Lynch throws in. The meaning of this is ex-
plained by Bellarmine, the great Ultramontane doctor, to
be this : " Whatever doctrine it pleases the Pope to pre-
scribe, the Church must receive ; there can be no question
raised ; she must blindly renounce all judgment of her
own, and firmly believe that all the Pope teaches is abso-
lutely true, all he commands absolutely good, and all he
forbids simply evil and noxious. For the Pope can as
little err in moral as in dogmatic questions. Nay, he goes
so far as to maintain that if the Pope were to err by pre-
scribing sins and forbidding virtues, the Church would
be bound to consider sins good and virtues evil.'' (De
Rom. Pont. IV., 5, p. 456.) Or, as Bishop Cornelio Musso,
of Bitonto, expresses \t : " What the Pope says, we must
receive as though spoken by God Himself. In divine
things we hold him to be God. In matters of faith I had
rather believe one Pope than a thousand Augustines,
Jeromes or Gregories." (Consciones in Ep ad Rom.
p. 606). Or, as a Jesuit Father has it : " When the Pope
speaks on a doctrinal question everyone must sacrifice
his understanding and submit blindly, and especially the
bishops as patterns to their flocks."

This is what Archbishop Lynch parades as the Catholic
mode of interpreting the Scriptures. But I beg to
tell his Grace that it is just as far from the Catholic
mode of intei pretation as is that of the man who in
the exercise of his private judgment claims the right to
attach any meaning to the sacred words that may com-
mend itself to him. The Catholic doctrine, as to interpre-

SSB

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

tation, is that neither the individual man nor an indi-
vidual Pope has any right to " prescribe," as Bellarmine
expresses it, any doctrine whatever. The faith was once
for ail delivered to the saints. No new doctrines can be
found out or imposed. The whole Church in her corpo-
rate capacity is the divinely appointed interpreter ; but
even the Church cannot disclose any new doctrine. She
cannot create anything, but only protect and witness to,
and explore and define, and apply the deposit she hai
inherited. She does not give opinions or express judg-
ments as to what she thinks the truth is, or ought to be ;
she bears witness to what the truth from the beginning
has been. And the meaning of a judgment passed in one
of her councils, on any point ^of doctrine is simply this :
" Thus have our predecessors, back to the days of the
Apostles, believed, thus do we believe, and thus will they
who come after us believe, for this was the doctrine de-
livered to the saints from the beginning."

So that the mode of interpretation to which Archbishop
Lynch and the whole Roman communion is now com-
mitted, though he calls it Catholic, is as radically and
totally different from the Catholic mode as that of 'he
extremest Protestant. It is in effect precisely the same
thing. The one sets up his individual self, and the other
the individual Pope, not as the investigator of and wit-
ness to the old truth, but as the inventor and imposer of
new truths. But however radically the Roman mode of
interpretation may differ from the Catholic, Archbishop
Lynch tells us it works admirably well. It has produced
" unity of doctrine ; " no two Catholics can differ from
one another, etc.

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

But has the Archbishop forgotten the difference that is
raging at the present time between the maximizers who
so interpret the doctrine of the infallibility as to claim
divine authority for every casual utterance of a Pope on
any religious or moral question, and of the minimizers
who, regardless of the Vatican decree, hold that the Pope
is only infallible when he proclaims a decision at which
a general council has arrived ? Cardinal Manning heads
the one party in England (Petri privilequim, pp. 34!-39)
and Cardinal Newman (letter to the Duke of Norfolk)
leads the other. Has his Grace forgetten the absolute
contradiction between the teaching of the Irish, Scotch,
and American episcopate about the question of the Pope's
personal infallibility and his own enforced teaching now 'i
When he speaks of unity of doctrine, has his Grace for-
gotten that Cardinal Newman denounces as a "bad dream"
that teaching about the Blessed Virgin which is found in
Liguori's "Moral Theology ? " Has he forgotten the fierce
doctrinal struggle between the Jesuits and Jansenists,
both recognized by Popes as good Catholics till the Jesuits
gained the mastery over the Papacy itself ? Has his
Grace forgetten the jealousies of the rival religious orders,
as, for instance, that which raged for centuries between
the Franciscans and Dominicans, a strife which in-
volved grave questions of theology, and which was carried
on with exceeding rancour and bitter hostility. Does
he forget that it was the disputings and quarrellings be-
tween the Jesuit, Franciscan, Dominican and Capuchin
orders, which wrecked and ruined the hopeful beginnings
of their missions in China ? Does he foj'get that the
various orders which arose in the Latin Church precisely

■ ' I,

ifmrwimrmmiiwwjMiiaMJ

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

■ s»

resembled the Protestant sects and far surpassed them in
denominational rivalry and rancour ? Does he forget the
strife between the regulars and the parochial clergy, be-
tween the Jesuits and Seculars ? Does he forget the 39
anti-Popes and the powerful factions which followed
them and deluged the land with blood ? Does he not
know that in a large number of instances the duly elected
Pope was set aside merely because his intruding rival had
stronger friends, larger armies and a longer purse ? Does
he forget that Pope Damasus, elected by the Arian fac-
tion, settled the dispute between himself and Ursinicus,
elected by the Catholic party, by putting himself at the
head of an armed rabble and taking by storm the churches
where his opponents were collected, and that he inaugu-
rated his work of infallible teacher by committing fright-
ful slaughter ? Does he forget that Innocent II., who
was unquestionably the anti-Pope, through the assis-
tance of several European monarchs, ousted Anicletus
II., who had been duly elected, and by the aid of an in-
vading army took his seat on the Papal throne ?

Unity of doctrine, harmony, brotherly love and peace
within the Church of Rome ! It is a beautiful picture, but
where is the reality ? There is actually no Church in the
whole world which has been so openly, so frequently and
so fatally divided and rent by schisms as the Church of
Rome. It is the Church of many and ever-changing re-
ligions. It has changed its faith twice within the last
thirty years. There is, no doubt, outward uniformity in
the Church of Rome ow, especially when it is under the
inspection of Protestants ; but it is an enforced unifor-
mity, which is obtained by the suppression of reason and
conscience, and historical knowledge and common sense.

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

.he

And surely if this Catholic interpretation, as Archbishop
Lynch calls it, this infallible teaching and guidance be
any good, it ought to have produced the unity of which
he boasts all along ; for the Pope has always been infal-
lible. A costly vase which is offered to our admiration,
for its freedom from the smallest flaw must fail to pro-
duce the desired effect if the marks of cement and rivet-
ing be clearly visible all over it, showing that however
skilfully pieced and mended now, it was once shattered
to fragments — (Littledale), and is only held in its seeming
unity by artificial means. It recjuired the long pontifi-
cate of Pius IX., and the gradual filling of almost every
see in Latin Christendom with his dutiful nominees to
achieve even this result, a result which has been brought
about by such a complete divergence from the constitu-
tion and teachings of the ancient Catholic Church that
Rome is no longer in either respect one with it.*

But if it be a divinely revealed dogma, as the Vatican
decree asserts, that the Pope is the infallible pastor and

* And the result of this oppression, as might have been expected, has
been to drive not thousands but millions of men out of the Roman Church
into the ranks of violent scepticism. And not only so, but the feud be-
tween the Tiiberals and Ultraniontanes has become so violent that the Pope
himself has been compelled to interfere. The letter of Pope Leo XIIL to
the Papal Nuncio at Paris shows how beautiful and inviting the unity of
which Archbishop Lynch boasts, really is. Writing to his own special
supporters, the Ultramontane joui-nalists, the Pope says, " their passionate
controversies, their personal attacks, their constant accusations and recrim-
inations, by adding daily fuel to dissension, render conciliation and broth-
erly harmony more and more difficult." And then he exhorts them to
cease wasting their time and strength in attacking each other and thus
giving everj' advantage to the impious designs of their enemies. This ac-
cording to the infallible authority, is the truer reality. It corresponds not
with the Archbishop's brilliant picture. ,.,;.,

lif

^ iS|

' i

■',ii

- 11

' m

'It

BESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

If"

■'i

teacher of all Christian people when he speaks ex cathedra,
then one would expect some sort of congruity between
the character of the individual and the high office of
divinely inspired and infallible teacher which he is
called to discharge. One would suppose that the
grace which so inspired him, and the sense of respon-
sibility which his high office must carry with it, would at
least change and elevate his character ; that the grace of
infallibility, which is to confer such unspeakable blessings
upon the whole Church, would bless him first, who is the
subject of this grace. And yet what was the character of
the men who occupied the Papal throne in the years that
followed the full developement of the Papal claims ? Cob-
bett, who has been flung at us lately as an impartial his-
torian, whose statements cannot be disproved, says, as a
writer in the Mail quotes him : " If we look into the
history of the Popes we shall find reason to conclude that
they were the most abandoned and flagitious of mortals,
who hesitated not at the perpetration of any crime to ac-
complish their purpose. Even popish writers admit that
no throne was ever filled with such monsters of immo-
rality as the chair of St. Peter. They are described as
having been not only detestable in themselves, but as
having given occasion by their example to the perpetration
of all sorts of wickedness, imposture, delusion, oppression,
robbery, tyranny, murder and massacre." And Cobbett
in this instance, had good authority for what he said.
For Cardinal Baronius, a most devoted son of the Church,
speaking of the Roman Church in the tenth century says :
*' What was then the semblance of the Holy Roman
Church ? As foul as it could be ; when harlots, superior

KESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

in power as in profligacy, governed at Rome. At whose
will sees were transferred, bishops were appointed, and,
what is horrible and awful to say, their paramours were
intruded into the see of St. Peter ; — false pontifts who are
set down in the catalogues of Roman Pontiffs merely for
chronological purposes ; for who can venture to say that
persons thus basely intruded by such courtezans were
legitimate Roman Pontiffs ? No mention can be found of
their election or subsequent consent on the part of the
clergy. All the canons were buried in oblivion, the .
decrees of the Popes stifled, the ancient traditions put
under ban, and the old customs, sacred rites, and former
usages in the election of the chief pontiff were quite
abolished. * * You can imagine as you please what
sort of presbyters and deacons were chosen as cardinals
by these monsters." " The Church was then without a
Pope, but not without a head. Its spiritual head never
abandoned it." . ,

He is describing a period covering the reigns of thirteen
Popes, but Gilbert Genebard, Archbishop of Aix, greatly
extends the time. He says that during nearly 150 years
about fifty Popes had fallen away from the virtues of
their predecessors, being apostatical rather than apostoli-
cal. (Genebard Chron., sec. IV., Anno 007.) Again, at
the end of the fifteenth century, came a group ofj^ontifts
as bad as in the darkest times of the harlot reigns, Sextus
W., Innocent VIII., and worst of all, Alexander
VI., the Nero of the Papacy, one of the vilest criminals
that ever lived ! Though a vowed celibate, he was both
the father and the paramour of Lucretia. His election
was simonaical, he was chosen Pope by means of pur-
E

74'

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

|i K

ill I

m'i''-

chased votes. He systematically sold the cardinalate to the
highest bidder, so that there were no true cardinals, be-
causehe had no right, by reason of his own simony to nomi-
nate at all, and because by their own simony the whole
transaction, according to the canon law of the Roman
Church, was invalidated. Henry VIII. was a man of pure
and noble life when compared with this wretch. Yet this
Borgian Pope sat on the altar of St. Peter to he adored as
the vicar of Christ, and exercised spiritual jurisdiction
over the Church of Christ. These the fr^iits of the Papal
sovereignty ! These the divinely inspired infallible teach-
ers of all Christian people ! When Alexander VI. died
there was no validly created cardinal left for the election
of a new Pope, so that on Papal principles the Petrine
succesion was here irremediably broken, and there
has been no valid Pope of Rome since the year 1492.
Therefore, according to the strict interpretation of Roman
Canon law, there is no apostolic jurisdiction, mission, or
succession, left in the world. All the eggs have been put
into one basket, and not one has withstood the fall. The
English Church, and indeed the whole Catholic Church,
can never be reduced to such an absurd position. For the
ancient theory expressed by St. Cyprian's well known
words " Episcopaius unus est cujus a singulif^ in solidum
pars tenetur." The Episcopate is a unity of which each
member exercises to the full all its powers and privileges
(literally of which a part is held by each individual for the
combined Episcopate, or in joint tenancy). On this old
Catholic theory there can never be loss of apostolic juris-
diction or mission, unless every bishop in the world died
at the same moment. If only one bishop were left he

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

or
put
The
urch,
>r the
tiown
duni
each
leges
Dr the
old

would possess the power to re-bishop the world. Not
so with the Roman Church. All jurisdiction and mis-
sion is centered in the Pope. A failure or flaw there-
fore, in the Papal line brings the whole fabric to the
ground." (Rev. Mr. Davenport.)

It will, perhaps, be said that these Popes have never
spoken ex cathedra. For some Roman theologians of the
minimizing school maintain that the Popes up to the
present day have only once spoken with the formalities
necessary to make their utterances ex cathedra and infal-
libly binding, and that was when Pins IX., on December
8th, 1854, decreed the Immaculate Conception of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. But unfortunately that tenet was
denounced by orthodox Catholics, including fourteen
Popes, for a thousand years, as a heresy, and is con-
trary to the well-nigh unanimous consent of the Fathers,
and therefore, forbidden under oath to be taught by any
Roman Catholic divine. And surely if this one pro-
nouncement were the sum total of the benefit which has
accrued to the Church by this one-man headship and
infallible teacher which Archbishop Lynch tells us is
necessary to the Church, it is not worth preaching about,
still less is it worth all the forgeries, and blood, and tears
which its establishment has cost.

But taking the common sense view of the meaning of
the Vatican decree, the one which it was manifestly in-
tended to bear, and grammatically does bear, " that when
a Pope speaks publicly on a point of doctrine or discipline,
either of his own accord or in answer to questions address-
ed to him, he does speak ex cathedra." Then where is
the great benefit and blessing that has accrued from this

' i
\i li

L -4- -

i ill

EESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

subversion of ancient Catholic usage in declaring the
truth ? What practical advantage has ever accrued to
the Church from the utterances of this infallible teacher ?
Not one solitary example is to be found in the whole of
Church history of any great struggle or difficult question
being decided by the Pope's interference. Not one of the
great heresies was put down in this way, but always by a
council or by some private theologian. And what reliance
can be placed by any sane man on the guidance of infal-
lible teachers, who not only contradict one another, as the
Popes flatly and flagrantly do, but more than once con-
tradict themselves ? What help has ever been derived
from this infallible voice ? Surely, if ever there was an
occasion when that guidance ought to have been used, and
to have been of use, it was in the early part of the
sixteenth century. " Europe was then," Dr. Dollinger
says, "in a state of thf extremest excitement, and
the whole religious edifice seemed tottering to its fall.
The most discordant doctrines in sharp antagonism to
all previous teaching were forcing their way to the
front. Never had there been a period in all Christian
history when the perplexity of men's minds had been
so great, and the people left to themselves so utterly
helpless,as in the forty-three years from 1520 to 1563," Yet
the Popes, according to the latest theory the sole infal-
lible teachers of mankind, kept silence. Not a single doc-
trinal bull of that whole period exists. One whole generation
was suffered to grow up in Europe and another to pass to
its grave without knowing what the infallible chair in
Rome bade them believe, on the gravest religious ques-
tions. German bishops, like Fabre, of Vienna, made the

li'

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

moat moving representations. "The whole generation," he
said, " whose birth and youth coincided with the time of
this groat controversy, knew not what was the true reli-
gion, and if this continued men would become thoroughly
godless and atheistical." But all was in vain ; the Popes
persisted in their policy of silence. And many who waited
and wished for some voice to guide them were swept
away in that swelling tide which swept three-fourths of
Western Europe out of the Roman obedience.

And this is only an example of what has been and will
continue to be the action of this infallible teachsr and
guide, in every great crisis of human thought, in every
great perplexity and trial of faith. What one doctrinal
direction of any practical importance, what interpretation,
t\ ^t is of the least help to the Christian in his daily tem-
tationsand struggles, has issued from this infallible chair,
even since the promulgation of its lofty claims ? — the anii-
Catholic creed of Pope Pius IV., the anti-Catholic doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception, the atrocious sentiments
of the Syllabus, and the self-contradicting doctrine of
Papal infallibility. But what help or guidance do they
give, even if they were true, to the Roman Catholic in
living a Christian life, which is not possessed by other
men ; and what help can be obtained from this source ?
The Pope is necessarily so occupied with the mere busi-
ness of his vast administration that he has no time to
devote to interpretations or to teaching, and does not
attempt it. But on this head I have said enough.

I should like to have had time to trace the effects of
this overthrow of the ancient Catholic constitution and
spirit in the practical affairs of the Church and the world.

tfi

firf

RESULTS OF PAPAL AUTOCRACY.

,i I

w '•)

But I must pass this by and hasten on to the points of
doctrinal difference between the Roman Church and the
Catholic Church. The Roman Church differs widely from
the Catholic Church in constitution, in spirit, in practice,
and has reaped as the result of her interference with the
House that God built, not strength but strife, and cor-
ruption, and weakness, and confusion.

May God the Three in One deliver us evermore from
all false doctrine, heresy and schism. May he keep us
steadfast in the faith and communion of the Catholic
Church.

'1-':'

V ,

3;:;f

■I p

■'f ■■',■}' '

.*■'.'

• -'■'•■■,.1, ■.•-■' 'I

.'C'R:

i i!

LECTURE V. . ^

THE WAY TN WHICH THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY WAS OB-
TRUDED UPON THE CHURCHES OF WESTERN EUROPE.

Walk about Zioiij and go round about her : tell the towers
thereof.

Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces ; that ye may
tell it to the generation following. — Psalm xlviii., 12, 13.

N trying to follow out the duty here enjoined we liave

seen

1. That the Catholic Church of the first days was a
visible, organized society, which began at Jerusalem and
extended itself in ever-widening circles, first into one
land and then into another, till it filled all the world, and
has reached down to us.

2. That for two hundred years we hear nothing of the
superiority of one bishop over another.

3. Then, out of the mere necessities of government, as
difficulties and disputes arose, they were referred by a
natural instinct to churches where one or other of the
Apostles had lived and taught, and where it was felt that
the apostolic interpretation and traditional usage would
be best known.

Vs'i

::|j

■ s

,i • 1

a matm JLAimmimwtr ow w

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

i;J

4. Out of this there grew up the system of metro-
politici.'- sees, whose bishops presided at the Provincial
Synods that were held in their see cities. No doubt, the
rank and importance of the city politically, or as a centre
of civilization, intelligence and Christian activity, had its
weight in determining these metropolitical sees.

5. Then, by -xn equally natural instinct, the bishops of
the capitals of the three great continental divisions of
the Empire, Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, acquired a
some-'/hat similar patriarchal jurisdiction over the metro-
politans of the European, African and Asiatic sub-divi-
sions of the one Church.

6. And among these the Bishop of Eome, the capital of
the world, was conceded a primacy of honour and pre-
cedence. Two general councils solemnly assert that that
precedence was based upon Rome's political importance,
as the capital of the Empire ; and they give no hint of
any inherent right she had to that position by virtue of
any Petrine claims. .^-

7. The appeals that were naturally made by mutual
consent from all parts of the West to the Bishop and
Church of the Imperial City — which was also reputed to
be the or.ly apostolic si',e of the West — were soon trans-
formed into the rights of an apj-ellate jurisdiction over
those churches.

8. T' "s c^aim was based wholly for a long time on a
canon of the local Council of Sardica, which gave the
bishops of the provinces represented permission to appeal,
not to the bishops of Rome generally, but to a particular
1 ishop of that city, Julius II. The conons of this local
synod were, either by accident or detiign, bound up with

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

the canons of the General Council of Nice ; and the one
referring to appeals to Pope Julius was again and again
quoted, with necessary changes and interpolations, as a
canon of the General Council of Nice, and as binding
therefore, upon the whole Church. This was the on!}'
ground upon which the Roman bishops for generations
based their claim, not to infallibility, nor even to sapre-
macy, but to the right to hear appeals from other
Churches.

9. Then the assumed supremacy of St. Peter over the
other Apostles was seized upon, and it was asserted that
that supremacy descended from St. Peter to the bishops
of Rome, though it is onlj'- a vague guess that St. Peter,
was ever at Rome at all, and a vaguer one still that he
was ever bishop of that city ; while it is a wholly ground-
less assumption, without one particle of evidence of any
kind to support it, that, even if St. Peter possessed the
supremacy ascribed to him, he intended to transmit, or did
transmit, that supremacy to the bishops of Rome, and
not to the bishops of Antioch or some of the other
Churches over which he presided for a longer or shorter
period.

10. But as this claim was felt to })e too vajrue and
unreliable to support the ambitious projects which the
bishops of Rome began to entertain, first of extending
their patriarchal juri -v^^ction, and then of establishing
their sovereignty over the whole Church, intt'rpolations
and forgeries of the most subversive and wholesale char-
acter were resorted to now, t(^meet every emergency.

I had intended, as I announced last Sunda}'^, to pass
from a hurried consideration of some of the effects of this

'a-

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

evil work to a brief review of some of the points in which
the Roman Church differs from the Catholic Church in
doctrine. But, in thinking the matter over, I have felt
that in order to present to you a connected view of the
progress of events, I ought to point out as well as I can,
in the brief space allowed me in this lecture, the way in
which the Papal claims that gi-ew out of these earliest
forgeries were obtruded upon one after another of the
nations of Europe, and won their way to general accept-
ance.

Nicholas J, was Pope when the forged decretals of
Isidore first came to general knowledge. He surpassed
all his predecessors in thn audacity of his designs. He
was greatly favoured by the confusion and ignorance
which prevailed during the seventy years of anarchy
which followed the break-up of the empire of Charle-
magne. Nicholas grasped at the new weapon with
eagerness, and silenced the doubts expressed by the
Frankish bishops with the assurance that all these forged
documents had long been preserved v/ith honour in the
Roman archives ; and as the object of these forgeries was
to represent the Roman bishop as ruler and judge, and
teacher of all Churches, Nicholas set himself to inculcate
and enforce the principles which they laid down.

For two hundred years after his time, however, the
Roman see was not in a position to, enforce these claims.
They were allow 3d, therefore, to germinate and spread.
They became embedded in the laws and thi^ology and
popular belief of the nasceat nations.

In the meantime, the Papacy became the prey and
plnything of rival factions of nobles, and for a long time

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

sr, the
I aims.
I) read,
and

'•V,

of ambitious and profligate women. The Tuscan Counts
made it hereditary in their family ; again and again dis-
solute boys like John XII. and Benedict IX. occupied and
disgraced the Papal throne, which was now bought and
sold like a piece of merchandise, so that nearlj'^ three cen-
turies passed before the seed sown by these fabrications
produced its full harvest.

Leo IX., who died 1054, inaugurated a new era in the
Papacy. The design was now deliberately formed to
weld the States of Europe into a theov itic priest king-
dom with the Pope at its head. It was Gregory VII.,
however, who was the first, and in fact the only one of
the Popes that set himself with clear and deliberate pur-
pose, io subvert the old constitution of ohe Church, and
to introduce a new one. He regarded himself not merely
as a reformer of the Church, but as the divinely-commis-
sioned founder of a wholly new order of things. Only
Popes and their legates were hereafter to hold those
synods by which the Church, for over a thousand years,
had regulated her aftairs. In every other form the insti-
tution was to disappear. He was aided greatly by
Anse'm, the canonist of Lucca, who first extracted and
put into convenient working shape everything in the
Isidorian forgeries, for the accomplishment of Papal
absolutism ; and next, by altering the law of the Church
by a tissue of fresh inventions and interpolations in
accordance with the requirements of his party and the
standpoint of Gregory.

Gregory himself, in his letter to A-chbishop Hermann,
of Metz — designed to prove how well grounded is the
Pope's dominion over emperors and kings, and his ri

ght

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

to depose them — set an example of the sort of work he
wanted done, by so distorting and interpolating a letter
of Pope Gelasius to the Emperor Anastasius, as to make
Gelasius say the very opposite of what he did say, viz :
" That kings are absolutely and universally subject to the
Pope ; " whereas, what he did say was, " That the rulers
of the Church are always subject to the laws of the
emperors, only disclaiming the interference of the secular
power in questions of faith and sacraments." (Regist.
ed. Jaffe, p. 457.)

Anselm and his confederate canonists Deusdedit and
Gregory, of Pavia, compiled new text books in which
they boldly placed the pretended decrees of Popes that
had been forged by Isidore in place of the canons of
councils, and thus supplied a pretext for Gregory and his
successoirt in their contest with the princes and bishops of
their own day. One main pillar of Gregory's system was
borrowed from the false decretals. Isidore in his for-
geries had made Pope Julius, about 388, A.D., write to
the Eastern bishops, ' The Church of Rome by a singular
privilege has the right of opening the gates of heaven to
whom .:5he will." (Decret. pseud. Is., p. 464.) On this
forgery Gregory built his scheme of dominion. How, he
asked, should not he be able to judge on earth, on whose
will hung the salvation or damnation of men ? (Monum.
Greg., ed. Jaffe, p. 445.) And so when Gregory, who was
notoriously the urst Pope to undertake the dethroning
of kings, wanted to depose the German Emperor, he
wrote, " To me is given power to bind and to loose on
earth and in heaven," Were subjects to be absolved
from their allegiance — which he was also the first to

THE PAPAL SUVEREIGNTY.

, he
nose
Hum.
was

attempt — he did it by virtue of his power to loose. If he
wanted to dispose of other people's property, he declared,-
as in his Roman Synod, 1080, " We desire to show the
world that we can give or take away at our will king-
doms, duchies, earldoms ; in a word, the possessions of all
men, for we can bind and loose." (Mensi. xx., p. 536.)
Personal sanctity had for some time been ascribed to
every Pope. Gregory VII. made this holiness of all
Popes, which he said he had personal experience of, the
foundation of his claim to universal dominion. (Ep. viii.,
21 Jaffe, p. 463.) Every sovereign, he said, however, good
before, becomes corrupted by the use of power; whereas,
every rightly appointed Pop<^ becomes a saint We saw
last Sunday evening what sort of saints m*^ of them
became. But then, to meet this objection, ,.e are told
that if they have no sanctity of thoir own they become
saints through the imputed merits of St. Peter. Referring
to a document which had been unquestionably forged in
the 11th century, Gregory VII. affirmed, in 1081, that
according to the documents preserved in the archives of
St. Peter's church, Charles the Groat had made the whole
of Gaul tributary to the Roman Church, and had given
to her all Saxony. ^

*• The most potent instrument, however, in extending
the new Papal system, was the decretum of Gratian, which,
about the middle of the twelfth century, was issued from
Bologna, the first school of law in Europe, the juristic
teacher of the whole of western chri.stendom. In this work
the Isidoriau forgeries were combined with those of the
Gregorian writers, and with Gratian's own additions. His
work displaced all the older collections of canon law and

[ill

SBB

I
I •

:t ill'

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

became the manual and repertory, not for canonists only
but for the scholastic theologians, who for the most part
derived all their knowledge of the Fathers and canons Trom
it. No book has ever come near it in its influence in the
Church, although there is scarcely another so crammed
full of gross errors, both intentional and unintentional.
All the fabrications — the rich harvest of three centuries —
Gratian inserted in good faith into his collection ; but he
also added, knowingly and deliberately, a number of fresh
corruptions, all in the spirit and interest of the Papal
system." (Janus).

Gratian interpolated without scruple, in order to for-
ward the grand national scheme of making the whole
Christian world in a certain sense the domain of the
Italian clergy through the Papacy. By falsifying a
canon, he makes Gregory the Great order that the
Church should protect homicides and murderers (Cans.
72, 134). And he takes great pains to inculcate in a long
series of canons that it is lawful — nay, a duty — to con-
strain men to goodness, and therefore to faith, by all
means of physical compulsion, and particularly to torture
and execute heretics, and to confiscate their property.
This notion took full possession of the mind of Innocent
III. (1198-1218), the most powerful of the Popes, who
worked out to completion the theories of Papal monarchy
which others had propounded. He maintained that the
Pope is God's lociim tenens on earth, set to watch over
the social, political and religious condition of mankind,
like a Divine Providence, fis chief overseer and lord, who
must put down all opposition. He wished to make Deu-
teronomy a code of laws for Christians, that he might get^

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

all

Bible authority for his doctrine of Papal power over life
and death ; and so he said that as Deuteronomy meant
the second book of the law, it must bind the Christian
Church which was the second Church. Yet to accomplish
his purpose the words had to be altered. It is there said
(Deut. xvii., 12) that if any man will not hearken unto the
priest (the vulgate has, I believe, High Priest) and to the
judge, even that man shall le. Innocent, by a slight
interpolation, made this into a statement that whoever
does not submit to the decision of the High Priest (whose
place the Pope occupies under the new covenant), is to be
sentenced by the judge to execution (Deer, per venerabilem,
4-17).

Leo X. quoted the passage with the same corruption to
prove that whoever disobeyed the Pope must be put to
death. This same Innocent III. wrote to the Patriarch of
Constantinople, thatChrist has committed the whole world
to the government of the Popes, and he gives as a conclu-
sive evidence of this that Peter once walked on the sea —
the sea signifying the nations — whence it is clear that his
successors are entitled to rule the nations (Innoc. III., lib.
ii., 209). This Pope taught that the Papal power is to the
royal and imperial as the sun to the moon, which last has
only a borrowed light ; or, as the soul to the body, which
last exists not for itself but only to be the slave of the
soul ; and the two swords are a symbol of the ecclesiastical
and secular powers, which both belong to the Pope, but
he wields one himself and entrusts the other to princes to
use at his behest and in the service of the Church. Gre-
gory IX. went still further in the assertion of absolute
domination over the State, and maintained that the Pope
is lord of the whole world, things as well as persons.

ti'

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

I T6M

But what sort of world, you ask, was it on which such
barefaced fabrications could be palmed off', and in which
such monstrous claims could be promulgated and accepted
and acted on ? And the answer is that it was a wild world,
a world of excessive ignorance and darkness and confusion
and strife. We can, I apprehend, form but a faint idea of
the utter chaos that followed the break-up of the Western
empire, when the old civilization was swept away and the
old Christianity trampled down under the feet of the in-
vading heathen hordes. The same state of things followed
tlie break-up of the empire of Clovis, Charlemagne and
Charles the Fat. A long period of the wildest chaos suc-
ceeded each. There was really no stable, settled order of
things in the Western empire till the eleventh century ;
and the ignorance that prevailed during those centuries,
in which the half-civilized and not half-instructed hordes
were being gathered by whole tribes and nations into the
Christian Church, made it an easy matter to palm off any
fcibrications that might be offered them. They had no
means of protecting themselves ; they could know nothing
about the matter except what they were told by their
teachers. It was an ignorant and uncritical age, and so
thoroughly had these forgeries penetiated the literature
and belief of those times that not only kings and princes
and ecclesiastics were misled, but the very foremost theo-
logian of these centuries, Thomas Aquinas, was wholly
deceived. He accepted in good faith not only the Isido-
rian, but all the forgeries of the canonists and Popes that
were put forth in support of the Papal monarchy, and
made them th(^ basis of his practical teaching.

But in addition to the ignorance and credulity of the

i I

THE PAPAL SOVEIIKIGNIT.

the

age, there were many cause.s which contributed to the .suc-
cess of these Papal designs. The Popes themselves were
consumed with such overweening ambition and such a
devouring greed for worldly wealth and power, that they
were ever ready to take advantage of the crimes and mis-
fortunes of princes,to strike the basest bargains with tliem,
and to sacrifice every spiritual interest if ihoy might
thereby promote their own wealth and power. Pepin wjis
encouraged by the Pope in his contemplated rebellion, on
the undei'standing that he would revive the forged dona-
tion of Constantine and found the States of the Church.
Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the West, on the
understanding; that he would renew and extend the irift
of Pepin. A similar bargain was struck with Louis the
Pious, 817, and with the Countess Matilda, 1079. Gregory
\MI. sui)ported the pretender Rudolph, 1081, only after
he had extorted an oath from him to support the claims of
the Church. When King Arnulf, to whom the Bishops of
Germany had bound themselves, desired to obtain the
Imperial Crown, he was given to understand that he could
onl} secure the support of the Pope, which was necessary
to his success, by compelling the bishops and clergy to
sid)mit to what they now regarded as the intolerable, but,
as they inferred from the decretals, the divinely-imposed
yoke of Rome. William the Conqueror obtained the sanc-
tion and blessing of the Pope for himself and his ruthless
array of vagabonds and outlaws in their contemplated
invasion of robbery and spoliation on the distinct agree-
ment that he would punish the Saxons for their resistance
to papal claims, and force the English Church into subjec-
tion to the Papal throne. •

F - \ "

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTf.

II;

You know how concessions were wrung from Henry
II., John, and Henry IV. And these are only a few in-
stances of the wa}^ in which this Papal greed of empire
was pursued and pressed, by taking advange of every
political exigency. The Crusaders and the Military Temp-
lars, who regarded themselves as the legions of the Su-
preme Pontiff, contribut3d greatly to the growth of this
power. But the most potent instruments for the exten-
sion of the Papal claims were the new religious orders of
Mendicants, which sprung up at the end of the twelfth
century, and which swarmed over the whole Christian
world — Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and Car-
melites, and were the strongest pillars and support of this
monarchy. They were the third great lever whereby the
Old Church constitution and system were undermined and
destroyed. They were completely under the control of the
Popes. They acted everywhere as the agents and instru-
ments of the Papacy. They were wholly independent of
the bishops ; they were invested with plenary power to
encroach on the rights of parish priests ; they wer< • em-
powered to set up their own churches wherever they
pleased ; and so they laboured for the honour and great-
ness of their Order, and for the Papal authority on which
their prerogatives rested. That authority was literally
doubled through their instrumentality. They became
masters of literature, of the pulpit, and of the university
chairs ; they travelled about as Papal tax-gaiiierers and
preachers of indulgences, with p' ^.nary power to inflict
excommunication on whomsoever they would. And thus
the campaign organized at Rome was carried into every
village and every parish in western Europe,

THE PAPAL SOVERKIQNTY.

The parish clergy generally succumbed to the mendi-
cants, though there were long and bitter contests. The
bishops, too, though they were at first a)l but unanimously
opposed to the new Papal autocracy — for they saw tliat
its success would rob them of their independence and
make them mere puppets in the hand of the Supreme
Pontiff — felt now, their own impotence against this
new power of these monks, strengthened by the terrors of
the Inouisition ; and they had, liowever indignantly, to
bend under the yoke that was now laid on their necks.

In order, however, more completely to subvert the an-
cient constitution of the Church and the regular adminis-
tration of dioceses by bishops. Papal legates were from
Hildebrand's time appointed. Sometimes they rectiived
a general commission to visit churches ; sometimes they
were appointed for a special emergency ; but they were
always invested with unlimited powers, and were expected
to bring back considerable sums of money over the Alps.
They traversed different countries surrounded by a troop
of greedy Italians ; and, armed against opposition by ban
and interdict, they held forced synods, the decrees of
which they dictated themselves. With this irregular
jurisdiction of legates there grew up a system of Papal
dispensation and exemption from e[)iscopal control ; but
every exempted corporation or monastery had to pay a
yearly tribute to the Sae of Rome, whose interest it was
to thwart and restrain episcopal authority whenever it
tried to act. And so the bishops, in constant danger of
incurring suspension or excommunication, or of being
cited to Rome for violating some Papal privilege, gave
up all idea of any earnest administration of their dio-
ceses. ' ^.:,.....: - — ' - ---

IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

V ^

^■

m.?'

«/-

1.0

1.25

m Ilia
'" IIIIM

.1' IM

1 2.2
2.0

1.4 IIIIII.6

^;.

c^]

Photographic

Sciences
Corporation

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, N.Y. 14530

(716) 872-4503

hi f

^THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

t ■

i ;;

s I

i ,

And as bishops and corporations were in mutual hos-
tility, so the parochial clergy found opponents and dan-
gerous rivals in the richly-privileged mendicant orders,
veho were unceasing in their attempts to appropriate the
more remunerative functions of the priesthood, and to de-
coy the people from the parish churches into their own.
And thus anarchy in dioceses and wild demoralization of
the clergy reached a point one cannot read of in contem-
porary writers without horror. When appeals came to
Rome, as they unceasingly did, on disputed presentations
to benefices, or episcopal elections, the question was gene-
rally decided in favour of the claimant who had the long-
est purse, though the Popes often took occasion to oust
both the claimants and to appoint a third person who had
outbidden them both. Abbot Conrad, of Leichtenav,
says : " There is no bishopric or spiritual dignity or parish
that is not made the subject of a process at Rome ; and
woe to him who comes empty-handed ! Rejoice, mother
Rome, at the crimes of thy sons, for they are thy gain. To
thee flows all the gold and silver. Thou art become mis-
tress of the world through the badnefis, not the piety, of
mankind." (Chron. p. 321.)

Most elections, as the result of tlie new Papal enact-
ments, came to be disputed ; and thus a vast number of
bishops and others were drawn to Rome and detained
there for years by processes spun out intermina.bly, until
they either died off in that unhealthy city or carried
home with them nothing but debts, disease, and a vivid
impression of the dominant conuption. And then the
Popes claimed the right to give away all benefices vacated
either by death or resignation at Rome. \

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

They began their interference in foreign churches by
letters of commendation begging appointments from kings
or bishops for their own favourites, but without specify-
ing any particular benefice. So it was still in the 12th
century. But before long these recommendations took
the form of mandates, commanding the appointment of
Italians, nephews, favourites, whom they wished for one
reason or another to provide for, enrich or indemnify
in foreign countries. Cardxral TTicholas Tudeschi says
that " church dignities were so loaded with excessive im-
posts and extortions that they were always subject t«
debts, and nothing of their revenues was available for re-
ligious purposes." Cardinal Zabarella says : " So com-
pletcjly has the Pope destroyed all rights of all lesser
churches, that their bishops are as good as non-existent."
And Chancellor Gerson says : " In consequence of the
greed and lust of power of the Popes, the authority of
bishops and inferior church officers is completely done
away with, so that they look like mere pictures in the
Church, and are almost superfluous." The theory which
was finally maintained by the Popes was that by virtue
of the sovereign power and absolute authority belonging
to the Vicar of Christ, all benefices of every sort apper-
tained to the chair of St. Peter.

It is needless to say that this pontifical view was never
accepted in England either by clergy or laity. There had
always been abundant, spirited protests against it, such as
those of Archbishop Rich, Bishop Grosseteste, etc. There
had been special Acts of Convocation and of Parliament
passed to prohibit it, such as the Constitution of Claren-
don, the three Statutes of Pro visors, etc. Nevertheles.*^,

■nil

t . >

I n

\w .'

I All '-

f ^

i ^

I I :

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

the Popes continued to sell English benefices and sees,
to draw a large part of their revenne from this abuse.
The mischief which was thus produced is graphically set
out in Gascoigne's Theological Dictionaiy, published about
1450. Gascoigne was a most devoted son of the Church,
and accepted without a suspicion of its being a mistake
the prevalent belief of his time, in the Divine origin of
the firmly- established Papal sovereignty. He complains
bitterly that the Popes used to sell English benefices and
English sees, and to draw a large part of t'neir revenue
from this abuse. " I know it," he writes, " to be a thing
commonly practised in England, that great and wealthy
persons, never elected to any dignity in the Church, ob-
tain from the King pei'mission to accept a Papal provision
of some dignity, and so by means of large sums of money
sent to Rome, and by the Pope's provisions, become
bishops. In the same way others get to be deans of
Cathedrals, Rome has been the principal wild boar to lay
waste the vineyard of the Church, by reserving to itself
the election of bishops, so as not to give the a})pointment
to any save they first pay the annates, that is the first,
sometimes the first three, years' income of their sees to
the Pope. She has also destroyed the vineyards of the
Church of God by invalidating the election of all bishops
in England, and by promoting evil persons by agreement
with the King, and by decreeing that all elections of
bishops pertain to the apostolic chamber — that is, the
Pope and the Cardinals — and by calling none a Bishop
unless he be chosen by the Cardinals, and first pay a
thousand marks in gifts to Roman courtiers." " Every-
where," he says, " sons of Belial are appointed to churches

THE PAPAL SOVRREIGNTY.

and great offices," being intruded by threats, by gifts, or
by carnal favouritism. The foulest crimes are perpetrated
and winked at." There is hardly a gleam of light in the
picture which this contemporary and friendly historian
draws of the condition of the Church. All is confusion,
greed, indolence, selfishness, and licentiousness.

Thus, by the use of abundant forgeries, which were
made the basis of all law and teaching, and were wrought
into the popular mind and belief of the Western Church,
by taking advantage of every political exigency to bribe
or browbeat kings and princes, by the sentiments created
by Crusaders and Knights Templar, by the instrumen-
tality of the mendicant orders and Papal legates, and last,
but not least, by the unmeasured employment from the
middle of the eleventh century of that most inhuman,
most fiendish invention, the Inquisition; thus was the
ancient constitution and order of the Church overthrown.
Thus was Papal Imperialism established. Thus was it
obtruded upon one after another of the nations of the
Western Empire.

In the great churches of the Eastern Empire it never
gained any foothold or recognition, except that it
was accepted for a few months near the end of the
thirteenth century, when the Greek Church, deceived by
a forgery only second to that of the false decretals, of a
spurious catena of Greek councils and fathers supporting
the claim of the Pope to be the infallible teacher of the
whole world and the absolute monarch of the Church.
But the Armenian Church, the most ancient of the na-
tional churches founded beyond the limits of the Empire,
the great Syro-Persian Church of the early and middle

'I's
iili

"'ill

«,l

'■m^

I '

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

ages, the Ethiopian and Abyssinian Churches, the Greek
Church clown to cur own day, the African for five cen-
turies, and, in the west, the Scoto-Irish and ancient Bri-
tish Churches, remained for centuries autonomous and
under no sort of subjection to Rome.

Do we wonder that a usurpation which had thus estab-
lished itself by falsehood, injustice and cruelty imparal-
leled in the annals of men, should have been felt even by
the men whom it deceived and enslaved to be an intoler-
able bondage, and that, in the language of the author of
Janus, " for four centuries from all nations and in all
tongues were thousandfold accusations raised against the
ambition, tyranny and greed of the Popes, their profana-
tion of holy things, and their making all the nations of
Christendom the prey of their rapacity." And what is
still more surprising, that in all this long period no one
attempted to refute these charges, or to represent them as
calumnies or even as exaggerations. Do we wonder that,
in the judgment- of Dr. Dollinger, the greatest ecclesiasti-
cal historian of this age, a reformation of these monstrous
abuses could not have been much longer delaj^ed ? Do
we doubt that God did avenge His own elect in whom His
Spirit dwells : First, by withdrawing His Spirit almost
visibly fi-om those who arrogantly claimed to be the only
instruments of His inspiring light, and by allowing a long
succession of men of such criminal and monstrous charac-
ter to obti'ude themselves into the infallible chair that
none who were not wilfully blind could fad to see that
these were not, and could not be, the divinely appointed
channel for making known the divine will and interpret-
tng the divine councils. And then, secondly, by allowing

THE PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.

such bewildering anarchy, such wild demoralization, to
follow the triunj|)h and completed establishment oi that
Papal autocracy which claimed divine authority, that the
most ignorant and enslaved of men could not fail to see
that this usurping power was the enemy alike ot God and
of men ? "

; "f

' 3

5-'!

LECTURE VI.

THE INQUISITION.

my soul, come not thou into their secret, unto their assembly ;
mine honour, be riot thou united. — Gen. xlix. 6.

I HAD intended to pass this truly horrible subject over
with the mere reference contained in my last lecture.
But further consideration of the important part it played
in riveting the chains of the Papacy upon western Europe,
convinces me that it cannot be left out of a consideration
of the means by which the ancient Order and independ-
ence of the national and provincial Churches were over-
thrown, and this terrible autocracy over kings and people
established.

' The Inquisition, usually spoken of in the language of
the times as " The Holy Inquisition," or " The Holy
Office," was a separate ecclesiastical tribunal, which was
set up by the Pope at the suggestion of St. Dominic, the
founder of the Dominican Friars for the detection, appre-
hension, trial and punishment of heretics. It was first
formally established in the year 1209, at the Council of
Avignon, though it had been in practical operation for

THE INQUISITION.

twenty years before this date. Pope Innocent III. decreed
on his own authority that every heretic should be seized
instantly and summarily delivered to the Secular Court to
be punished according to law ; all his property to be for-
feited ; one-third to be given to the informer, one-third to
the court that judged him, and one- third to public
works ; his houtie to be demolished, and his friends fined
in one-fourth of their property for the benefit of the
State. The accused had no right of appeal. No judge,
advocate, or notary was allowed to give them any aid
under peril of the loss of his office ; and the clergy were
forbidden to minister to them. This was the first rough
draft of the Inquisitorial Court. It was afterwards
greatly modified in the interests of the Papacy. It was
not finally abolished in Rome till the year 1849.

For five hundred years it filled Western Europe with
torture, and terror, and groans, and tearg, and blood. No
one whose information has been derived from the ordinary
channels of history, and who has not made this subject a
special study, can have any idea of the terrors, the in-
justice, the cruelty and fiendish barbarity of the Inqui-
sition.

The Emperors, from the time of Constantine, had taken
upon themselves to enforce upon their subjects the faith
which they themselves professed. But the orthodox rulers
had distinguished between heresies, and had only inflicted
severe penalties on those whose principles led to moral
enormities. But that distinction was given up after the
tleath of Pope Lucius III. 1184, and the view of the anci-
ent church on the treatment of the heterodox was com-
pletely changed. She had, it is true, often criminally

I >

100

THE INQUISITION.

■ ' », ■'

i*i .

encouraged tl>o proceedings of the secular arm in enforcing
her faith upon those who rejected it. She had acquiesced
in the infliction of unjustifiable cruelties upon those whom
the kings undertooVto punish for immoral principles or
practices. But she had not constituted herself a court for
their detection and apprehension. She had not taken
upon herself to adjudge them to intolerable tortures and
death. She had not al)olished the ancient distinc-
tion between mere errors of judgment and deliberate
heresies*. But now all was changed. The ruling
principle of the Papacy from tliis time forth was that
those are heretics who believe otherwise than the Roman
Church V)elieves, and also those who doubt or dispute the"
supreme power of the Pope, in temporal as well as spiri-
tual matters. Every departure therefore from the teach-
ing of the Roman Church, and every important opposition
to any ecclesiastical ordinance, must be punished with
death, and the most cruel of deaths — by fire. Complete
apostacy from the Christian faith, or a mere difference of
opinion on some minor points of order, were all the same ;
either, according to the new definitions, was heresy, and
was to be punished with death. Innocent III. (Concil. ed-
Labbe xi. 152) declared the mere refusal to swear, and the
opinion that oaths were unlawful, a heresy worthy of
death, and he directed that whoever differed in any res-
pect from the common way of life of the multitude of
Roman Catholics, should be treated as a heretic.

* "In the .ancient Church when a bishop had become implicated in the
capital punishment of a heretic only as accuser, he was separated from the
connuiniion cf his brethren as Idacius and Ithauius were by St. Martin and
St. Ambrose in 385."

THE INQUISITION.

101

The Inquisition was introduced to enforee these piin-
ciples — to make the Papal system so irrcsisitble as to
impede any disclosures of the rottenness of its founda-
tions, and to enforce its claims upon tlie whole ('hurch.

The res])onsil)ility both of the initiation and carry in<^^ on
of this terrible system rests upon the Popes alone. The new
theory of the autocratic power of the Papacy needed
some all -pervading agency — everywhere active, but no-
where conspicuous — that should subdue each opponent as
he arose, strike dread into every soul, and put every com-
plaining voice to silence, either in death or in a dungeon.
And so, it was the Popes who began by compelling bishops
and priests to condemn, those whom they now regarded as
heterodox, to torture, confiscation of goods, imprisonment
and death, and to enforce the execution of these sentences
upon the civil authorities under pain of excommunication.

There was nothing in the literature of the time to pave
the way for it. And it was not until it had been
systematized and carried out in many places that the
schoolmen undertook its justification. Thomas Aquinas
is its great defender.

When this tribunal was first established it was not in-
tended that it should exceed the powers of punishment
which had been for some time vested in the bishops.
But in the hands of the Dominicans, to whom the Popes
handed over its whole management, subject only to their
approval, it soon manifested an independence and
exercised an influence which were surprising. To dis-
arm the bishops who were jealous at this new en-
croachment on their powers, the Popes ordered that
they and the inquisitors should act jointly ; but very

-^ .ii

102

THK INQUISITION.

li'

i III

i Hi

- 6 •'

f'ii

soon, with tlic connivance of the Popes, the bishops were
sot aside, and the inquisitors acted independently of them.
Then the secular powers were jealous because the property
of criminals was formerly forfeited to the State, whereas
now it would go directly to the Papal treasury. Tc avoid
this difficulty the Popes decreed that the inquisitors
should condemn, that the magistrate should execute the
sentence, and that one-third of the property of the accused
should be appropriated by the State, and that the other
two-thirds should be e(|ually divided between the inquis-
itors and the Pope. So that each of the parties concerned
in conducting the trial had a direct and large pecuniary
interest in securing the condeumation of the accused.

It is a terrible thing to say, but this conclusion is forced
upon the student of the history of this dread tribunal
that, whatever may have been its object at its first estab-
lishment, it was very soon transformed into a vast organ-
ized system of Tiiurder, carried on mainly for the sake of
plunder, under the sanction and direction of the Papal
court. The pontiffs took care to urge kings and princes to
support, with the aid of their secular power, their emissaries
in all their endeavours to extirpate heresy, and so well were
their wishes responded to, that in a short time, no one, even
of the most unblemished character and the greatest piety,
could consider himself safe froir being cruelly put to
death, if he should hr ppen not to have secured the favour
of the inquisitors.

From the year 1200 to 1500 there are a long series of
Papal ordinances on the Inquisition, of ever-increasing
severity and cruelty ; their whole policy towards what
they call heresy runs on without a break. Every Pope

!«)!

what
Pope

THE INQUISITION.

103

confirms and improves upon tho rlecreos of his predecessor.
All is directed towards tho one end, of uprooting every
difference of belief. And very soon the princip?'; came to
be openly asserted that the mere thought of heresy, with-
out having betrayed itself by any outward sign, was
penal.

Nothing but the absolute dictation of the Popes and the
conviction of their infallibility in all questions of religion
and morals, which the forged decretals had embedded in
the mind of Western Europe, could have made the Chris-
tian world, even of that day, silently, though sullenly,
admit the code of the Inquisition — a code which contra-
dicted the simplest principles of Christian justice and love
to our neighbours, and which would have been rejected
with universal horror by the ancient Catholic Church.

Besides the open profession of known heretical opinions
there were sixteen offences enumerated which caused the
persons guilty of them to be suspected of heresy and
made them liable to the punishme*^ t of the Holy Office.
These were certain kinds of blasphemy, sorcery and
divination, the invocation of demons, to renuiin a year or
longer under excommunication without asking for abso-
lution, or performing the penance which had been im-
posed, schisms, favouring or concealing heretics, refusing
to take the oath to drive heretics from their estates,
the neglect of governors and kings to do the bidding of
the Inquisition, the refusal to repeal statutes or decrees con-
trary to the measures of the Holy Office, for lawyers or
other persons to assist heretics with their advice, or to
conceal papers which would lead to their conviction, to
give Christian burial to heretics, to refuse to take the oath

rif

.-if*

■■1 M

104f

THE INQUISITION.

It.

i:i;c
If-

in the trial of lieretics ; in addition to these were de-
ceased persons, who had been denounced as heretics and
concerning whom the Popes had decreed that their bodies
should be disinterred and burned, their property confis-
cated and their memory pronounced infamous, lastly
Jews and Moors if they tried in any way to convert Cath-
olics to their Faith.

When an int^uisitor in his judicial rounds arrived in a
town, he called upon the magistrate to put in force all the
laws against heretics. He then announced that all who
should voluntarily confess should receive absolution, and
be subjected only to slight penances, but that those who
should be denounced should be proceeded against with
severity.

After a brief interval the informers were summoned,
and proceedings were begun by a denunciation, or direct
charge of heresy, made by some of these, or by informa-
tion wrung from a prisoner under torture. Anonymous
denunciations were received without scruple, and were
acted on in the same manner as those given under the
sanction of a name ; and even the depositions of those
refused a hearing in all other trials, either from personal
enmity to the accused, or on account of public infamy,
such as perjurers, panderers, and malefactors were admit-
ted. It is needless to point out how this enabled those
bearing a grudge to avenge themselves on their enemies
in a most dastardly manner.

Many denunications were effected through confessors,
who imposed it as a duty upon their penitents to make
known to the Holy Office anything which they had seen
or heard that was contrary to the Catholic faith, or to

THE INQUISITION.

105

the Inquisition. Absolution was rigidly refused until
the denunciation was effected, and it very frequently
happened that a wife informed af^ainst her husband, a
parent against a child, or a child against a parent. It is
related of Blanco White, for instance, that his mother,
who was a good Catholic, and was aware that he held
opinions, which if known would subject him to the
power of the imjuisitors, would not dare to speak to him
for days together, lest he should unguardedly give expres-
sion to those opinions ; in which case she would, of
course, be compelled by her confessor to denounce him to
the Holy Office.

If the inquisitors thought the words or acts warranted
enquiry, an inquest was commenced. The persons named in
the denunciation as able to give testimony were summoned.
Each witness was compelled to swear first that he would
not divulge anything which he might see or hear. He
was then asked, not concerning the particular case in
which he had been summoned, but in general terras,
whether he had ever seen or heard anything which was,
or appeared to be contrary to the Catholic faith, or the
rights of the Inquieition. Being ignorant of the object
for which he was called, and knowing that he could only
escape the torture by telling what he did know, he would
generally divulge circumstances implicating persons not
previously denounced. The inquisitors would then art-
fully set to work to weave a web of evidence that would
lead to the conviction of those thus named. They would
then draw out of the witnesses all they knew of the case
in which they had been called, and as they did not know
for what purpose they were required, nor even whether

a . ■, -

I*'

lit

'*^ 4

lOG

THE INQUISITION.

they were to be treated as witnesses, or as accused men,
they were so terrified as to be altogether unmanned, and
often said things, and signed declarations which went far
beyond their knowledge or belief. The accused were never
confronted by the witnesses. They had no opportunity
of questioning them, or even of knowing wno they were.
In cases where three persons conspired against the
accused, he was beyond all chance of escape, for the
accuser's evidence, and the concurring testimony of two
witnesses were enough to convict him. And, indeed, so
artfully were persons treated, and so impenetrable was
the secrecy in which inquisitor-; involved evidences and
witnesses alike, that it was almost a miracle if any per-
son who was once accused established his innocence
against such odds. Only about one in 2,000 did escape.

If the evidence was thought sutficiently strong it was
submitted to appointed theologians, who had to determine
whether the accused were guilty of heresy or only
suspected of heresy; and if suspected, whether the
suspicion were light, grave, or violent. Justifiers, as
they were called, were often so protoundly ignorant of
systerpatic theology that they not unfrequently con-
demned, as heretical, the dogmas taught by the most
eminent Roman Catholic theologians.

As soon as anyone was arrested, all his property was
seized and retained to pay the expenses of his arrest and
the cost of his maintenance during his incarceration — if,
as rarel}^ happened — he was released, the balance was
returned to him ; but if condemned, it was added to the
funds of the tribunal.

Those ai^ainst whom the charge of heresy was preferred
were always confined iu a dark dungeon for forty-eight

THE INQUISITION.

107

hours without food or drink ; sometimes they were locked
up for weeks, sometimes for months, in the secret prisons,
without even being informed of the cause of their arrest.
These secret prisons, in the early history of the tribunal,
were damp, filthy dungeons, unfit for the reception of
human beings ; latterly they were of a more wholesome
character — small, but light and dry. Yet, with these
advantages they were most frightful places of confine-
ment. The most profound solitude and silence reigned.
None entered within the walls without the certainty
either of meeting a disgraceful and horrible death, at the
stake, or, if life were spared, of being indelibly stigma-
tised and eternally lost in public opinion. The solitude,
and the absence of all occupation, the contemplation of a
fearful death, and the feeling that the convicted felon
or the galley slave would be respected in society in com-
parison with him — all these would combine to precipitate
the unhappy prisoner into despair too fearful to contem-
plate. Instances were by no means rare of men being
imprisoned by the Holy Office who, when they entered,
were men of strong constitutions and vigorous minds, but
who, when they left its dungeons, had feeble bodies
and minds entirely broken down by intense mental and
bodily sufferings. Many of you will remember in Dickens'
pictures from Italy his harrowing description of the
inquisitorial prison which he saw in the Pope's palace at
Avignon.

" A few steps," he says, " brought us to the dungeons
in which the prisoners of tiie Inquisition were confined
for forty-eight hours after their capture, without food or
drink, that their constancy might be shaken, even before

I . it a

r -1;

108

THE INQUISITION.

they were confronted with their gloomy judges. The
day has not got in there yet. They are still, small ccll«,
shut in by four unyielding, close, hard walls ; still pro-
foundly dark, still massively doored and walled as of old.
On we went into a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-
room, once the chapel of the Holy Office. The place
where the tribunal sat was plain. The platform might
have been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable
of the Good Shepherd having been painted on the wall
of one of these Inquisition chambers i But it was, and
may be traced there yet.

" High up in the jealous walls are niches where the
faltering replies of the accused were heard and noted
down. Many of them had been brought out of the very
cell we had just looked into. We had trodden in their
very footsteps. Then into a room adjoining — a rugged
room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the
top to the bright day. The chamber of torture, and the
roof was made of that shape to stifle the victim's cries.
See the stone trough for the water-torture. Gurgle, swell,
bloat, burst, heretic — for the Redeemer's honour. Suck the
bloody rag, deep down into your unbelieving body, heretic,
at every breath you draw. And know us, for His chosen
servants, true believers in the Sermon on the Mount,
elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle but to heal ;
who never struck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness,
dumbness, madness, or any one affection of mankind, and
never stretched his blessed hands out but to give relief
and ease. There the furnace was. There they made the
irons red-hot. Those holes supported the sharp stake on
which the tortured persons hung poised, dangling with

THE INQUISITION.

109

their whole weight from the roof. A cold air laden with an
earthy smell falls upon the face. It comes from a trap-
door in the wall. One looks in. Downward to the
bottom, upward to the top of a a steep, dark, lofty tower,
very dismal, very dark, very cold, the executioner tlung
those who were past all further torturing down here.

" Again, into the chapel of the Holy Office, a little trap
door in tiie floor. Behold the oubliettes of the Inqui-
sition, subterranean, black, terrible, deadly ; my blood ran
cold as I looked down into the vault*? where these forjjot-
ten creatures, with recollections of the world outside, of
wives, friends, brothers, children — starved to death, and
the stones rang with their unavailing groans. But the thrill
I felt on seeing the accursed wall below, decayed and
broken through, and the sun shining in through its gaping
wounds, was like a sense of victory and triumph."

'Place yourself in imagination beneath the vault of
yonder rugged room, picture to yourself the scene, and
consider what unguessed-at misery it means. Begin by
laying aside the thought of friends, from whom when once
a prisoner, you are altogether severed. Not a soul of them
will ever see you again, Not one can even conjecture
where you are. You have been trapped, it may be, in a
lonely street, and brought hither in the dead of night. In
another ten minutes you must undergo the question. What
answer will you give ? Will you confess to these men
after the example of St. Paul : " After the way which ye
call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers." Or will
you deny your own convictions, and profess to believe
what you do not believe. To do this will secure for ^^ou,
at the least an easy death, instead of a death by fire,

THE INQUISITION.

possibly no more than a short penance, possibly seclusion
in some well-known monastery. But if you will denounce
your friends and enter the service of 3'^our tormentors as
a spy, you will o;ain for yourself, not only life, but much
that makes life luxurious, if not splendid. Remember, if
you choose against this, you will go down into silence.
" No protest of yours, no word nor deed will ever be
known ; neither the fact of your death, if you die, nor
yet of your existence, if you should continue to live in
any other vocation than the abhorred one of being a spy
upon your friends." Such was the policy of this accursed
tribunal (Jackson on Retribution). Will you not, my
brethren, lift up your hearts in thankfulness to God now
that he has not subjected you to such an ordeal.

When the prisoner was brought before his judges, he
was not informed of the charges against him, but was ex-
horted to speak the truth and confess whatever he had
said or done against the Catholic faith or the Inquisition.
After three audiences of this kind, the prosecutor or fiscal,
as he was called, formulated his charges, and instead of
reducing them to proper heads, he multiplied the number
of charges, in proportion to the number of witnesses who
had testified against him. Thus supposing a certain con-
versation to have been reported by five or six witnesses,
with the inevitable variations, five or six different accusa-
tions, instead of one were framed upon their evidence.
These accusations were read at his public punishment in
an auto da fe, without any diminution of their number,
and the ignorant mob were led to applaud the leniency of
the Holy Office, which had awarded so light a punishment
to a criminal guilty of such a large number of heinous
crimes.

THE INQUISITION.

Ill

When the farce of these examinations was over, all were
alike subjected to torture, whether they had confessed
their guilt or denied it. The former was tortured, not for
the crime he had confessed, but that he might be com-
pelled to confess other crimes of which the Holy Oftice
was not cognisant, and those who had either denieil or
partially confessed their guilt were tortured, that the
former might be compelled to confess something, and the
latter to acknowledge more than he h;ul already done.

This torture was of such a dreadful character, that
death often resulted from its infliction, A law was there-
fore passed forbidding it to be inflicted more than once,
but with their usual fiendish ingenuity the in(|uisitors
evaded this law. They had a physician present who
informed them when it could no loncjer be continued
without dansfer of life, and then the torture was declared
to be commenced, but not terminated, and the wretched
sufferer was sent back to his dungeon with the comforta-
ble assurance that the punishment would be re-inflicted so
soon as his frame was capable of bearing it. It very often
happened that victims who were wholly innocent of the
charge laid against them were simply bullied and tortured
into admitting what the inquisitors wished tliem to ad-
mit, in order to shorten their pangs.

That the screams of the prisoners might not be heard,
the torture was inflicted in the hall of torture, as Dickens
describes it.

The first torture was that of the pulley. The hands
were tied behind the back and a heavy weight attached
to the feet ; then the victim was suddenly hoisted to the
ceiling by a rope attached to his hands and running

'J;'!;

'\^ i

; <|i

112

THE INQUISITION.

through a pulley. The arms were thus wrenched from
their sockets, and while thus sus])ended the prisoner was
often whipped ; at other times had a red-hot iron thrust
into various parts of his body, and he was coldly admon-
ished by the inquisitors to speak the truth. If he refused
to confess and his arms had not been dislocated, he was
suddenly dropped to within a few feet of the ground and
brought up with a jerk which seldom failed to accomplish
that result.

If he still refused to confess he was subjected, as soon
as the physician pronounced him strong enough, to the
torture of the fire or chafing-dish. The prisoner was placed
in iron stocks so that he could not move hand or foot,
a chafing-dish full of burning charcoal was brought; his
feet, being frequently rubbed with grease, were literally
fried. During the process he was exhorted to confess.
If by the extremity of pain he promised to do so, the
attendants introduced a board between his feet and the
fire, and he was required to go on with his confession. If
he did not do so the board was withdrawn and the pro-
cess went on.

Another torture was the rack. Though there were
several machines bearing that name, the simplest drew
the arms in opposite directions till torn from their sockets.

Another was a trough with rungs across the middle of
the victims back, his arms and legs were tied to the sides
with ropes. These were to be tightened by turn after turn
of sticks till the ropes cut into the flesh, — often to the
bones. But as if this diabolical cruelty were not enough,
the prisoner's nose was stopped so that he could not breathe
through it, and a linen bag was first inserted into his throat

THE INQUISITION.

113

and water poured in. In his desperate efforts to draw
breath the prisoner often burst a blood vessel and died un-
der the infliction. If the prisoner could bear it, cords were
tied to his toes, and he was strung up to the ceiling till
he fainted. The tortures varied, but were of every con-
ceivable description that fiendish cruelty could invent.
Women, who were frecjuently the victims of the Holy
Office, were treated in the most immodest and brutal
manner.

Upon the evidence thus obtained the charges were
formulated. The accused, as soon as he was able to ap-
pear, was brought before his judges. The charges were
read over, one by one, and to each he was required to
give an immediate answer. This was intended most un-
fairly to entrap him into statements and admissions which
would make it impossible for him to defend himself
against the charges yet to be made, of which he was in
utter ignorance. All means of legal protection were with-
held from him ; there was no right of appeal and no legal
adviser allowed him. Any lawyer who undertook his de-
fence would have been himself excommunicated and sum-
moned before the tribunal.

Those acquitted, averaging about one in 2,000 of the
accused, were allowed to return to their homes and fami-
lies with certificates of absolution ; but no reparation was
made for the loss of health, honour, or property, nor were
the names of false witnesses who had [)rocured their de-
nunciation given up. The rest were condemned either to
be reconciled, after appearing in the auto da fe, and ful-
filling their penance, which meant often years of imprison-
ment in a dungeon, or as a galley slave, or they were
burnt to ashes at the stake.

\\m

'\ m

M-

K »s

_ - . - ill I

I' \

II 'I !

THE INQUISITION.

When sentence had once heen pronounced no one could
plead or su implicate on behalf of the heretic. Breach of
this .h>\v, even wlu'n tlie petitioner was a wife pleading for
her husband, or a parent for his child, involved the sup-
plicant in the guilt of the accused.

This devilish enactment conies from the brain of the
canonized monster. Pope Pius V.

The inquisitor was forbidden to show any pity. Tor-
ture in its most terrible form was the usual way of ex-
torting confession. No recantation or confession of ortho-
doxy could save the accused ; he was allowed confes-
sion, absolution, and communion, and his profession of re-
pentance was accepted in foro sacrament I, but he was
told at the same time that it would not be accepted judici-
ally, and he must die if he were a relapsed heretic. Lastly,
to fill up the measure of inic^uity, his innocent family was
deprived of its property Vty legal confiscation. Life only,
said Innocent IIL, was to be left to the sons of mis-
believers, and that only as an act of mercy. They were
therefore made incapable of all civil offices and dignities.
The pretext that was put forth for the formal
establishment of the Inquisition was that it was needed
to uproot and exterminate the fugitive Waldenses and
Albigenses who, after their land had been desolated by
the crusaders the Popes sent against them, were hunted
like wild beasts from their own countrv, and sought to
hide themselves in Northern Italy, Switzerland, Spain,
Venice and Hungary.

One cannot study their history without feeling that
their chief offence was that they refused to accept the
new doctrine about the Pope's supremacy. Tens of thou-

THE INQUISITION.

115

sands of them were seized and subjected to the terrible
tortures and death of the Inquisition.

That we may form some idea of the terrible work of
this tribunal, let me mention a few facts. In the first
eighteen years of the S{)anish Inciuisition under Tor-
quamada 10,220 persons were burnt, and 07,321 impris-
oned, banished and reduced to want. During the rule
of one, Chief Inquisitor Diaz, 38,440 persons were con-
demned by it in Spain alone, 2,598 of them were burnt.
During the brief rule of his mild successor, Cisneros,
Llorente estimates the number of victims at 3,504 burnt,
and 48,050 condemned to various other punishments.
Pope Adrian VI. was In(|uisitor General of Spain for
five years before he became Pope, and during that time
the number of those condemned was 28,220, of whom
1,344 were burnt. He was succeeded by Marquinez, under
whom 15,625 persons were condemned, of whom 2,250
were burnt. And so it went on century after century for
five hundred years. And this, remember, only represents
the havoc wrought in the one kingdom of Spain. The
operations of the Inquisition were no doubt carried on in
that land in the most .systematic and wholesale manner.
But its iron grasp was felt in every corner of the Western
Empire. In Italy and Venice, and France, and Germany,
and E norland, in Portuoral and the Netherlands. In Mexi-
CO, in South America it rioted with unrestrained license.
In India, China and Japan tens of thousands of victims,
men, women and children, were doomed to infamy and
death by this merciless tribunal. It bathed the kingdom
of Poland in flames and blood. The Inquisition estab-
lished by the Emperor Charles V. in the Netherlands, for

■■fli
.1

116

THE INQUISITION.

11 I

m r

the extirpation of the followers of Luther, burnt more
than fifty thousand victims in that one small kingdom
before this j^reat king, in sheer disgust, flung off his im-
perial crown, and fled to hide himself from men in the
solitude of St. Just. Our own Wm. Tindale, one of the
early translators of the Bible into English, who had fled
to the Netherlands for protection, was one of this num-
ber. Motley (Revolt of the Netherlands) estimates that
probably not less than 100,000 victims of the Inquisition
were burnt, strangled or buried alive during this reign,
and this before Philip the Second began his fiercer and
more sweeping measures. Pope Pius V. not only plotted
with RudolH the assassination of Queen Elizabeth, but
sent the consecrated hat and sword of honour to the
monster Duke of Alva, the instrument of that tierceness,
and as a reward for his savage cruelties in the Low
Countries.

Dr. Dollinger says that the Reformation movement
swept at least two-thirds of the entire population of Ger-
many, France, Austria, and Italy out of the Roman obe-
dience — and that it was reduced to its present diminished
proportions largely by the wild extravagances of many
of its leaders — but largely, also, by the religious wars
which the Popes provoked, and by the merciless exercise
of this dread tribunal. The first wholesale victims of
the Inquisition were the Waldenses and Albigenses. The
confiscation of their lands and goods gave the inquisitors
their first taste of plunder. Very soon measures were
devised for bringing the Jews, who were the wealthy
business men of that time, under the grasp of the Holy
Office. First they were compelled to choose between

THE INQUISITION.

117

accepting Christian baptism or banishment and confisca-
tion of goods. Many, to save their homes and fortunes,
professed to be converted. They then became subject to
suspicion of heresy as Catholic Christians. No profession
or protestation could save them. They wore hunted and
imprisoned by thousands, their goods being invariably
confiscated. They supplied for a long time a rich mine
for the inquisitors to work.

When they were exhausted and well nigh extermin-
ated, the Moors, who had lived in Spain for seven
hundred years, and wore the most intelUectual, learned,
scientific, and successful citizens of the kingdom, were
subjected to the same treatment as the Jews had been,
imtil after years of merciless persecution the whole
Moorish population were, by the machinations of the
Chief Inquisitor, expelled and deported from Spain to
Africa. Numbers were shipwrecked and drowned ; many
were murdered at sea for the sake of obtaining their
property. The Spanish historians give details of men
murdered in the presence of their wives and children ; of
children thrown overboard alive, of women violated,
only to meet with the same fate a few days afterwards,
details which can only be equalled by the most terrible
instances in the annals of piracy. Of those who landed
in Africa many were attacked by wandering Arabs, and
slain ; others perished of hunger and fatigue. Of six
thousand persons who set out from Oran for Algiers, only
one reached that city. While of 140,000 who set out
for Africa about this time, 100,000 are believed by com-
petent authorities to have perished within a month or
two after their expulsion. Over a million of the most

'tf

118

THE INQUIOITION.

industrious and wealthy subjects of Spain were thus
expelled or slain. And to that expulsion may be dis-
tinctly traced the beginning of the decline and fall of the
once mighty Spanish empire. The Inquisition was
directly concerned in this monstrous cruelty, inasmuch
as their expulsion was devised and pressed upon the King
by the Inquisitor-General, and was directly and indirectly
assisted by the violent persecutions of that tribunal, the
cruelties of which stirred up an inveterate hatred among
the Moors against a religion which could tolerate such
enormities. This monstrous outrage on humanity was,
of course, accompanied by the confiscation of all the
goods and property of the expelled.

I will conclude with one or two personal narra-
tives out of the thousands that throng the histories
of these times. In 1549, Constantine Fuenta, preacher
to Charles V,, was accused of Lutheranism. Before
his arrest he had entrusted some of hi" MS. to a
widow named Martinez, and she secreted them in a
wall in the cellar of her house. She, too, was arrested
for Lutheranism, and her property confiscated. Her son
had concealed some of her property before the inventory
was taken — the officer of the Inquisition came to him, and
demanded the efiects which he had concealed. He
having no doubt that his mother had acknowledged
the concealment of the books gave them up. On their
evidence Fuenta was convicted of heresy, and thrown
into a deep, dark, and damp dungeon, where the noxious
vapours soon ended his suflferings. His goods were con-
ficated, his etifigy burnt, his memory pronounced in-
famous, and the inquisitors gave out that he had com-
mitted suicide.

THE INQLISITION.

119

Nicholas Burton, a native of Bristol, was burnt in an
auto da fe. He went out with a cargo, which he pre-
tended was his own ; he was accused of Lutheranism, his
property v/as confiscated, and he himself was burnt. John
Fenton, the real owner of the cargo, went to Seville, and
applied to the Inquisition to have his property restored.
After being subjected to great expense and delry, they
promised to restore his goods. In the meantime, however,
they caused a cliarge to be laid against him of being a
Lutheran. He barely escaped death, but his property was
confiscated, and he was condemned to wear the sanbanito
for a year.

Jane Bohorgues a married woman near confinement,
charged with the same offence, was tortured in the most
brutal manner. In her feeble and forlorn condition, her
child when born was torn from her, and before her
strength would allow she was again subjected to the
torture with the most feindish cruelty. The cords which
bound her limbs penetrated to the bones, and caused the
bursting of several blood-vessels. Blood flowed from her
mouth in torrents, and she was carried back to her
dungeon where she soon expired.

In 1704, Elizabeth Chaffer, who married Doctoi" Vas-
concellos, a native of Maderia, remained faithful to the
Church of England. During her husband's absence in
Brazil, she had a dangerous sickness, and was informed on
her recovery that she had been received into the Roman
Church. She repudiated the ceremony, and was impri-
soned for seven months, and tl.en prosecuted for holding
heretical opinions. Then she was sent a prisoner to the
Inquisition of Lisbon. They appropj-iated all her money

■ "I

120

THE INQUISITION.

and jewellery, and then locked her up for nine months and
fifteen days in a small dark room, about five feet square,
on the ground floor. She was kept for most of the time
on bread and water, and had nothing but a bundle of
damp straw to sleep on. As she refused to conform, her
back was stripped and lashed with a whip of knotted
cords. Then they burnt her breast to the bone in three
different places. After a month she received another
severe whipping, and was then asked whether she would
profess the Roman faith or be burnt. She resolutely
refused to make the profession they required. She was
told that the mercy of the tribunal was extended to
endeavour to rescue her from the flames of hell, but
that it her resolution was to burn rather than embrace
the Roman Catholic religion, they would give her a trial
of it before hand. She was then bound, so that she could
not offer any resistance — her left foot was then made
bare, and an iron slipper, red-hot, was fastened on her foot
till the flesh was burnt away to the bone. As she fainted
away the slipper was removed, and she was carried back
to her dungeon. After a time, she was again whipped so
cruelly that her back was torn all over. She was
threatened with worse treatment still. And being quite
unable to endure such a life of misery, she signed a paper
of recantation and adhesion. She was then, after a time,
dismissed in a most destitute condition, without any of
her goods, or plate, or money being restored to her.

Wm. Lithgow, a Scotch traveller who had gone over
Europe, ariived in Spain in 1620; he was seized and im-
prisoned as a suspected spy by the inquisitors. He has
ivjritten a harrowing description of the prison, surpassing

THE INQUISITION.

121

that of Dickens' in its actual horrors. He was subjected
to every one of the difi'erent kinds of torture I have des-
cribed, and others more revolting still. Lithgow was
accidentally discovered by some English factors, who se-
cured his release. On his arrival in England in 1621,
James the I. went to see him, and a long diplomatic corres-
pondence grew out of his treatment.

These are only a few instances picked at random out of
thousands. Had I time, I could adduce well attested
proofs, the narratives of those who endured or witnessed
the inflictions, of the truth of everv soatement I have
made, and of every description I have given of this fright-
ful tribunal. No one can read its history without feeling
that for its ir.conceivable cruelties, its wholesale murders
perpetrated in the name of religion, and under the direct
authority of the Pope, there must be a mighty retribution
in store for tne Uoman Church yet. Other Christians
taught by her foul example. The Church of England, the
Presbyterians, the Congregationalists have persecuted one
another cruelly — but they are one and all deeply ashamed
of their conduct — have repented of their sin, and repudiat-
ed it. But the Roman Church stands formally committed
to this frightful policy still. For this accursed system is part
to the actual ecclesiastical codeof the Roman Church at this
moment, no scrap of it having been ever withdrawn, re-
pealed, or modified, though power to erforce it is happily
lacking. And it is probable that the Vatican decrees have
made its repeal now forever impossible.

I cannot dwell upon the practical reflections which such
a recital suggests. It must make us shudder at the reve-
lation it gives us of the power of evil. That men could be

.'i

lij

BHVill

122

THE INQUISITION.

found capable of such hard-heartedness, such treachery,
such fiendish cruelty, surpasses imagination. It was how-
ever perpetrated in the name of truth, and at first with the
intention of upholding what the}^ believed to be the truth.
Do not think that the powers which instigated this mon-
strous wickedness have ceased to be. They are cariying on
their warfare with different weapons now, using the very
abhorrence which men ieel for the methods then em-
ployed in the name of truth, to make the truth itself odi-
ous and men indifferent about truth altogether.

Extracts made by Littledale from the Sacro Arsanle of Boionga iGOo,
a hand book of the procedure of the IiKiuisition,

CXXVI. Torture should begin with those most suspected, and if they
be man and woman, is to be;,'in with the woman, as the more timid and
frail : and if all are males then with the youngest and feeblest.

CCIV. The sons of heretics do not incur the penalties enacted against
them, provided they judiciously disclose to the Holy Tribunal the heresy of
their ])arents and secure their imprisonment.

CCXXI. A true Catholic is bound to denounce heretics, even if he have
promised, pledged his faith, and sworn to them not to disclose them ; such
promise or oath being of no force or obligation.

CCXXXIV. The Doctors (and with good reason) hold the crime of
heresy as so atrocious that they accoimt heresy incurred through ignorance,
as worse than murder committed with treachery.

CCXXXVI. If heretics have Catholic children, nevertheless their goods
are to be confiscated, and no regard is to be had of the chrildren.

LECTURE VII.

ROMAN DEPARTURE FBOM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES
AND PRACTICE.

*' It was needful for me to write mito you, and exhort you that
you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered
unto the saints,"— Jude, 3.

IT is a duty to examine with unceasing care the spaci-
ousness, and beauty, and strength, and structure of
the Church of God, that we may be able to defend and
maintain it, and may hand on to the generations to come
a true conception and description of the Divine architec-
ture. The words of the text call us to another duty : to
contend with all our might for the propagation and pre-
servation of the deposit of truth, the faith — the definite,
levealed doctrines that have been entrusted to the
Church as the pillar and ground of the truth, to witness
to and to keep. There is danger, as we hav(^ seen, of un-
hallowed hands meddling with the Ark of God, the out-
ward structure, and changing and overturning the divinely-
appointed constitution of the one body. There is danger
of indolent minds holding the truth in unrighteousness,

124 ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES.

of impure minds corrupting the faith, of unbelieving
minds subverting it altogether. Against each tendency
in ourselves, and in others, we are here bidden earnestly
to contend. I have given proof enough already that the
Koman Church has fallen into the snare first named, and
that she differs widely — one fears almost fatally — from
the divinely-constituted order and harmony of the primi-
tive Catholic Church. By a law of unbending sequence,
as history seems unquestionably to indicate, she has fallen
into the second snare as well, and has corrupted, over-
loaded, and obscured the faith once for all delivered to
the saints. v .

I intend to invite your attention to two or three points
— I cannot cover the whole field — in which the Roman
Church differs from the Catholic Church in doctrine and
in practice. We saw last Sunday that it was the climb-
ing ambition, the greedy lust for worldly wealth and in-
fluence, by which whole generations of Popes were pos-
sessed that led them to labour on with unscrupulous per-
sistency and unceasing toil till they had, at least largely,
succeeded in subverting the primitive constitution and
government of the Catholic Church. It was precisoly the
same greed of power that led them to tamper with the
Catholic faith, and to debase the worship of the Catholic
Church by the allowance of heathen sentiments and prac-
tices. This grew naturally out of the consuming desire
of the Roman PontiflTs to extend at first their patriarchal
and appellate jurisdiction, which brought them in large
revenues, and then to extend the Papal sovereignty —
when that idea was conceived — over the whole Church.

In order to conciliate the heathen, and make it easy to

ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES. 125

induce whole tribes and nations to enter the Church of
the Roman obedience, heathen customs and sentiments
were winked at, or openly allowed. This is no fancy of
my own. It rests upon the very substantial authority of
Pope Gregory the Great. In instructing Augustine of
'Canterbury how to act towards his Saxon converts, he
says, " Let this be done : as these people have been in
the habit of slaying many cattle in the sacrifices to their
demons, so for their sakes ought there to be some solem-
nity, the object of it only being changed. Then, upon a
dedication or upon the nativity of some of the holy mar-
tyrs * * * let it be permitted to make arbours
with the brandies of trees round what once were but
heathen temples. Then celebrate such solemnities with
religious feasts so that the people will not immolate
animals to demons, but slay them and partake of them
with thanks and praises to God. * * * j^qj. ]^q
it remembered that it is not possible to deprive those
whose minds are hardened of all things." And then, in
justification of his advice, he says : " When the Lord
made Himself known to the people of Israel in Egypt,
He still reserved for His own use the sacrifices which it
had been accustomed to tender to the demons, and even
commanded them to immolate animals in His honour, so
that as their hearts changed they would lose one portion
of the sacrifice ; that whilst the animals were immolated
as they had been immolated, yet being offered to God and
not to idols, the sacrifices may no longer be the same."
The advice with the illustration — of very questionable the-
ology — shows that it was the policy of Rome, even at that
early day, to minimise in the minds of the heathen the

r-i

^-&

iilB

126 ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES.

/ extent of the change they would have to make in becom-
ing Christians, and so to conciliate them by retaining
many of their customs. The same spirit controlled the
whole action of the Roman Church with regard to the
worship of images, angels, saints, and relics.

One of the most frequent reproaches flung at the early
Christians by the heathen was that they had no images
among them or in their places of worship (C. Cels., viii.,
17.) CaBcilius (Ap. Minuc. F. p. 19), asks, Why have they
no known images ? And so Arnobius (L. vi.) says to the
heathen, Ye are wont to charge us with the greatest im-
piety that we set up no images or likenesses of the gods.
The statements of Origen, TertuUian and Minucius attest
beyond all dispute that images of every kind were utterly
disallowed in the Cliurch of their day. The Benedictine
(Roman Catholic) editors of Origen sum up the principles
of the early Christians in this brief sentence : " They held
that no imas:e of God was to be made." " What avail
images ? " asks TertuUian, " which are the monuments
either of the dead or of the absent ? " St. Augustine de-
nies that Christians had images in their churches. (Im.
pp. 113, 6.) The testimony of the whole primitive Church
is ovewhelmingly against the worship of images. Even
Pope Gregory writes to Serenius, Bishop of Marseilles,
that he had heard that Sei'enius, seeing certain persons
worshipping images, had broken those same 'images in the
Church and cast them out, and says : " I praise you in
this that nothing made with hands should be worshipped."
He then draws a distinction between the use of pictures,
as a means of instructing the unlettered (just as they are
used in our Sunday-schools now), and the abuse of

ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES. 127

■i

worshipping them, and advises that they be retained to
the former end, and care be taken that the people sin not
in worshipping tlie picture.

Tliis advice was widely acted upon ; and so, under the
plea of conciliating the heathen on the one hand, and of
instructing the ignorant on tlie other, the system of vene-
rating images grew to such excess in the eighth century
that three emperors, Leo the Isaurian, Constantine Co-
pronymus, and Leo IV., took measures for removing
images from churches, and suppressing image worship by
force. These measures were strongly opposed by Popes
Gregory IL and III., who stirred up rebellion against the
emperors, and so Constantine assembled a Council at Con-
stantinople in 7;")4, which declared that all worship of
images was contrary to Scripture and the sense of the
Church in the purer ages ; that it was idolatry, and for-
bidden by the Second Commandment. They also main-
tained that the use of images in churches was a custom
borrowed from the Pagans ; that it was of dangerous
tendency, and ought to be abolished. But in the year
780 the Empress Irene succeeded to the control of the
Eastern Empire, and entered into league with Pope
Adrian. They held another council at Nice, to which
only bishops favouring the use of images were invited.
This council decreed that the cross, the images of Christ,
Mary, the angels and the saints Avere entitled to the wor-
ship of veneration ; yet that they were not entitled to
Divine worship, Latria, properly so called.

The report of the proceedings of this Council, though
approved by the Pope, kindled a flame of furious opposi-
tion throughout the Churches of the West. The English

' 'I

V a

'.i\

128 ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES.

Church, under the guidance of the learned Alcuin, led the
way, and at the Council of Verulam (St. Albans), 793,
denounced the image worship which this Eastern Council
had sanctioned " as a thing which the Church of God
utterly abhors." In the next year the great Council of
Frankfort was held at the summons of the Emperor
Charlemagne. It represented the whole Western Church*
England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, including
legates from the Pope, and it condenmed as " execrable
in the Church of God all worship, adoration and service
of images." And so the Council of Paris, in 824, in dis-
cussing this subject, denounced the absurdities of Pope
Adrian, who, they ^ay, " had commanded an heretical
worship of images." Thus the whole Western Church
formally and emphatically reject the doctrines of the
pseudo Nicene Council, and declare what up to that time
had been the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Ciiurch.
And that decision stands unreversed to this day as the
law of the Western Church.

In spite, however, of this formal rejection, this heathen
superstition revived amongst the half-instructed converts
from heathenism, and grew apace, just as the Papal power
grew, until it absorbed very largely the devotions of the
people. I am aware that Roman Catholic controversial-
ists deny that any real worship is paid to images, and
that they are merely regarded as edifying memorials of
those whom they represent. But when we know that
the common people are taught to bow down before sta-
tues and pictures of our blessed Saviour, of His virgin
mother, and of His saints and angels, though we are told
that they make no prayers to the images, but to those of

ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCRRINES. 129

which they are images, yet, we ask, wherein does such
worship differ from idolatry ? The lieathen, as we learn
from St. Augustine, protested that they did not pray to
the image, but to the god whom the image was meant to
represent. So that the very essence of idolatry is to wor-
ship God through the medium of an image or representa-
tion. It is against tliis very sin that the second com-
mandment is directed ; and it is no doubt the conscious-
ness of this fact, whatever explanations may be offered*
that lies at the rout of the Roman mode of teaching the
commandments so as to slip the second commandment
altogether out of sight. And so it comes to pass that not
one Roman Catholic in a million knows or is taught that
image worship is sinful and can be abused. Nay, emi-
nent Roman divines have taught unchecked that to the
very images of Christ was due the same supreme worship
which is due to Christ Himself, even that Latria with
which none but the Holy Trinity and the Incarnate Word
must be approached. Bellarmine, who himself took a
hesitating course and held that Latria was only improperly
and by accident due to an image, yet tells us that the
opj)Osite opinion was held by Thomas Aquinas, Cajetan,
and Bonaventura, and he himself says that " the images
of Christ and the saints are to be venerated, not only by
accident and improperly, but also by themselves properly ;
so that themselves terminate the veneration as in them-
selves considered, and not only as they take the place of
their examples."

Azorius, the Jesuit, says that the image is to be honoured
and worshipped with the same honour and worship as that
with which he is worshipped whose the image is. (So.

130 ROMAN DEPARTURE PROM CATHOLK! DOCTRINES.

Azor. Just., Mort. Tom., 1 Let. ix., c. 9.) And Thomas
Aquinas says, " The same reverence should l)e displayed
towards an image of Christ as towards Christ Himself;
and seeinfj that Christ is adored with the adoration of
Latria (i. e. sui)reme religious worship) it follows that His
imaire is to be adored with the adoration of Latria.
(Suinuia. ii., xxv., 3.) Anain, the cross is adored with the
same adoration as Christ, that is with adoration of Latria,
and for that reason we address and supplicate the cross
just as we do the Crucified Himself." If this be not to
break God's commandments and teach men so, then it is
hard to see how God's commandments can be broken.
Even the enlightened heathen seldom went so far as to
believe the worship due properly to the idol itself, and
not merely to its original and prototype. Roman Catholics
insist that there is no idolatry in this teaching and prac-
tice. It may be so ; but if so, it is quite impossible to
tell what the term idolatry means. At all events, we see
plainly enough from the quotations given that the Roman
Church of to-day differs very widely on this subject both
from the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church of
the first eight centuries.

It is just the same with the history of the great crying
crime of the practical system of the Roman Church — her
obscuration, nay, overthrow, of faith in Jesus Christ as
our only Mediator and Redeemer — the cultus, they call it,
of the blessed Virgin. It has no place whatever in the
faith or practice of the Catholic Church of the first ages.
The first approaches to it are rejected with almost furious
indignation by the great Church teachers. The vast ma-
jority of the Christian writers before the Council of Nice

ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES. 131

whose writings have come down to us, in all their histo-
rical, doctrinal, and devotional statements never mention
the blessed Virgin in any way whatever. Of the few
who do refer to her in an historical way not one directs
any devotion to be paid to her, or assigns her any other
place than that of being the honoured instrument of the
Saviour's incarnation. Two, Origon and Tertullian, blame
her for entertaining unbelieving doubts. Irenams says
that St. Mary's obedience counterbalances Eve's disobedi-
ence, so that she has become the advocate of Eve. We
have only a barbarous Latin translation of what ho wrote
and it is evident that he is not thinking of the blessed
Virgin as the advocate of Eve in the active sense of
pleading for her now, but only of the one act of her ready
submission to the divine will, as furnishing a counter-
balancing plea to the disobedience of Eve. And it is evi-
dent that he had no notion of the Roman doctrine con-
cerning the Virgin mother, for in another place he speaks
of Christ having checked the unreasonable haste of His
mother at Cana. (Adv. Haer. iii., xvi.) There is no
change in the testimony of the greatest fathers even after
Nice. In their catechisms, prepared for the instruction
of the people, there is absolute silence as to any religious
homage due to her, and in their devotional utterances
there is nothing that can be tortured into an address to
her of any kind. St. Chrysostom does not hesitate to say
that she was ignorant of the full mystery of the incarna-
tion, and that she was moved by ambition and arrogance
in sending that message to her son. (Horn, on St. Matt,
xii., 48.) St. Basil speaks of her as wavering in belief at
the time of the Passion. (Epist. 260.)

132 ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES.

St. Gregory Nyssen says nothing created is to be wor-
shipped by man. * * * " We who are taught
by the Scriptures to look to the true Godhead are in-
structed to regard every created being as foreign from the
Divine nature, and to serve and reverence the uncreated
nature alone." (Contra Eunomium.) (St. Ephanius, 403),
a Doctor, says, Mary's body was holy, indeed, but she was
not a Deity. She was a virgin, too, and honoured, but
not given to us for worship. And he concludes, " Christ
called her woman, as in prophecy, because of the heresies
and schisms which were to come upon the earth, lest any
one, through excessive adoration for that holy Virgin,
should fall into the silly nonsense of that heresy (that of
the Colly ri'leans). * * * For if Christ willeth
not that the angels should be worshipped, how much
more is He unwilling that worship should be paid to her
who is born of Anna ? Let Mary be honoured ; but let
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost alone be worshipped.
Let no one worship Mary." He says that this idolatrous
heresy has only for its promoters weak, fickle, narrow-
minded women, prone to error, and that they must be put
to silence. " With these agree St. Jerome, Doctor, 478 ; St.
Augustine, Doctor, 430 ; St. Cyril, of Alexandria, 440.
And, finally, nothing whatever implying this cultus is to
be found in the copious writings either of Pope Leo the
Great, 4G1, or of Pope Gregory the Great, 004. And
when we first find the cultus of the blessed Virgin, or of
the angels, making its appearance, it is at once challenged
and condemned as a novel heresy." (Littledale.)

Such was the doctrine, such the practice of the Catholic
Church for over 600 years with regard to the cultus of

ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES. 133

the blessed Virgin. Like the worship of angels, images,
and relics, it was introduced to conciliate the heathen,
and it found a soil ready prepared in the minds of those
barbarous hordes who had been accustomed to worship
the Queen of Heaven and her attendants or rivals. And
so this custom which the fathers rejected with abhorrence
as an idolatrous heresy grew apace in that soil till it
reached at last its truly appalling proportions in the
modern Roman Church.

• I have not time to trace its history, but invite your
attention to a few illustrations of the accredited Roman
teaching on the subject now. One of their most learned
writers, Suarez, says " it is a universal sentiment in the
Roman Church that the intercession of Mary is not only
useful, but in a certain manner necessary, because God
has determined to give us no grace except through the
hands of Mary." And so it is taught in authorized books
that '* it is morally impossible for those to be saved who
neglect the devotion of the blessed Virgin ; " that " it is
the will of God that all graces should pass through her
hands ; " that '"' no creature obtained any grace from God
save according to the dispensation of His holy mother,"
(quoted from Bernerdine by Liguori). That Jesus has in
fact said " no one shall be partaker of my blood except
through the intercession of My mother." That " our sal-
vation is in her hands." That " it is impossible for any
to be saved who turns away fronfi her, or is disregarded by
her." That " God Himself is subject to the command of
Mary." That " God has resigned into her hands His om-
nipotence in the sphere of grace." That " it is safer to
seek salvation through her than directly from Jesus. It

134 ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES.

was necessary that Christ should constitute His well-
beloved mother a mediator between us and Him, that she
would appease the wrath of her Sen." (lac de Valent en
Eupos Magni.) Again, it is taught that " God retained
justice unto Himself and granted mercy to her ; " " that
she is the throne of grace whereof the Apostle speaketh
to which we are to come;" "that she appeaseth the just
anger of her Son ; " " she is the only refuge of those who
have incurred the Divine indignation." (Blosius in Glories
of Mary, p. 93.) And these are not the mere opinions of
private teachers, but of Doctors whose teaching has been
examined and approved, of authorised books of devotion
and instruction, nay, of Popes themselves, e. g : " On this
hope," says Pius IX., " we chiefly relv that the most
blessed Virgin, * * v^ho by the foot of virtue
bruised the serpent's head, and who, being constituted
between Christ and His Church, * * hath ever
delivered the Christian people from calamities of all sorts.
For ye know very well, venerable brethren, that the whole
of our confidence is placed in the most holy Virgin, since
God has placed in Mary the fulness of all good, that accor-
dingly, we may know that if there is any hope in us, if any
grace, if any salvation, it redounds to us from her, because
such is His will who has willed that we should have
everything through Mary." (Ep. Encycl, 1849.)

That is the way the last Pope interpreted and taught
this doctrine. We have been told that the present occu-
pant of the Papal throne is a liberal and enlightened man,
who has no sympathy with the superstitions of his pre-
decessor. And yet who of us has not been horrified at
the pure and simple heathenism that pervades every line

ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES. 135

of that encyclical of his published about a month ago,
calling the faithful to observe a novenna to the blessed
Virgin, and promising all sorts of indulgences for the mere
mechanical recitation of prayers to her ? Neither the
name nor the doctrine of Christ has the faintest recogni-
tion. It is in fact an entire endorsation of Liguorian
teaching about Mary. Again, De Salazar (pp. G21-G29),
hesitates not to say that " Mary loved the world and gave
her only begotten Son for it ; for with priestly piety she
offered Him up as a sacrifice for the world. Many things
are asked from God and are not granted ; they are asked
from Mary and are obtained." " At the command of the
Virgin all things obey, even God." " The salvation of all
depends upon their being favoured and protected by Mary;
he who is protected by Mary will be saved ; he who is
not will be lost. Mary has only to speak and her Son
executes all." (Glories of Mary, Liguori.) That is what
is taught the people in the popular manuals of devotion
and instruction.

Think of this prayer in the Recolta, to be used during
the celebration of the mass : " I acknowledge thee and I
venerate thee, most holy Virgin, Queen of Heaven, Lady
Mistress of the universe, as daughter of the Eternal Father,
mother of His well-beloved Son, and most loving spouse
of the Holy Spirit ; kneeling at the feet of thy great
majesty with all humility, I pray through thy divine
charity wherewith thou wast so bounteously enriched on
thine assumption into heaven to vouchsafe me favour and
pity, placing me under thy most safe and faithful protec-
tion and receiving me into the number of those happy
and highly favoured servants of thine whose names thou

iiiii

156 ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES.

dost cany graven upon thy virgin heart." And think of
this prayer published at Rome with license of Superiors
in 1825 : " I adore you, Eternal Father ; I adore you,
Eternal Son ; I adore you, most Holy Spirit ; I adore you,
most holy Virgin, Qucc;n of the heavens, lady and mistress
of the universe." She is thus put on a virtual level witli
God as an object of worship, and as far as language can
do it is honoured above Him. Salazar calls her "the com-
plement of the whole Trinity, with body and soul under
the sacred species." I shudder even to read what follows.
Dr. Pusey (Enenicon) says there exists among the poor
people of Rome a belief that in the Holy Eucharist not
only our Lord but His mother is present. And the belief
is defended by Oswald, one o( their distinguished writers.
(Dogmat. Mariol, p. 177.) " We maintain," he says, " a
co-presence of Mary in the Eucharist. This is a necessary
inference from our Marian theory, and we shrink back
from no consequence. We are much inclined," he says
afterwards, " to believe in an essential co-presence of Mary
in her whole person." The same doetrine was stated long
before by one of Rome's most careful commentators on
Holy Scripture, Cornelius a Lapide, Eccl. xxiv., 29 : " As
often as we eat the flesh of Christ in the holy Eucharist,
so often do we in it really eat the flesh of the blessed
Virgin." " As, then, we daily hunger after the flesh of
Christ in the Eucharist, so, too, do we hunger for the same
flesh of the blessed Virgin ; that we may drink her virgin
endowments and ways and incorporate them into our-
selves ; and this do not only priests and religious, but all
Christians; for the blessed Virgin feeds all with her
own flesh, equally with the flesh of Christ, in the holy
Eucharist."

ROMAN DEPARTUKE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES. 137

Salazar says that St. Ignatius taught in a meditation
that in the Eucharist he received not only the flesh and
blood of Christ, but also a part, yea, a chief part of Mary.
And Faber (pp. 2!), 30, pre. Bid.) says, " There is some por-
tion of the precious blood which was once Mary's own
blood." And he says that Christ showed to St. Ignatius
the very part of the host which had once belonged to the
substance of Mary." I could multiply quotations of this
kind vastly, but my soul is sick. If this teaching is not
idolatry, if it is not barefaced, unmeasured blasphemy
under the guise of religion, then I don't know the mean-
ing of human speech. It was with reference to these
statements that Dr. Newman said, when Dr. Pusey pressed
them upon him, " they are like a bad dream ; they amaze,
they terrify me."

I had intended in this lecture to point out that the
Roman doctrine of purgatory, with its monstrous mass
traffic, has a similar history, and is equally a departure
from Catholic doctrine and practice ; but I must not de-
tain you longer. I will only say that not only does the
Roman Church difter from the Catholic Church as to these
doctrines and practices which we have been considering,
but that her present attitude, both in teaching and prac-
tice, amounts to an absolute revolution in the Christian
faith. It is not a gloss, or a development, or a modifica-
tion, but a radical change. Theoretically, and as it is prac-
tised in the most ultramontane quarters, it is the dethrone-
ment of the Almighty Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the substitution of another sovereign ruler, another
Saviour and Redeemer, another object of worship. And
the worst of it is that the cultus is vastly increasing in

IMV"

138 ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES.

the Roman Church, as her bishops almost with one voice
testified in their ans Timers to the enquiries addressed to
them by the Pope previous to the assembly of the Vatican
Council. Yes, and many of the most influential Roman
writers are urging it on, and are contemplating with ex-
ulting eagerness the overthrow of heresy and the reign of
peace in the approaching age of Mary, when the blessed
Virgin will be the almost exclusive object of Christian
devotion. In other words, an actual and an appalling —
because unperceived — apostacy is in active progress in
the Roman communion. The allegiance of men is being
transferred from Christ, the Son of God, to one who, most
highly honoured as she is, is yet only a human creature,
and when the great trial comes, and men will have to
deny the faith of Christ or die for it, they will have no
faith in Christ to deny, for it will have been obscured and
forgotten, or transferred to another.

May God in His infinite mercy open the eyes of these i
blind votaries of this system of revived heathenism, and
restore them to the faith of the Catholic Church, and the
worship of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

NOTE.

In all Christian ages the especial glory ascribed to the
Virgin mother is purity of heart and life, implied in the
term Virgin. Gradually, in the history of the Christian
Church, the recognition of this became idolatry. The
works of early Christian art curiously exhibit the pro-
gress of this perversion. They show how Mariolatry
grew up. The first pictures of the early Christian ages

ROMAN DEPARTURE FROM CATHOLIC DOCTRINES. 139

simply represent the woman. By and by we find out-
lines of the mother and child. In an after age the Son
is seen sitting on a throne with the mother crowned, but
sitting as yet below Him. In an age still later, the
crowned mother on a level with the Son. Later still, t
mother on a throne above the Son. And lastly, a Romish
picture represents the Eternal Son in wrath about to de-
stroy the earth, and the Virgin intercessor interposing,
pleading by significant attitude her maternal rights and
redeeming the world from His vengeance. Such was in
fact the progress of Virgin worship : first the woman reve-
renced for the Son's sake; then the woman reverenced
above the Son and adored. (Rev. F. W, Robertson, 2nd
Series, p. 267.)

LECTURE VIII. ;;

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE BETWEEN THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH AND THE ROMAN CHURCH.

** It was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that
ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered
unto the saints." — Jude 3.

I HAVE given a general exposition of these words in
my last lecture. In seeking to make further practical
application of them I shall follow the lead of Archbishop
Lynch, and as he has been pointing out the difference be-
tween the Catholic religion and the Protestant religions,
I will ask your attention to some further points of difier-
ence between the Catholic religion and the Roman re-
ligions. • '^

And hrst let us consider one of the points upon which
the Archbishop dwells in his lecture. Ke says " Catholics
believe that after this life there is a middle state between
heaven and hell, where souls not good enough to go to
heaven, or bad enough to go to hell, are detained some time
that they may be purified from the stains of sin, the guilt of
mortal sin being forgiven in this life by true repentance,

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

141

that they may be pure and holy enough to be engulfed in
the infinite sanctity and purity of God. The Protestant
says that after death there is only one heaven, or hell, to
receive the soul." This is certainly a very mild and limited
statement of the Roman doctrine of purgatory. But
mild as it is, it differs widely from the Catholic doctrine of
the Catholic ages. The catechism of the Council ot Trent,
which is practically .an authoritative document, teaches
" that there is a purgatorial Hre in which the souls of the
pious are tormented for a certain time, in order that an en-
trance may be open to them into their eternal home, where
nothing defiled can enter." Tetzel, an authoritative teacher
in his day, rebuked the people(./M-s^ pro sacerd. Serm. 2, in
v., d. Hardt. Hist. Ref.), saying " Ye hear not your par-
ents and other deceased crying, ' Have mercy, have mercy
on me, for we are in the severest pains and torments, from
which ye could free us by a slight alms ; and ye will not.
Ye permit us to lie in the flames, deferring the glory
promised to us.' " And (in Sermon 3, ib.) as the mortal
sins of life are almost infinite, they have to endure an in-
finite punishment in the burning pains of purgatory.

Sir Thomas More, appealing in behalf of private masses
for the dead, speaks of the souls in purgatory as suffering
pains in fire and torments intolerable, God only knows
how long (Works,- p. 816). Liguori makes the Blessed
Virgin the Queen of this terrible realm. And Faber re-
presents St. Michael as Prince of Purgatory, and our Lady's
Regent, the moonlight of Mary's throne lighting up their
land of pain. Bellarmine teaches (Z)g Piirgatorio, lib.
II.) that the fire of purgatory is corporeal, that the souls
suffering it are sure of salvation, and that they may be

tsesa

142

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

aided — their sufferings diminished and shortened by the
prayers of the faithful. In the apprehension of the peo-
ple, the pains of purgatory are identical with the pains of
hell, and this is practically taught by such popular manu-
als of devotion as " The Key to Heaven," authorized by
Archbishop Hughes, of New York. The faithful are in-
structed to pray for the departed, " that they may be de-
livered from the shades of death, where the light of Thy
countenance shineth not. From torments incomparablj'
greater than the bitterest anguish of this life." We are
all familiar with the gross popular representations of souls
half delivered — with head and arms out of purgatory,
while the lower parts of their bodies are being scorched in
purgatory. By such representations offerings and pay-
ments for masses for the dead are often extorted from the
poor. But leaving these popular yet wide-spread notions
out of view, let us compare the accredited doctrine of the
Roman Church on this subject with the doctrine of the
Catholic Church of the first days. That doctrine, as the
Archbishop's language implies, and as their authoritative
teachers directly assert, is that there are some souls —
those of saints and martyrs and exemplary christians —
good enough to be received into heaven immediately at
death, and that they are so received. 2nd. That there
are other souls bad enough to be sent to hell at once,
and that they are so sent; while others, the vast majority
of ordinary christians, are left in purgatory till they ex-
piate, by sufferings, the temporal punishments due to
their sins.

This doctrine is a complete perversion of the primitive
doctrine of the intermediate state, and contradicts in ex-

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

143

plicit terms the .statements of the great Catholic doctors
of the first ages.

The Catholic Church, in common with the Jewish
Church, has always believed in an intermediate state be-
tween death and the judgment, in which the soul exists
apart from the body — a state of conscious happiness or
misery. This state they called in Hebrew, "sheol," in
Greek, " Hades," The abode of the blessed in it they de-
scribed as the Garden of Eden, answering to the Paradise
of the New Testament (Luke xxiii., 43). They also, spoke
of it as being " Under the throne of glory," — an expres-
sion nearly parallel witli (Rev. vi., 9) of the souls crying
" under the altar" They further spoke of it as being in
Abraham's bosom, an expression which our Lord adopts
in the parable of Dives and Lazarus (St. Luke xviii. 22).
This doctrine is authoritatively proclaimed as true.not only
by the fact that our Lord did not correct or reprove those
who taught it, but that He adopted it and incorporated it
into His own teaching in the parable referred to above
and in His promise to the penitent thief, " To-day shalt
thou be with Me in paradise." When it is evident at once
tha+ paradise does not mean heaven, for after His resur-
rection he said, "I have ^?o^ yet &8cended to My Father."
This teaching was well understood and universally accept-
ed in the Apostolic Church. But it contradicts the present
Roman doctrine just as explicitly as it contradicts the
popular Protestant misappiehension. Both alike teach
that the souls of the righteous and wicked go at once to
heaven or hell. The Roman only differs from the Protest-
ant by inventing a third class, of whose existence there
is no trac^ in Holy Scripture or primitive teaching — a

144<

UIFFEUENCES OF DOCTRINE.

vast multitudo, neither righteous nor wicked, whom it
leaves in purgatory for a longer or shorter time. The earli-
est Christian teachers explicitly reject both these theories
Justin Martyn, A. D. 135 (Dial c. Tripho, .">), says the
souls of the pious take up a temporary nbode in a better,
tho'^e of the wicked in a worse place. stigmatises as

heretical the doctrine that souls are received into heaven
immediately after death (ib, 80,). He says those who say
that immediately after death their souls are taken up to
heaven, these are not to be accounted either Christians or
Jews. , •;

Irenjeus, A. D. 170, (V., 31, p. 3.31). " That souls go to
the place appointed for them by God, and there abide
until the resurrection, when they shall receive their
bodies and arise in their completeness, that is bodily, as
the Lord arose, and shall come to the v' 'on of God."

Tertullian, A. D. 218, states his bel that the souls

of all men go to Hades until the resurrection, and that
the soul receives beforehand somewhat of torment or of
solace in its prison." — De Anima. Origen, 2.54, says "that
the souls of pious Christians go to paradise, which he
distinguishes from Hades and identifies with the bosom of
Abraham." ^

He maintains that the perfection of blessedness ensues
only after the final judgment. And he declares his be-
lief that 'not even the A'postles have received their perfect
hli98 ; for saints at their departure out of this life do not
attain the full reward of their labours, but are awaiting us
who still remain on earth." (Hom. VII. in Sev. Nem. II.)

Lactantius, 330, says that " all souls are detained in the
same common place of keeping until the time come when

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

14.'

the Supreme Judsfe shall enquire into their good or evil
deedH." (Lact., Lib iiic, 21.

Hilary, A, D. 808, says, " The faithful who depart out
of the body are reserved in the safe keeping; of the Lord,
for an entrance to the kingdom of heaven, being in the
meantime placed in Abraham's bosom, whither the wicked
cannot enter." (Hil. in Ps. 138).

Ambrose, A. D. 3!)8, says " That while the fulness of time
is expected, the souls await the reward which is in store
for them. Some pain awaits, others glory. Bu' in the
meantime the former are not without trouble, nor are the
latter without enjoyment." And so throughout. There is
no trace up to this date in any Christian writing that has
come down to us of any statement that can give any
countenance to the present Roman doctrine of Purgatory
It is explicitly taught that none, even of the greatest
saints, ha 'e yet passed into the final glory of God in
the kingd in of heaven. All are in an intermediate con-
dition of c iscious liappiness or woe awaiting the final
consummation, at th.e resurrection of the body. They
know of no saints so distinguished that they passed at
once into the heavens ; of no sinners so reprobate that
they were flung at once into hell. And they have never
heard of a vast neutral company who are enduring the
pains of the purgatorial fire. At least if they knew, they
have handed down no trace of their knowledge, and have
written much that makes it impossible to believe that
any such doctrine was known amongst them.

Many of the early writers were perplexed about the
meaning of I. Cor., iii., 11-15. They confessedly can
only offer conjectures as to the meaning of the words,

146

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

" Saved as by tire." They had no traditional doctrine of
purgatory to explain it. Clement of Alex, referring to this
passage, says that some will be puritied by tire (Strom,
vii., (J, p. 851), but it is evident from the whole context
that he is speaking of tire even during this present life, the
tire of attiiction. Origen, on the othei" hand, thinks that
the fire meant is the fire which will consume the world at
the last day (Contra, Cels v., 15). And so far from his
knowing anything of the Roman doctrine, that Apostles
and Martyrs have escaped this fire, and that it is meant
only for the middling kind of Christians, he says that no
one, not even Paul, or Peter himself, can escape this fire,
but that it does not cause any pain to the pure. The same
interpretation is given by Basil Gregory Naz. (In Orat.
39, 19, p. 690). Ambrose and Augustin (De Civitate
Dei xvl, 24, qcj., 25).

In interpreting I. Cor. iii., 11-15, Augustine speaks
of the fire of judgment which is to try men's works, and
says further, "that they who have the true foundation, even
Jesus Christ, shall have their carnal afiections and infirm-
ities purged away from them by the fire of tribulation, by
the loss of things they love, by persecution, and in the
end of the world by the atfliction which Anti-Christ
should bring." In short, by the troubles of this life. And
then he adds, " that some have fancied that after death
some further purging by fire was awaiting them who were
not fully purified here." This opinion, however, is not an
acknowledged truth. It is a mere speculation which had
begun to be broached in his day. It has no Scriptural
authority. It is not a traditional doctrine of the Church.
It is only a speculative conjecture which he will not argue

•UH

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

147

a,s;ainst, since, he says, it may perchance he true. It was
in fact an evident novelty in the days of Augustine.

Gregory the Great, A. D., 590-(}04<, may rightly be called
the inventor of the doctrine of purgatory. Wliat Augus-
tine mentioned as a private speculation, he lays down as
an article of faith, saying, " De qitibitsdem levibus calpis
esse ayite judicium purgatorius ignis credendus est " (Dial.
IV., 39). And yet he does not r)ropound ib as a well
known traditional doctrine of the Church, but rests his
dogmatism upon his own opinion of the meaning of
(Msitt. xii. 31). He, too, was the first writer virho clearly
propounded the idea of deliverance from purgatory by
intercessory prayer, by masses for the dead, &c. If we
compare Gregory's doctrine with the former (more idealis-
tic notions concerning the purifying fire), we may say
with Schmidt, the belief in an uninterrupted endeavour
after a higher degree of perfection which death itself can-
not interrupt, degenerated into a belief in purgatory. The
Greek Church to this day has never accepted this doc-
trine of Roman invention about purgatory.

But what, it will be asked, was the meaning of those
prayers for the dead, which certainly date back at
least as early as the second century, if the Roman
doctrine of purgatory was unknown in those ages ?
Why, it is asked, were prayers offered for the dead
unless they could profit them ? And how could they
profit them except by delivering from the pains of
purgatory, or shortening their duration ? If the dead
are either saved or lost and no change can now take place
in their condition, why pray for them at all ? The
answer is that the prayers of the Primitive Church for

148

DIFFKHENCES OF DOCTRINE.

m m

the departed not only do not imply the doctrine of
purgatory, but expressly disprove its existence. That
doctrine is that the soals of apostles, martyrs, and saints,
and especially the soul of the Blessed Virgin, whose
assumption is solemnly celebrated,are already in heaven ;
that the souls in purgatory are not at rest and in peace,
but are tossed and torn with intolerable pains. But the
prayers of the ancient Liturgies are offered for the great-
est saints, for apostles and martyrs, yea, for the Blessed
Virgin herself, who (according to Roman doctrine) is not
only in heaven, but is reigning as Queen of Heaven.
Thus in the Clementine Liturgy, "We offer to Thee for all
the saints who have pleased Thee from the beginning of
the world, the patriarchs, prophets, iljfhteous men, apos-
tles, martyrs." "The Liturgy, called St. Chrysostom,
prays for all departed in the faith, patriarchs, prophets,
apostles, and especially for the holy, imaculate, blessed
Theotokos and ever Virgin Mary." This alone is sufficient
to prove that the Roman doctrine of purgatory was not
known when these Liturgies were composed, and is a dis-
tinct contradiction of that doctrine. But more than this,
many of those who speak of praying for the dead posi-
tively declare their firm belief that those for whom they
prayed were in peace, rest and blessedness, and, therefore,
certainly not in fire and torment. Thus in ancient
Roman Missals were the words, " Remember, O Lord,
Thy servants who have gone before us with the sign of
faith, and sleep in the sleep of peace ; to them, Lord,
and to all that are at rest in Christ we beseech Thee to
grant a place of refreshment, of light and peace." And
so throughout. None of the ancient prayers for the dead

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

149

had even an allusion to the pains of purgatory. There is
no petition in them, before the middle of the fourth cen-
tury, even for the forgiveness of the sins of those prayed
for. They are only offered for those whose sins are al-
ready forgiven, and who are at rest in Christ.

After the time of St. Jerome, we meet constantly with
prayers that the defilements which the pardoned soul car-
ried with it out of this life may be wiped out, but even
then for a long time the pardon asked for has reference,
for the most part, to the Judgement Day, as, for instance,
this from the Monophysite Liturgy of St. John the Evan-
gelist, " They who have lain down in the ^rave wait for
Thee, and look to Thy life-giving hope. Awake them,
Lord, in th*^ last day, and may Thy look towards them
be tranquil, and in Thy mercy forgive their faults and fail-
ings." By degrees, however, the idea of pardon in the
intermediate state for sins of infirmity which were com-
mitted here, comes creeping in. But stili those prayed for
were held to be already saved, to have had their pardon
sealed, and to be in a condition not of torment, but of light,
peace and refreshment.

Why, then, were those prayers offered ? They were a
definite realization of the communion of saints, a calling to
mind in the presence of God of those whom we have loved
and lost, and a tender commending of them to God's
loving care, and asking, in confiding love, for a continu-
ance of those very blessings which they were believed
already to enjoy. Much in the spirit in which we pray.
" Give us this day our daily bread," even when his present
bountiful supply of all our needs gives us every reason
to know and trust his loving care for the future.

150

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

Again the resurrection and full blessedness of the de-
parted is yet future, and the Ancients prayed for the has-
tening of the resurrection, much in the spirit of our own
burial service, " That it may please Thee to hasten Thy
kingdom, that we, with all those departed in the true
faith and in the fear of Thy holy name, may have our
perfect consummation and bliss both in body and soul in
Thy eternal and everlasting kingdom," and of the petition
in the Lord's Prayer, " Thy kingdom come." So St.
Ambrose prayed for the Emperors Gratian and Valen-
tinian, " That God would raise them up with a speedy
resurrection," And so the Liturgies constantly ask a
speedy and happy resurrection for those who have died in
the Lord.

Another part of these prayers was Eucharistic thanks-
giving for the martyrs and for all that had died in the
faith and fear of God. And these commemorations were
held to be of the greatest importance, as testifying a prac-
tical belief in the doctrine of the communion of saints, and
that the souls of those who are gone hence are still living,
still fellow-heirs of the same glory, and fellow citizens of
the same kingdom with ourselves. The conclusion, then,
is inevitable that the doctrines of the Ancients concerning
the intermediate state was altogether inconsistent with a
belief in purgatory, while their prayers for the dead prove
conclusively that no such doctrine had yet been heard of
when they were written. God has vouchsafed to tell us
but very little concerning the state out of the body. The
picture in the parable of Dives and Lazarus. The promise
contained in the word paradise, Abraham's bosom, under
the altar, as descriptions of the abode of those who have

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTBINE.

151

died in the Lord. The declaration that they are blessed,
that their works do follow them. That when absent from
the body, they are present with the Lord. That they
sleep in Him as descriptive of their deep, undisturbed
rest. This is all the revelation He has given us. No de-
tailed description of what makes up their blessedness, or
of what it is to be present with the Lord, or of how that
presence makes their sleep in Him far better for them than
the most active service of love here. It may be, it prob-
lably is the case, that no human speech could convey to
our minds any adequate or true conception of what that
life out of the body will be. " And the ancient Catholic
Church did not strive to be wise above what is written ;
she had no traditional doctrines that threw any ad-
ditional light upon the world beyond the grave." We
see distinctly how the doctrine of purgatory grew out of
the speculative fancies of later interpreters who tell us
that they had nothing to base their conclusions upon but
their own conjectures.

It is natural for us to think that that life with the
Lord must be one of progressive knowledge and progres-
sive holiness. It seems incredible that we shall not
be, even then, transformed from glory to glory by the
presence of the Lord. It may, too, be inconceivable, as
Dr. Pusey thinks, " that when the soul shall first behold
Jesus, and in His sight with its powers quickened, shall
behold its past life as a whole, it should not experience
intense pain, pain so intense that here soul and body
wonld be severed by it." And it may be, as he tells us, an
" instir tive feeling that the soul which here has had no
longings for God, even if the man himself should be in a

152

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

state of grace, would not be at once and might not for
some long period be admitted to the sight of God." But all
we can say is that this is all mere speculation ; we are told
nothing about it and we can know nothing about it. God
would have us commit our dead to Him — and go down
to the grave ourselves, trusting absolutely to Him as a
Faithful Creator and most merciful Saviour who has re-
deemed us with His blood and will accomplish His own
will in us and for us in ways that we know not of. Even
in that last dark hour He requires us to walk by Faith
and not by sight.

INDULGENCES. '

The Roman doctrine of Indulgences is closely allied to
that of Purgatory — and like it is an utter departure from
and perversion of primitive practice. In the early ages
of the Church the penitential discipline was very severe,
and persons were frequently placed \mder excommunica-
tion for long teruis of years ; sometimes till they were dy-
ing and other severe penalties were imposed as tests of re-
pentance and acts of self -discipline. The authority which
imposed these censures could, and often did, mitigate or
remove them, on being satisfied with the sincerity of the
offender's repencance. Out of the perversion of this
ecclesiastical discipline, Rome has built up her whole huge
system of Indulgences. That system has little or nothing
to do with ecclesiastical censures or earthly penalties, but
is almost wholly concerned with God's chastisement of sin
in the intermediate state of souls between death and the
last judgment. They teach that there are two penalties
annexed to all sin, Culpa, or eternal punishment ; and

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

153

Poena, or temporal punishment, including that of Purga-
tory. That here, when Culpa has been remilted by abso-
lution, Poena still remains uncancelled. That one drop of
Christ's blood was sufficient for the redemption of the
world, while all the rest that he shed, together with the
merits and prayers of all the saints over and above what
were needed for their own salvation, constitute an inex-
haustible treasury or bank, on which the Pope has a right
to draw, and to apply the drafts for the relief of the souls
in Purgatory. So that any one who obtains an indulgence
can apply its merits to himself ov transfer them to some
one living or dead. An indulgence of a hundred days or
seven years means a deliverance from the amount of suf-
fering which would have to be endured during that length
of time if the indulgence had not been obtained. A plen-
ary indulgence means the entire remission of all purga-
torial chastisements. These are now granted not to per-
sons under ecclesiastical censure, but for the most part to
those who are specially devout and obedient. Again,
while the limit of human life is less than one hundred
years, indulgences are granted, not only for five hundred,
but for 11,000, 32,355 and 56,000 years. This system
had grown to enormous proportions in the times pre-
ceding the Reformation. Indulgences were openly sold,
and became one of the fruitful sources of papal reve-
nue. The Roman Catholic princes, alarmed at the
progress of Lutheranism, met at Nuremburg in 1523 and
addressed a petition to Pope Hadrian VI. for the remedy
of one hundred grievances. Among these occur No. 5,
" How licence to sin with impunity is granted for money,"
67 ; " How more money than penitence is exacted from
J

rmm

154

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

I! I

sinners," No. 91 ; " How bishops extort money from the
concubinage of priests. They alleged that the vendors of
bulls of indulgence declare that by means of these pur-
chasable pardons, not only are past and future sins of the
living forgiven, but also those of such as have departed
this life, and are in the purgatory of fire, provided only
something be counted down." They say if any one have
the means of paying, not only are present transgressions
allowed, but permission to transgress with impunity in
the future is secured ; out of this they say grow perjury,
murder, adultery, and every atrocious crime. The Pope
to whom this petition was sent implicitly admitted the
truth of these horrible charges. Indeed he could not deny
it, for the book entitled. Taxes of the Sacred Apostolic
Penitentiary, was then and is still extant, with a regular
tariff for the absolution of all kinds of sins, including
simony, murder by a priest, parricide, incest, arson, &c.
This evil had been steadily growing up for centuries, until
it reached its highest pitch under Pope Alexander V^I.,
and then the outcry began which ended in the compara-
tive reformation of 1563. But even as reformed the sys-
tem differs wholly in doctrine and practice from those
primitive ecclesiastical censures out of which it grew.
When it is asserted by Roman Catholic controversialists,
that nothing more is intended by indulgences than the
relaxation of such penances as are enjoined by canonical
discipline, they are involving themselves in the condem-
nation of the bull exurges of Leo X., June 20th, 1520,
which coadems as pestiferous, pernicious and scandalous
those who say that indulgences do not avail for the remis-
sion of punishment due to Divine justice for actual sin,

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

155

and that they have relation only to the penalties of sacra-
mental satisfaction of man's appointment. It is not neces-
sary to prove by quotations that this system differs wholly
from the teaching of the Preraitive Church. The whole
thing is a novelty. There is no trace of it until A.D. 1084,
when Gregory offered remission of sins to all who would
take up arms against the emperor Henry IV. The same
offer was made to the C^rusaders, and it was extended by
Innocent III., to all who would take up arms against the
Albigenses and other heretics. After that it was offered
on all occasions.

The system in its mildest form destroys all true devo-
tion. It transposes the whole religious life into a system
of barter and sale. It assumes that no one will even offer
prayers to God without being bribed to do so, by a certain
fixed tariff of so much direct advantage and profit for so
much prayer. It transforms prayer from being the free
spontaneous outburst of a loving, trusting heart into a
coarse attempt at making a huxtering bargain with Al-
mighty God, until free-v^ill praises and prayers are be-
cominof almost unknown to the bulk of Roman Catholic.
Indeed Faber urges, "why should we have any vocal
prayers which are not indulgenced ("Growth of Holi-
ness," p. 292), nothing can be more profoundly unspiritual
or tend more to destroy the very central idea of the Gos-
pel of Christ as teaching a religion of self sacrifice — of
free, glad loving service of God than this whole horrid
traffic. For whatever Roman apologists may say, it is a
traffic still. ■ .

It must be remembered that the practice, encouraged
and authorised by the belief of Roman Catholics is, that

156

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

the iDcalculable majority of their own co-rehgionisis, who
are saved at all, pass at once after death into hideous tor-
ments of undefined duration — that the sacrifice of the
mass as propitiatory for the sins of the living and the
dead, are the chief means of relieving souls in purga-
tory — and so masses for the dead are very prominent
features in all Roman Catholic Churches. Yet, these
masses except on very infrequent occasions, such as All
Souls' day, are not said for the faithful departed in gene-
ral, but for private individuals, and are paid for according
to a fixed tariff. The result is that rich people purchase
thousands of these masses to be applied for the repose of
their own souls and those of their kindred and friends,
and so it comes to pass, not only that those who are just
barely capable of being saved, and who, according to
Roman theories, ought to remain longest and suflfer most
in purgatory, will find speedy release — while the poor
whose friends cannot afford to pay for masses are left to
suffer on for ages. And not only so, but the rich by pre-
engaging such vast numbers of masses for themselves,
leave the priests no time to say gratuitous masses for the
poor, however, earnestly they might wish it. And so
money is made the key of the kingdon of heaven.

" It was authoritatively taught by Troup, of Ancona in
the pontificate of John the XXII., that the Pope as dis-
penser of the merits of Christ could empty purgatory at
one stroke, by his indulgences of all the souls detained
there, on the sole condition that somebody fulfilled the
rules laid down for gaining those indulgences. He, how-
ever, advises the Pope not to do this. Put the case of
one of the worst kinds of railway accidents, where the

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

157

shattered carriages are also on fire, and the sufferers are
being slowly burnt as well as crushed and maimed, what
would be said if it were to become known that the rail-
way officials had extracted from the wreck only such pas-
sengers as seemed able to })ay for the attention — and had
teft all the poor to lie there without help. And yet there
is no proportion between the cruelty of such conduct and
that of the Roman clergy, if they believe what they say."
— Littledale.

One cannot read such things without standing aghast
at the boundless cruelty and wickedness of which human
nature is capable. Did these men really believe what
they taught; that millions upon millions of poor souls
were sutfering the intolerable pains of Purgatory ? That
they had the power to release them if they would, — and
yet that they could make a traffic out of this agony of
human spirits — refusing to lift their hands unless some
one would pay them for an exercise of charity, from
which not even death should hold them back, if they had
one spark, I will not say of Christianity, }>ut of humanity
left in them.

One cannot wonder that France has turned her back in
scorn upon what she has been taught to regard as the
Christian religion, when one reads the accounts of the
scandals that have been revealed in the courts of law in
connection with this mass traffic. Certain of the Parisian
clergy had bound themselves by receiving money for the
purpose to say as many as two hundred thousand masses.
TLey found that the work simply could not be got
through with, and instead of saying so and returning the
money, they arranged with an agent to farm out a large
proportion of them to country priests at a lower rate of

158

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

pay per mass, so as to leave a margin of profit to the
original contractors, and a commission for the agent. It
was shown in two lawsuits that the agent had not carried
out his part of the engagement, but had simply pocketed
the money (while in other cases the masses had been said
for the barest pittrnce by starving curates). Imagine thfe
working of a sytem of religion which thus makes possible
a Glasgow Bank fraud in the spiritual world affecting in
the profoundest way the agonized souls of the departed
and the feelings of their sorrowing kindred ; that it should
be believed that the future condit' on of souls which Christ
died to ransom should be thus at the mercy of any grasp-
ing priest or swindling commission agent, surpasses all
comprehension. Indeed this whole system of indulgences
and mass traffic is such a manifest contradiction of the
whole spirit and teaching of the New Testament — such a
perversion of the faith and practice of the Catholic Church,
even for a thousand years of her history ; such an insult
to the reason, and common sense, and moral instincts of
men — that one would suppose that this flagrant departure
from the Catholic religion would be enough to open the
eyes of the most ignorant to the corruptions cl' Rome and
to set them free from her thraldom.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

Is another departure from thr> do*' ■» • he Catholic
Church. The Roman positi ui j Eucharist,

after the words of consecrat: , the aok substance of
the bread is converted into the subs ance of the body of
Christ, and the substance of the wino into the substnnce

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

of His Blood, so that the bread and wine no longer re-
main, Imt the body and blood of Christ are substituted
in their place. This, however, is said to be true only of
the substance and not of the accidents. The accidents
such as colour, shape, taste size, smell, consistence, weight,
etc., all remain unchanged. It is held that the substance
which is interior to, and not necessarily dependent upon
these external accidents, is that which is converted, and
yet that the change is not spiritual but a real miraculous
conversion of the substance of the bread and wine into
the very body of Christ which was born of the blessed
Virgin and crucified on calvary.

It is not pretended that this doctrine was ever formu-
lated before the time of Paschasius Radbertus, about the
middle of the ninth century. No teacher before him
taught dogmatically that the presence is corporal and car-
nal. Nay, this position was emphatically denied by many
of the greatest of the Fathers. None evei before asserted
that after consecration nothing but the body and blood
of Christ remained, and that the substance of bread and
wine had passed away. It is indeed gravely doubted
whether Paschasius ever intended to teach any such doc-
trine. It is held that what was attributed to him, was
the developement of a yet later age.

The definition did not grow out of the statements of
Holy Scripture, and it was not a summarizing of a tradi-
tional doctrine of the Church. It was suggested by a
philosophical speculation of the schoolmen, which is in
all probability altogether false. We can conceive of the
res or substance of anything existing apart from one or
more of the ordinary accidents of that substance, but we

■ ki ■

lt)0

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

cannot conceive of it existing apart from all of them toge-
ther. To say that anything is not in any sense what all
our senses declare it to be, is to destroy the very bases of
all knowledge, and ultimately of all faith too. For if the
senses of touch and taste and smell may deceive us, why
may not the senses of sight and hearing. And so the
ground of faith for faith cometh by hearing. To declare,
however, concerning anything that it is somethmg more
than our senses can take cognizance of, is to transfer
it into the very realm of faith, and is in harmony with
our experience and observation. As for instance the out-
ward form of plant or tree or animal, and its inner life ;
the body which our senses take cognizance of and the
indwelling soul and spirit ; the mind and the thoughts
that dwell in it. That the whole Primitive Church be-
lieved in an actual presence of Christ in the Eucharist is
beyond dispute. All spoke of feeding on Christ there —
eating His body and drinking His blood. But then was
t after a spiritual and heavenly manner, or was it a car-
nal presence that they believed in ? Was it natural or
supernatural. Did they teach a carnal eating and drink-
ing of Christ's natural flesh and blood, or did they teach
a spiritual manducation i Did they believe the bread and
wine to be literally and actually transmuted into Christ's
body and blood, or did they think the bread and wine
still to remain bread and wine. Yet to be so identified
by the operation of His Spirit in some inscrutable way
with His body and blood, as to be called by their name,
and to be the instrument of actually conveying them to
the believing soul.

No controversy had as yet arisen on this subject. There
was no need of caution, and so their language is not

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

161

mai-ked by the exactness of modern theology. Their feel-
ings inclined them to the mysterious, and so they not
infrequently used language which sounded like a belief in
transubstantiation or a carnal presence. This would natu-
rally occur where people believed in a real presence, and
had not learned the necessit}'^ of guarding their words.
But then it is evident at once that one clear statement,
that the presence was spiritual, or that the substance of
bread and wine remained, must outweigh any number of
statements that merely sound like a belief in transubstan-
tiation. No Roman Catholic for instance would now sav
that the bread and wine remain unchanged, and that the
feeding is after spiritual and heavenly manner.

St. Cyril, of Jerusalem, A.D. 38G, for instance, who uses
very strong language about His body being given under
the figure of bread, and His blood under the figure of wine,
yet uays, " That the Jews from their carnal interpretation
of His laws were ofiended at the Lord's saying," John vi.,
53. " They not receiving His saying spiritually, being
offended, went backward thinking that He invited them
to the eating of His flesh."

St. Justin Martyn, 138, in explaining to the heathen the
acts and meaning of the Christian religion says, " this food
is called by us Eucharist, which no one is allowed to take
but he who believes our doctrine to be true, and has been
baptized in the laver of regeneration for the remission of
sins, and lives as Christ enjoined, /or we take not these as
common bread and common drink, for we are taught that
this food which is blessed by the prayer of the word which
cometh from Him by conversion of which our flesh and
blood are nourished, is the flesh and blood of Him the

I
i

162

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

Incarnate Jesus." This of course proves that high Eucha-
ristic doctrine prevailed in the days of Justin, but it
proves also that he was no transubstantiationist. He says
that it was still bread, though not common bread : \t had
been transformed into a new use. Had he held the doc-
trine of transubstantiation, he would in- all honesty have
had to tell the Emperor that by a miraculous action of
God it had ceased to be bread at all.

Iren£eus, A.D. 170 says, " As the bread from the earth
receiving the invocation of God is no longer common
bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, earthly
and heavenly ; so also our bodies receiving the Eucharist,
are no longer corruptible, but have hope of eternal life "
(Irense Lib. iv., 32). In his apprehension, the substance
of the bread remains as an earthlv element still after con-
secration.

He elsewhere says, " That by the Holy Spirit descend-
ing on the Eucharist, the elements become so the body
and blood of Christ, that though they yet remain figures
or emblems, still the partakers of those emblems obtain
pardon and eternal life." (Irenaeus, Frag. 2, p. 20.)

TurtuUian, A. D. 218, says Christ called the bread,
" His body" (Ad. Judse. c. 10), and again, bread, by
which He represents His very body (Adv. Marcuis, Let. I.,
c. Is). Once more, having taken bread and distributed it
to His disciples. He made it His body, by saying, " This
is My body." that is, the figure of His body. But there
would be no figure if there were no true body (Ad. Marc.
Lib. iv, C. 40), he says, " The bread is a figure of Christ's
body by which he is pleased (representare) to recall His
body to His followers. In this bread His body is under-
I

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

163

stood (Censetur), or accounted. So that our bodies are fed
with His body."

Clement of Alex, A. D. 218, says, " In speaking of the
Eucharist, Christ showed that what He blessed was wine,
by saying to His disciples, " I will not drink of the fruit
of the vine, (Lib. ii., C. 2, p. 186). . j t^

Origen, A. D. 254, says, in speaking of the Eucharist
" Acknowledge that they are figures which are written in
the sacred volumes. Thereupon, as spiritual, not carnal,
examine and understand what is said. For, as carnal,
you receive them, they hurt, not nourish, you. Not only
in the Old Testament is there a letter which killeth, but
also in the New there is a letter which killeth him which
doth not spiritually consider it, for if, according to the
letter, you receive this saying, " Except ye eat my flesh
and drink my blood, that letter killeth." (In Lent., Hom.
vii., p. o).

St. Cyprian, A. D. 258, arguing against the heretics who
were using water in the Holy Communion instead of wire
mixed with water (the universal usage of the Primitive
Church), says, " That nothing should be done but what
Christ did before ; that, therefore, the cup which is oflered
in commemoration of Him be oftered mixed with wine.
For whereas Christ says, ' I am the true vine,' the blood
of Christ is surely wine, not water, nor can it appear that
in the cup is His blood with which we are redeemed, if
wine be absent, by which Christ's blood is represented."
(Cyp., Epis. Ixiii Coecilio Fratri, p. 148, Onf.)

St. Athanasius, A. D. 373, quoting John vi., 61-63,
says, " Christ distinguished between flesh and spirit, that
believing not only what was apparent, but also what was

164

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

invisible, they might know that what he spake was not
carnal, but spiritual. * * He made mention of His
ascension into heaven that he might draw them 'rom un-
derstanding it corporally, and that they might under-
stand that the flesh he spake of was heavenly food from
above, and spiritual nourishment given them by Him."
(Athan, in illud Evangel., Op. Tom. :, p. 979.)

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, A.D. 386, says, " The Caphar-
nite heretics were misled by interpreting our Lord car-
nally, as though He meant a banquet upon flesh, not as
He ought to be interpreted, spiritually," (Cyril Cat. Mul-
tag. iv, 1.) - .•." ,,

Jerome, A.D. 420, who uses very strong language about
the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist yet clearly
distinguishes between the natural body and blood of
Christ and the spiritual body and blood which are eaten
and drunken by the faithful. (Hieron. in Eph. I., v. 7.)

The Epistle to Csesarius, generally attributed to Chry-
sostom, says " that before the bread is consecrated we call
it bread ; but when it is consecrated it is no longer called
bread, but is held worthy to be called the body of the
Lord, yet still the substance of the bread remains." (Chrys.
ad Csesarium, Tom. IIL, p. 743.) ; v

St. Augustine, A.D. 430, says, " Our Lord hesitated not
to say, ' This is my body,' when He gave the sign of His
body, spiritually understand, what I have spoken to you.
You are not to eat that body which you see and drink
that • ood which they will shed who will crucify Me. I
have commended to you a sacrament, spiritually under-
stood it will quicken you. Though it must be visibly
celebrated, yet it must invisibly be understood." (Tom.

DIFFERfiNCES OF DOCTRINE.

165

IV., p. 1066.) What you see is bread and the cup. But
as your faith requires, the bread is Christ's body, the cup
His blood. How is the bread His body and the wine His
blood ? These things, brethren, are therefore called sacra-
ments, because in them one thing is seen another under-
stood. What appears has a bodily form, what is under-
stood has a spiritual fruit. (Tom. V., pt. 1., p. 1103.)
" The body and blood of Christ will then be life to each if
what is visibly received in the sacrament be in actual
verity spiritually eaten, spiritually drunk." (Tom. V.
par. I., p. 64.)

Theodoret, A.D. 456, says, " He honoured the visible
symbols with the name of His body and blood, not chang-
ing the nature, but adding to the nature grace." (Tom.
IV., p. 17.) Again, " The mystic symbols depart not after
consecration from their own nature, for they remain in
the former substance. Though we understand what they
have become, and believe and adore, as though they were
what they are believed to be." (Ibid. p. 185.)

Pope Gelasius, 496, says, " Certainly the sacrament of
the body and blood, which we receive, is a divine thing,
on account of which, and through the same, we are made
partakers of the divine nature, and still the substance or
nature of bread and wine does not cease (non desinit),
* * ♦ * although by the operation of the
divine spirit they may pass over into a divine substance
still they continue in the propriety of their own nature
{permanente tamen in suce proprietate naturm.") — Be
duohus natur in Christo, Tom. VIIL, p. 730.

And so it went on without any change in the testi-
mony of the Church against the modern doctrine of Rome,

166

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

certainly till the middle of the ninth century, probably
till the middle of the twelfth century.

That all the Christian writers of these first ages use
language which teaches in the plainest terms the doctrine
of a real (or if it be preferred a true and actual) presence
of (vhrist in the Sacrament of the Altar, is altogether
beyond dispute. Indeed they use language again and
again which, if such an interpretation were not rendered
impossible by such statements as I have quoted, would
readily lend themselves to the support of the present
Roman doctrine. Those statements make it impossible
that such a doctrine could have been held by them. The
idea which lies at the basis of most of their strongest state-
ments respecting the Lord's Supper may be said to be
this : That as the Logos or Word was once united with
the flesh, so in the Supper He is now united with the
bread and wine ; but as the Catholic doctrine has always
been that the union of the two natures in Christ was not
a transubstantiation or absorption of one nature into the
other, but that the two natures continued united in the
one person, perfect God and perfect man ; so in the Eucha-
rist the two parts the heavenly presence and the earthly
elements were united in one Sacrament by the power of
the Holy Ghost, yet so that each continues in its own
proper nature.

It has been well urged that the Fathers, with all their
strong expressions, could not have meant to teach tran-
substantiation : (1) Because the change is so often com-
pared with that of water in baptism and chrism in conse-
cration; (2) Because it is likened to the union of the
Logos with the flesh — where there was no transformation

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

167

of the flesh ; (3) Because the Fathers (many of them)
argue against the monophysites, on the ground that as
there was in the Lord's Supper no change in the sub-
stance of the bread and wine, so there was none in
the incarnation ; (4) Because they frequently call the
elements after consecration figures and signs, rvn-ocr dvTirvTra,
Hgura signitm, terms which no believer in transubstanti-
ation could or would apply to them. And so we may
conclude that in this particular again Rome has perverted
and destroyed the doctrine of the Primitive Catholic
Church, has introduced a degrading materialism into the
interpretation of the mysteries of Christ, and has de-
stroyed the very nature of the sacrament by transforming
its unfathomable mystery into a mere mechanical miracle.

THE WITHOLDING OF THE CUP.

This is a point in which the Roman Church has confes-
sedly departed from the practice of the Primitive Catholic
Church. Cardinal Bona, one of the most distinguished
liturgical writers of the Roman communion, saj ^ that the
faithful always, and in all places, from the first beginning
of the Church till the twelfth century, were used to com-
municate under the species of bread and wine. The
use of the chalice began little by little to drop away in the
beginning of that century, and many bishops forbade it to
the people, to avoid the risk of irreverence and spilling
(Ro. Liturg. ii. 18). The Council of Constance, which first
dared to set aside the Lord's express command, "drink ye
all of this," (on June loth, A.D. 1415, not only admits that
Christ Himself administered in both kinds to His disci-
ples, but further declares that in primitive times this sacra-

168

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

ii.i

ment was received in both kinds by the people, and yet
in the teeth of an explicit Divine command, and in spite
of acknowledged long continued Catholic usage, it decreed
that " as the reception of one element was sufficient for
the receiving wholly, both the body and blood of Christ,
so the Eucharist should be received by the laity in one
kind only." (CI. Con. Sess. xiii.) And it decreed " that if
any priest in obedience to Christ's command should disre-
gard its decree, he should be handed over to ihe secular
arm, which then meant that he should be burnt at the
stake." This is still the unrepealed law of the Roman
Church.

It is in direct opposition not only to the plain letter of
Holy Scripture, but to the unquestioned practice, as Ro-
manists confess, of the Catholic Church. In Justin Marty n,
A.D. 135, the earliest uninspired account of the Eucharist
that has come down to us, we read that " the deacons gave
to every one that was present to partake of the bread over
which thanks had been offered, and of wine mixed with
water, and that they carried them also to those not pre-
sent." (Just. Apol., 1, p. 97.)

St. Cyprian says, " that the deacons offered the cup to
those who were present." (Cyp. de Lapsis, p. 6 j, Fek. }

St. Chrysostom specially notices that there is no differ-
ence between priests and laymen in this respect, " whereas
under the old covenant, the priests ate some things and
laymen others ; and it was not lawful for the people to
partake of those things of which the priests partook ; it is
not so now, but one body is placed before all and one
cup," (Chrys. Horn. xiv. in I., lib.)

And so onward for centuries. Thus the Council of
Clermont, A.D. 1095, decrees, in its xviii. canon, that all

i ■ - -:•

DIFFERENCES OF DOCTRINE.

169

wlio shall communicate at the altar shall receive the body
and blood in both kinds, unless by way of necessity and
from caution, and this Council was presided over by Pope
Urban II. in person.

Pope Galasius I. says, we have ascertained that certain
persons, having received a portion of the sacred body alone,
abstain from partaking of the chalice of the sacred blood.
Let such persons either receive the sacrament in its enti'
retij, or be expelled from the entire sacrament, because the
devision of one and the same mystery cannot take place
without great sacrilege. Thus what shocked Pope Gala-
sius was exactly what is seen in every Roman church to-day.
The priest alone receiving the chalice,and the laity abstain-
ing from it (Cup. Jur. Can. Deere t, III., ii. 12). So Pope
Paschal II., A.D. 11 18, wrote, " Therefore, according to the
same Cyprian, in receiving the Lord's body and blood, let
the Lord's tradition be observed ; nor let any departure be
made through human and novel institution, from what
Christ the Master ordained and did. For we know that
the bread was given separately and the wine given sepa-
rately by the Lord Himself; which custom we therefore
teach, and command to be always observed in Holy
Church, save in the case of infants and very infirm per*
sons, who cannot swallow bread (Op. 535, t. 1(33, p. 442).

How this is reconcilable on infallibility principles, with
the teaching of the whole line of Popes since the Council
of Constance, and with the practice of the Roman Church
since that time, it is not easy to conjecture. However it
may be explained, it proves conclusively that the Roman
Church in this particular again differs widely both in doc-
trine and in practice from the Catholic Church.

LKCTURK IX.

THE CONTINUITY AND CATIIOLR'ITV OF THE CHURCH OF

ENGLAND.

*' For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which
in Jesua Christ."— lat Corinthians iii., 11.

rT"^HE Clmrcli grew out of Christ. It is built ui)on His
JL person. It is His own appointed instrument for
conveyin^ liis incarnate life to us. It is the great world-
wide and time-long witness to the truth of His history.
It was organized and instructed by Him. It began its
heroic task oi' converting the world, at His command,
when in the upper chamber at Jerusalem He had shed
out upon it His regenerating, illuminating, guiding Spirit.
From that centre it spread with noiseless rapidity, creep-
ing on from village to village, from town to town, frotji
land to land, till within a very little while it had reached
the uttermost bounds of the West, and had spread to the
Noi'th,andEast,and South, into lands far beyond thebounds
of the Roman Empire. It was, as we have seen, called the
Catholic Church, because it had this world-embracing
mission, and because it was the herald of God's whole
truth to man. It did not set itself to subvert or absorb

CATHOLICITY OB' THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. I7l

the Hocular |)(/vver but to strengtlien and establisli it by
purifying and eleveiing human life in every land ; and so
wliile it was every where one and the same body, in per-
fect union and communion throughout all its parts, it yet,
insubordination to its great central truths and principles,
accommodated itself to the political conditions of its sur-
roundings. And so there grew up the national sul)-divi-
sionst)f this one body, such as the Greek, Italian, Spanish,
French, and English branches of the one Catholic Church,
all subject to the supreme legislative government of the
whole body — the General Council.

1 have asked your attention to the way in which this
original constituti(jn was invaded and overturned, these
principles trampled under foot, and these doctrines contra-
dicted and obscured, so that the Roman Church, in so
far as she is Roman, has ceased to be Catholic in consti-
tution, in doctrine and in practice.

I ask your attention to as brief a statement as I can
make, of the beginning, continuity, and catholicity of the
English Church.

Whence, then, came the Church of England ? It is now
made clear beyond dispute that the Celtic part of the
Island had been almost if not wholly Christianized long
before the coming of Augustine in 596, and that Celtic
part — including Wales, the kingdom of Strathclyde, and
Scotland — embraced quite half of the territory of the
whole island. We learn from Tertullian, who wrote about
A. D. 208, that districts of Britain inaccessible to the
Roman arms — that is the Highlands of the noith and
west — had been subdued to Christ. A little later, A.D.
239, Origen speaks of Britain as having one religion, and

172 CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

that one tho religion of Christ. (Homil. iv., in Eazekl.)
Constaiitius, the fatlier of Constantine, is said by Sozo-
inan to liave favoured and supported Christianity in Bri-
tain. And Eusebius, the historian, in more than one pas-
sage implies the existence of a Christian British Church.
There was certainly a large and regularly constituted
Church in Britain before the end of the third century, for
at the important council held at Aries, in A. D, JU4,
three British bishops were present, and affixed their signa-
tures to the decrees of that council. St. Athanasius says
that the British Church accepted and assented to the
faith defined at Nice, A. D. 325. His language leaves* no
dou])t that British bishops were either present in person
or afterwards signified their adhesion to the decisions of
the Synod of Sardica, 347. Three British bishops were
present at the misguided Council of Rimini, 359. St.
Chrysostom, writing 3G7, speaks of the British Isles as
possessing churches and altars.

In fact, the evidence of the existence of an organized
Church in Britain before the coming of the Roman mis-
sion is overwhelming. When Augustine landed, he found
a bishop, Luidhart, and his attendant priests, who had
come from France with the Christian Queen Bertha to re-
side in the court of the yet heathen Ethelbert, King of
Kent ; and about two years after Augustine's arrival we
have a detailed account of his interviews with seven
British bishops and many learned men from their famous
monastry of Bangor. Augustine claimed, among other
things, their acknowledgement of himself as Archbishop
of England, by virtue of his appointment by the Pope.
They replied, " We know of no other obedience except

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHUllCH OF ENGLAND. 173

that of love and perfect charity tliat is (hie to him whom
ye style Pope, nor that lie has a claim and right to be
Fathoi <»f Fathers. Further, we are under the juri»dic-
tion of the Bisliop of Caer-Leon-upon-Usk, wlio is un-
der God appointed to oversee us, and to make us keep the
spiritual path." Augustine was enraged and threatened,
" Since, then, ye refuse to work under my direction for
the conversion of the Saxons, ere long, by a just judgment
of (iod, you shall have to suffer from the Saxons
the bitter pains of death." And it was not very
long till an Anglo-Saxon king, still j)agan, marched at the
head of his tribe to the very spot where the conference
had been held, and, overthrowing the Welsh army, massa-
cred the whole of the monks of Bangor, to the niunber of
700, and rased their monastery to the ground. " It was a
national tradition among the Welsh," says Thierry, " that
the chief of the Roman mission had instigated this inva-
sion and pointed out the monastery of Bangor to the
Pagans of Northumbria." Be this as it may, the event
supplies an additional proof of the existence and extent
of the ancient British Church.

But you are, perhaps, asking. Whence came this nume-
rous ancient British Church ? In replying, we may at once
dismiss as mere myths the legends about St. Paul, Cai-ac-
ticus, Joseph of ArimatluDa, and King Lucius, being
founders of the British Church. They have no historical
basis. There never was any King Lucius, such as the
Roman Catholic legend describes. There can be but
little doubt in the mind of any one who will take pains
to study the matter that Christianity came into England
mainly from Asia Minor through the Greek colonies at

I mw

lti|

■I

174 CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGIAND.

i.'i f •->(-'.

Marseilles and up the Rhone. During the early Christian
times there was close and continual intercourse l^etween
the (ireek colonies of the Lower Rhone, and the Greek
settlements of Asia Minor, of which Ephesus was the
centre. Greek civilization was extensively diffused in the
interior of south-eastern Gaul. The Church that flour-
ished at Lyons and Vienne in the second century was
unquestionably G-reek in its origin. The martyrs' names
are Greek. The first fjishops were Greek. The great
Irenajus, the second bishop, wrote in Greek. The narra-
tive of the martyrdoms of the Rhone vvas sent, not to
Rome, but to the Greeks of Asia, li-enjieus took sides
with the Greeks in their disputes with Rome about
Kaster and the rebaptizatlon of heretics, and he rebuked
the Roman bishoj) shari)ly for his harshness towards the
Asiatics. We learn from iiim that the Church at that
time extended not only through this district of the Rhone,
but alontjf the left bank of the Rhine towards the English
Channel.

When persecution broke with such sudden fury upon this
(!hurch, towards the end of the century, thousands were
slain, but thousands fled towards the West, and sou<rh-t
shelter fum their I'^oman persecutors among their kins-
men ami<l the forests of the West. Britain was as yet
free from the per:3ecu tor's flail, and as many as could
passed over to their Celtic kinsmen living there, and
hid themselves in the remote districts of the island, carry-
ing with them not only the story of their sufferings, but
the m<!ssag(i of their faith, winning many to the religion
of Clirist, and tluis accounting for I'ertullian's saying,
" Et Brittannorum inacc«ssa Romanis loca Christo vero

; CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. l75

•subdita sunt," and for the large number of bishops, monks
and priests tliat were found among the Celts at the com-
ing of the Saxons. Bede (B. I. C. 15), describing the hor-
rors of the Saxon invasion, tells us that tb . prie^oS were
everywhere slain before the altars. The prelates and the
people, without a'ny respect of persons, were destroyed by
tire and sword. Some of the miserp.ble remainder beinfj
taken in the mountains, were butchered in heaps; some
with sorrowful hearts Hed beyond the seas — fled to Ire-
land, no doubt, as they were being driven to the West l)y
the ferocious Saxons. These became the harbincjers of
the faith to Ireland, just as their Gjelic kinsmen had been
nearly two centuries before to England, St. Patrick, who
was a Scotchman, seems to have been the first to carry
on a successful missionaiy work in that island. His suc-
cess, however, was only temporary. The land ]aj)sed into
heathenism after his death ; and the abiding conversion
of that island was accomplished by St. David, St. Gildas,
and St. dhadoc, three Welsh saints of the ancient Biitish
Church, who went to Ireland at the request of King An-
mire, to restore ecclesia stical order, because, as he states
in his letters, the Iiish had lost the ( 'atholic faith. This
Irish (Jhurch soon became famous throu<]:hout the world
for its learning and missionary zeal. During the seveuthand
early • *q^hth centuries, it was the most influential Church
in Christendom. It promised fair at that time to become,
instead of Home, the ecclesiastical centre of the Christian
world. From it at an eaily date went out those famous
missionaries, ( -olumba, Aiden, Finnan, (Jhad and Wilfred,
who finally converted the greater part of Saxon England
to the faiti).

': i

Sf |i

176 CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

For although Augustine, the Roman missionary, was at
first successful in converting the kingdom of Kent, and
through his agents, Essex, East Anglia and Northum-
bria, yet when the first Christian kings died, the still
half-heathen masses of the people returned to their old
ways. Christianity, as planted by the Roman mission-
aries, was everywhere swept away, heathenism every-
where restored, and the final re-conversion of the five
principal kingdoms of the Heptarchy was accom[)lished
by the Celtic missionaries, who emerged from the already
Christianized kingdom of Strathclyde, Wessex, the last
of the heathen Saxon kingdoms, was converted by an in-
dependent mission of the Frankish Gauls, under Birinus.
So that Kent was the only one of the Saxon kingdoms
that really owed its surviving Christianity to the Roman
mission. The English Church, then, owes its origin not to
the Roman Church, as Roman controversialists maintain,
but directly to the Scoto-Irish Church, and ultimately to
the Greek Asiatic Church. This historical record is con-
firmed by the fact that the British Christians followed the
Ephesene, and not the Latin liturgy, and customs.

The whole Church, then, of England, Ireland and Scot-
land was one, and the Roman mission had only resulted
in contributing the one small kingdom of Kent to this
final result. Throughout the island, with the exception
of this small corner, the liturgy and customs of the ancient
British Church prevailed. The differences between this
British, or Galilean liturgy, and the Roman of that day
were not important, and there is no evidence of conflict
or hostility between the Churches of British and of
Latin origin. The Roman usage with regard to the time

C' f:

MMiiiiiiinimim

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

177

of keeping Easter was finally accepted as the result, not
of constraint, but of an intelligent discussion of the mat-
ter, and the liturgical differences were left undisturbed,
so that different uses })revailed in different parts of the is-
land, even until the first prayer book of Edward V^I, was
issued.

But the Church of Enjjland itself thus constituted was
autocephalous — it had no headship outside itself — it was
wholly independent of Rome, It managed its own affairs,
and ofoverned itself ; and iio more thoufjht of submittinof
its action to the approval of the Pope than does the
Church of England of to-day. The claim of the Pope to
patriarchal and appellate jurisdiction was not unknown.
But it was repudiated. Wilfred, bishop of York, in a
quarrel with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King
of Northumbria, was the first Englishman to appeal to
Rome. This was a direct violation of the Church princi-
•ples of that age, for the Patriarch of Rome had jurisdic-
tion only when both parties agreed to refer the cause to
him. To appeal from a national English synod, from an
English King, and an English Metropolitan, was not to be
tolerated by the free spirit which pervaded the land ; and
consequently, when Wilfred returned with a Papal deci-
sion in his favour, and on the strength of it demanded to
be restored to his diocese, a council of clergy and laity
was assembled, and unanimously determined that the ap-
peal was a public offence, and the Papal letters an insult
to the Crown and nation. Wilfred was condemned and
imprisoned for nine months, and became for many years a
wandering outcast. By the Archbishop of Canterbury
Theodore, the Papal mandate was equally disregarded ,

178 CATHOLIJITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

although the decree declared that all persons, whoever
they might be, who should attempt to infringe that
decree, should be smitten with an everlasting anathema.

You remember how, at the end of the next century,
790, the English Church, under the guidance of Alcuin,
resisted the action of the Church of Rome, and the com-
mand of the Pope, and rejected the veneration and service
of images, to which they had committed themselves, as
things which the Church of God utterly abhors. The
claims of Rome were now being constantly pressed, and
though they made some progress they were constantly re-
sisted.

In the year 805 the English clergy in synod addressed
a letter of remonstrance to Pope Leo on the custom which
had been growing up of late of the English Metropolitans
being obliged to go to Rome to solicit the pall from the
Pope. They pointed out that it was an innovation, and>
in consequence, the Pope sends the pall the following year
to Wilfred, without requiring his presence at Rome.

For the next hundred years — till the middle of the
tenth century — the Danish ravages and final conquest of
the land, not only suspend the progress of the Papal
power in England, but almost sweep Christanity from the
land. During this time, howeve)', the principles of the
forcreiies of Isidore were being propagated and accepted
everywhere in the West ; and so, when the Church re-
vived again in England, it was surrounded by a wholly
different atmosphere. The whole ideal of the constitution
and government of the Church was changed : Papal sov-
ereignty was being enforced. Under the inspiration of
Rome, the secular clergy — as the men who were married

"V^

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 179

and lived in their parishes were called — were being driven
out ; clerical celibacy was enforced, and the Benedictine
monks — those eager agents of the Papacy — were being in-
truded into the places of the parochial clergy every-
where.

The inveterate preference of Edward the Confessor
(1042-1()GG) for foreigners, and his constant practice of
putting toreign Churchmen into English sees, is well
known. Increased connection with the continent, where
Rome was already supreme, meant increased subjection to
the Papal claims. We now, for the first time, hear of bis-
hops going to Home for consecr? '^n or confirmation, and
of the Roman Court claiming ast a veto on the nom-

ination of the English Kino;.

One of the avowed objects of the conquest was to
bring the English Church more completely under the con-
trol of the Papal see. For this end the Pope gave his
sanction and blessing to this robber chieftain, and sent
his leofate to assist one of the most ruthless tvrants that
ever lived in trampling the life out of the English
Christians, and in driving English bishops from their sees
to make room for Frenchmen and Italians, who would be
the ready instruments of the Papal will.

And yet the Conqueror claimed and exercised an eccle-
siastical supremacy far exceeding that exercised by Henry
VIII. He would not allow any one of his subjects to re-
ceive any actual pontiff of the Roman city as the apostoli-
cal pontiff, except by his orders, or to accept his letters
unless they had first been sh:)wn to himself The Arch-
bishop of Canterbury was not allowed to enjoin or pro-
hibit anything, except it were in accordance with his will

180 CATHOLICITY OF THE (JHURCH OF ENGLAND.

and had first been submitted to him. He asserted his
right to stay excommunications, or purely Church cen-
sures, and he robbed monastries and churches and
shrines in a wa.y that throws Great Hal's sacrileges alto-
gether in the shade. And yet, as he was promoting the
extension of the Papal power, he was not so much as re-
monstrated with by the Supreme Pontitt*.

Rufus, his son and successor, went still further. All
Church preferments were openly administered for the
benefit of the royal revenue. Whenever a prelate or
beneficed clerk died, the royal ofiicers at once seized the
benefice and held it for the benefit of the crown, until
such times as a clerk could be found who would pay to
the royal exchequer the price at which the preferment
was valued. A system of universal simony was intro-
duced. The see of Canterbury was kept vacant for years,
and the king appropriated the revenues. When, at length,
Anselm was appointed archbishop, he resisted the king's
exactions, and upheld Pope Urban, with whom the king
had quarrelled; but it is remarkable that the bishops of
England, in the spirit of their ancient independence, ad-
vised the archbishop to give up this Urban, who could
never be of any advantage to him, and casting away the
yoke of servitude and asserting his freedom as becomes an
archbishop of Canterbury, be ready to support the king.
And it is remarkable, too, that when Anselm fled to the
Pope for help, he wjis kept hanging about the Papal
court for years, and could obtain no definite answer to
his appeal until the king died. Then came the long
quarrel with Henry I. about investiture, which involved
the question as to whether the clergy were to be the sub-

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

lil

jects of the King or of the Pope. Henry declared in his
quarrel with Anselin, " I will not endure in my kingdom
anyone who is not my subject." On the appointment of
Ralph as Anselm's successor, the Pope wrote an angry
letter complaining that the see of Rome (which had by
this time, 1114, r^retty well established its sovereignty on
the continent) was treated by the English Church and
king with scant reverence. " No appeals came from Eng-
land, no questions were I'eferred to Rome for decision.
The English Church presumed to act independently." To
remedy this state of things, he sent Anselm, a nephew of
the late archbishop, as his permanent legate in England.
This was a new and unheard-of claim. Special legates
had been sent for special purposes, but the establishment
of a permanent legate had never been tolerated. When
the attempt became known in England, the excitement
was intense and general. Bishops, abbots and nobles
met in London, and sent an embassy to the King, who
was at the time in Normandy, and the result was that
the Papal legate was forbidden to enter England, and the
Pope acquiesced and withdrew him.

The English Church was tricked by another
Pope into allowing the appointment of such an officer.
The disputes between the Archbishops of York and Can-
terbury about superiority was referred to the Pope, and
he settled the question by appointing the Archbishop of
Canterbury,' who claimed superiority, his permanent legate,
and so making him superior to his brother of York. It
has been well said that the Archbishops of Canterbury
were thus stripped of their rights and clothed with the
shadow of them. And still the struggle went on, the

182 CATHOLICITY OF THE ("HITRCH OF ENGLAND.

Papacy ever pi'essing its claims, and the Kings and
Church of England struefeflinij ayainst them, and ever and
anon resisting and rejecting them. As the result of this
struggle, during the next reign the Council of Clarendon
was held, and by its deo'ees no appeal was allowed to be
carried beyond the court of the Archbishop of (Canterbury,
i. e., to Rome, except by the King's special permission.
No excommunication or interdict could be published
without his sanction. All appointments of bishops were
henceforth required to be by election, and every bishop
was now obliged to declare himself the liege and subject
of the King, not of the Pope.

When John had basely surrendered his crown and
kingdom, it was the Church of England, under the leader-
ship of Archbishop Langton, that was chietiy instru-
mental in extorting from him the Magna Charta, which
enacts in its first clause that the Church of England shall
be free, and retain all her laws and ancient liberties in-
tact, including the liberty of election. The Pope annulled
the great Charter, and excommunicated the Primate and
his supporters, and styled John, who went raging through
the countr}^, accompanied by bands of cut-throat mercena-
ries, his beloved son in Christ. But neither Primate, nor
Church, nor people would yield to his threats, and the
Chai'ter was maintained and our English liberties secured.

The year 1225 is notable in English Church history as
having witnessed the first systematic attempt of the Pope
to use the benefices of the English Church as a source of
revenue for himself and his court. The demand was
simply laughed out of court. The king and the bishops
were as one, and sent a message back to the Pope that

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 183

i;^'

when otlior parts of the Church universal liad Jicknovv-
leclged its obligation they would not be found lacking.
It was well known to all those present that a similar de-
mand made by the Pope on the Church of France had
just been rejected with indignation.

Through the agency of the friars and the unfaithfulness
of the kings who entered into agreement with Popes as
the readiest way of obtaining the appointment of un-
worthy persons who were willing to pay him, the Kng-
lish Church was now fearfully oppressed. The Pope
obtruded foreigners into the best livings, claimed the
right to nominate the Primate, and levy taxes upon the
clergy as he pleased. The most valuable livings were kept
vacant for years, and their revenues appropriated, some-
times by the King, sometimes by the Pope. There was
long and determined resistance to these claims on the
part of the English Church, led, at first, by Archbishop
Rich and Bishop Grossetete, who, in 122G, made answer
to a new demand of the Papal legate for money for him-
self, " We will bear these things no loncjei-. Let him
support you who sent you here without any request from
us." Grossetete went to the Papal Court, and in the
presence of the Pope said, " the cause, the fountain, the
orio-in of the evils that are crushing; the life out of the
Church of England is this Court of Rome, not only be-
cause it does not correct these abominations, but because
by its dispensations, provisions and collocations to the
pastoral care^ it appoints not pastors but destroyers of
men ; and for the sake of providing a livelihood for one
man hands over thousands of souls to eternal death. It
commits the care of the fiock to ravening wolves. * * *

1S4 CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

This Court has filled the world with lies, has put to flight
''11 modesty, has taken away all confidence in documents,
has lent all boldness to falsifying one's word."

This prolonged and bitter struggle led to the passing of
the statutes of Provisors in 1307, which prohibited Papal
taxes and appointments ; and the statute of Pn^munire,
1335, which prohibited appeals to Home. The National
Church, having begun to as.sert her rights, begins now to
review her doctrines, and to discover that just as the
rightful legal position of churches had been overbo/ne by
Rome, so, too, the purity of primitive doctrine had been
grievously obscured and corrupted by the accretions fos-
tered and upheld by Rome, and that in both respects much
needed to be done to recover what had been lost. The
result of this discovery was the open revolt from the
doctrine of the medi;i!val Chui-ch, which took place in
England under the leadership of John Wyclifle, during
the latter half of the fourteenth century. This struggle
was marked by many revolutionary and heretical opi-
nions. The attempt to repress it issued for the first time
in England in the burning of heretics ; but it went on
with varying intensity and success, till the final over-
throw of Papal pretensions was reached.

In 1399 the Parliament solemnly enacted "that the
Crown of England and the rights of the same have been
from all past time so free that neither chief pontiff nor
any one else outside che kingdom has any right to inter-
fere in the same." " From the end of the thirteenth
century," says Dollinger, " and constantly during the four-
teenth they had resisted the encroachments and extor-
tionate demands of the Roman Court, with the united

CATHOLICITY OF THK CHURCH OF ENOLAND.

18o

force of King and parliament. And so there are no
statutes recognizing the jurisdiction of the Pope or the
right of the Pope to appropriate lienefices in England,
or to levy taxes and imposts, or to appoint officers.
These things grew up by custom ; but they grew up
illegally, either against the provisions, or, at any rate,
without the sanction of the law of the land. Evoi- since
the concjuest there had been a continuous struggle be-
tween the intruding foreign element and the national
element, nnd the men who conducted the final ejuancipa-
tion of the English Church from the Papal power were
able to jook back over the history of the nation and see
that if this foreign influence were removed there could be
nothing to hinder the National C/hurch from shaking off
the terrible evils under which it had so lontr been oroan-
ing. The opportunity for the complete overthrow of this
foreign influence came in the quarrel of Henry Vlil. with
the Pope. That quarrel grew out of the basest motives,
and it was conducted by Henry and the Pope on the
Vmsest principles, and was decided on the one hand and
the other by purely self-indulgent considerations. The
Pope was not the noble and intrepid champion, as Roman
Catholics would have us believe, of the sanctity of Chris-
tian marriage and the purity of Christian life. The inner
history of the negotiations leaves no doubt that ho was
ready enough to take Henry's freely offered gold and
secure his powerful support, and annul the marriage, as
other Popes had annulled precisely similar marriages ; but
he was afraid of the mighty emperor Charles V., who
steadily and naturally resiste<l the divorce of his aunt
Catherine. He offered, however, to allow Henry to have

111:

IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

1.0

I.I

>. 113.2

■ 4.0

IIM

22
20

1.8

1.25 1.4 16

1 iii^=

c« 6" ►

'<5.

Photographic

Sciences
Corporation

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, NY. 14580

(716) 872-4503

■■> I

1,1

•f.-'I

r|'^

186 CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

two ^wives, as a way out of the difficulty. With that
quarrel we have no concern, except that in the Providence
of God it brought the opportunity for the complete eman-
cipation of the Church of England from the thraldom in
which she had so long been held.

Her enslavement had been brought about by the agree-
ment of Kings and Popes. For the tyrants of the Nor-
man line discovered before long that it was far easier for
them to obtain permission from the Popes than from the
English Church, and people to lay hands upon the
Church's revenues, and to appoint unworthy favourites to
her offices. And so they supported the ever-growing
Papal demands, and enforced them as far as they could by
fire and faggot upon an independent and resisting Church
and people. The cry for deliverance from the indescrib-
able corruption, venality and oppression had been going up
for over three centuries, and now in the quarrel of these
long-combined powers of evil the opportunity for that de-
liverance came.

The overthrow of the Papal sovereignty first, and then
the rejection of the Papal corruptions of doctrine, was the
action of the whole Church and nation ; for the Church
and the nation were one and the same thing then. It was
not that a new Church sprang up, and overthrew the old,
or that the old was abolished, and a new one started in
its place. It was the old Catholic Church of England;
that had its beginning far behind the days of Augustine,
that ros^ up in its might, and flung cfF the accretions of
ages, and reformed itself upon the model of Holy Scripture
and the primitive Catholic Church. Pugin, endorsed by
Dr. Newman, says, as quoted by Dr. Carry lately :

%xt-

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

187

" Every great cathedral, every diocese, every abbey was
duly represented in that important synod (the convoca
tion which renounced the Papal supremacy), and yet the
deed is signed, not by the vox i^ojndi, but by the voice of
convocation. The actors are the true and lawful bishops,
and the clergy of England. One venerable prelate alone
protests, (and yet not against the abolition of Papal
supremacy, but against the proposec* a; •» -^•'^acy of Henry).
He is speedily brought to trial and extcution ; his ac-
cusers are Catholics, his judges are Catholics, his execu-
tioner is a Catholic, and the bells are ringinjx for hisfh

^ O O CD

mass in the steeple of St. Paul's as the aged bishop as-
cends the sCftffbld to receive the martyr's crown."

The act was the act of the ancient Catholic Church of
England, lopping off with her own hand that excrescence
of Papalisni, v^rhich in the days of her ignorance and help-
lessness she had allowed to grow there, though not with-
out protest. No honest man, writes Dr. Carry, denies that
infamous things were done in the Reformation period, as
well by the fierce bigotry of Mary as by the despotism
of Henry. " It was the Catholics," says Pugin, " of Henry
Vin.'s time who executed the monks ; they did the same
to Protestants in Mary's reign ; but both executions were
in accordance with the decrees of the State and Catholic
Parliament." Dr. Carry also quotes Mr. Beard, an ad-
vanced Liberal, as saying in his Hiljbert lectures, 1883 :
" We must take some pains to understand a fact which
more than any other ditierentiates the English Reforma-
tion. I mean the continuity of the English Church. 1
speak as a historian, and not as a theologian. It is an
obvious historical fact that Parker was the successor of

188 CATHOLECITY OF THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND.

Augustine, just as clearly as Lanfranc and Becket — Ware-
ham, Cranmer, Pole, Parker ; there is no break in the
line. * * The succession from the spiritual point of
view was most carefully provided for when Parker was
consecrated. Not even the most ignorant controversial
ist now believes in the Nag's Head fable. The canons of
the pre-Refo^*mation Church, the statutes of the Planta-
genets are binding upon the Church of England to-day.
* * There has been no break in the revolution of
Church property. It is impossible to fix the point at which
the transition " of the Catholic Church into a Protestant
one was made (pp. 311 and 12). •

The Reformation in England was set going, and carried
out on the principle of keeping the continuity of the then
existing: Church unbroken. Its old office books were re-
tained as the basis of the revised formularies ; its anciant
orders of ministers, its creeds, its sacraments and sacra-
mental rites, its ceremonies and its canon law, except
where they conflict with the new condition of things, re-
main as they were in Catholic times. There is no trace
in the English Statute book of the disestablishment and
disendowment of the pre-Keformation Church, and the
establishment of a new Protestant one in its stead.
There has been no such transfer from that day to this.
The continuity was unbroken ; there was no Roman
Church in England from the beginning of the Reformation
until the eleventh year of Elizabeth, (except during the
brief reign of Mary, when the English Church submitted
again to the Papal yoke.) In that year the Pope excom-
municated the Queen, and set up a separate schismatical
Roman communion in England; so that the Roman

CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

180

Church, in addition to its manifold corruptions of doctrine
and practice, is a schism and an intrusion, and the Church
of Ent^land to-day is, beyond all dispute, the ancient
Catholic Church of this realm, reformed and restored ;
and they who have left us to join the Church of Rome,
under the persuasion that they were being received into
the Catholic Church, have committed the very sin they
thought they were renouncing, and have separated from
the Catholic Church to become members of a schismatical
communion. To bring this truth to the light, to force
it upon the recognition of the world, to vindicate it for
her own children, and to claim the whole heritage, of
faith and order and worship, which belongs to her as the
ancient Catholic Church of this land, has been and is the
very central aim of what is called the High Church ;nove-
ment. Rome knows it, and hates that movement with a
perfect hatred. - , ,,

* ':

LECTURE X.

ANSWERS TO KOMAN OBJECTIONS.

** Prove all things ; liold fast that which is good."'
nians, v., 21.

-1st Thessalo-

I OCCUPIED your time at grerb lengtli on Sunday
evening last in pointing out the historical proof of the
continuity and catholicity of the Church of England. I
will be as brief as I can in answering the objections that
are urged by Roman Catholics against the validity of that
claim. According to the Roman Catholic view, it does
not make any difference by whom any national Church
was planted. It is all the same — a daughter or branch of
the Holy Roman Church, and owes just the same kind of
obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff as if it had been planted
by Roman missionaries. And according to the Anglo-
Catholic view it does not make any difference by whom
the Church may have been planted in any nation. It is
all the same free from the Church of any other nation,
and owes obedience only to the Catholic Church as repre-
sented in her General Councils or unvarying practice and
profession. And yet one of the grounds upon which Roman
controversalists claim the submission of the English

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

191

Church to the Roman is that the English Church was
founded by Roman missionaries, and is therefore subject
to her quite apart from any Divine right which may be-
long to the Bishop of Rome to rule overall Churches. It
is for this reason that 1 pointed out at considerable length
on Sunday last that the English Church owes her origin
not to the Roman, but directly to the Sco^^o-Irish, and
ultimately to .he Greek Church of Asia Minor, and that
she is the direct lineal descendant of that branch of the
Catholic Church.

But the Roman controversalist replies, "Whatever you
may prove as to 3'our origin, your orders, the succession of
your bishops is traceable through Archbishop Theodore
to a Roman source ; and as the Church in all its parts can
only extend and perpetuate itself through the ordination
of its ministers, and as the power of ordination has never
been exercised by any but bishops in the English Church,
therefore the whole Church of England to-day owes its
very being to the Roman Church." , _

The facts upon which this argument is based are these :
At the end of the seventh century, about the year 686, the
kings of the Saxon Heptarch}^ having become Christian,
agreed among themselves that the Church of the seven
kingdoms should be united under one head, the Archbi-
shop of Canterbury, as the Chuvck of England. They
selected a clergyman, Wighhard, for the post, and evi-
dently to avoid any jealousy as to which Church should
have the precedence in his consecration, they sent him to
Rome to be con^iecrated. He, however, died at Rome
before his consecration, and the Bisiiop of Rome being
requested to select some one to take his place, chose

192

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

Theodore, of TaiHus, a Greek then residing in Rome. He
consecrated and sent him him to England. The act was the
result of a particular emei'gency and a special request —
just as the election and consecration of the last Metropoli-
tan Bishop of Montreal was delegated to the Archbishop
of Canterbury. No previous Archbishop of Canterjbury
had been chosen or consecrated by the Pope, and Dr
Freenifin says no succeeding one was so consecrated till
Jumieges, 1050. Under the Greek Theodore the Churches
of the seven separate kingdoms were organized and con-
solidated into the one National Church of Enejland about
the year 690, so that the Chui-ch of England is 150 years
older ihczi the State of England.

" Nowhere," says the historian Freeman, " was the
Church more thoroughly national than in England. No
foreign interference was tolerated. Thus in the two
councils of Cenwulf, held in the years 797 and 819, it is
put on record that neither the Bishop of Rome nor the
Emperor had any jurisdiction in this realm. It was this
Theodore who set at defiance the Pipe's threat of eternal
anathema if he would not restore Wilfred to York, and
who flatly refused to go as the Pope's representative
to the Second Council of Nice." But it is said that
Theodore, who himself had 'received Roman orders, con-
secrated twenty-two English bishops, and that amongst
these there were several bishops of the Scottish mission
whom he reconsecrated, and that the result of this was to
reconstitute the whole Episcopate of England on the
Roman succession.

The facts which I have narrated show that it would
not in the least establish the Roman claim or invalidate

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

193

our position as an independent National Church if the
facts were as aUeged. But they are not. The only
authority for the assertion that he reconsecrated the
British bishops is the statement of Bede with reference
to Chad, that Theodore completed (ordinationem ejus
consummavit) his ordination, and Theodore's own canon*
— that the bishops ordained by the Scots or Britains who
did not conform to the Church of Canterbury in the
matter of Easter and the tonsure, let them be confirmed
(confirmenter) by a second imposition of the hand of a
Catholic bishop. Now, in the first place, there is nothing
whatever said about re-ordination, bat only about the
confirmation or completion of an ordination already re-
ceived.

Then, in the second place, if Theodore did force the
Celtic bishop to submit to re-ordination for the utterly
frivolous reasons mentioned, viz., that they did not cut
their hair in the same way as the Roman bishops and did
not observe Easter on the same day , if for these reasons
Theodore pronounced their consecration invalid and re-
ordained them, then he was guilty of an act of sacrilege,
and they did not receive their episcopal succession from
his sacrilegious acts, but from their previous perfectly
valid consecration by British bishops, and the suc-
cession which they transmitted was the British and not
the Roman succession, in spite of Theodore's action.
But, in addition to this, the rule of the Catholic Church
from the beginning has been that three bishops at least
shall take part in every consecration, not that one has not
always been held to be sufficient to impart valid orders, but
to guard against any possible defect in the consecration.

194.

ANSWERS TO ROMAN ORlECTtONS.

So important has the Church allalongheld the proper trans-
mission of orders to be, that she 1ms provided that there
shall he three independent sources of this authority in every
consecration. At the first remove there are nine, at the
second twenty-seven separate sources, from which this
consecrating power or succession would come. So that it
cannot be broken. It is noi. a chain, any link of which
giving away the whole is gone. It is a net, any defect or
brea^ in which only eftects the time and place at which
it occurs. Or, it is like the weaver's weft and woof. The
threads of Apostolic authority are continually crossing
and recrossing one another and being woven into the
texture of her life. Any broken thread only weakens
that particular spot, and is not felt in the web of her
onward life.

Now, as Theodore was the only bishop in England that
had Roman orders, and as he had to have two other
bishops tc assist him, it follows that in any case the suc-
ceeding consecrations in England, were, to say the least,
two-thirds British or Gallican, and only one-third Roman.
Besides, the very next Archbishop of Canterbury, Brith-
wold, was a Saxon, who, because there was no metropoli-
tan in England, and because Wilfred, the opponent of
Theodore, who was unpopular with the clergy, would
have been chief consecrator had he b3en consecrated in
England, was sent to France for consecration, so that the
Roman succession of Theodore would soon run out and a
Celtic one from the Gallic Church be introduced in its
stead. But the question is one of no importance at all,
except as showing on what utterly frivolous grounds the
Roman claims to jurisdiction rest, and how utterly foolish

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

195

are the objections which their controveraialists are in the
habit of urging against our position. • ^

But tlie unscrupulous Roman controversialist replies :'
It does not make any difference what you can prove
about the origin and history of the English Church
up to the time of the Reformation. The connection
of the English Church with the past was utterly cut
off, the succession of her bishops, destroyed by the
farcical Nag's Head consecration of Archbishop Parker
on the accession of Queen Elizabeth. Some of you
are probably not familiar with the story. Mr. Maddan^
the great Church historian, who has sifted the whole
question through and through, says that the grounds
on which this objection rests " are so frivolous and
unwortliy that an apology is due for condescending to
notice them at all. Any one with the slightest power of
weisfhins: historical evidence would he ashamed, if he ex-
amined the case, of committing himself to Its acceptance."
Lingard, the Roman Catholic historian, is candid enough
to disown the Nag's Head story. "It was said," he writes,
" that Kitchen and Scorey, with Parker and the other
bishops-elect, met in a tavern called the Nag's Head, and
that Scorey, ordering them to kneel down, placed a Bible
on the head of each, and ordered them to rise up bishops.
Of this tale, concerning which so much has been written,
I can iind no trace in any author or document of the reign
of Queen Elizabeth." And when attacked by Roman
Catholics for what he had written, he says he " owes it to
himself to prove the truth of his statement, and the utter
futility of any objection that can be urged against it."

Conrayer, another Roman Catholie writer of note, says

190

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OnJECTfONS.

that this fable, whicli had its birth in the reign of King
James, is not to be found in any of the aathoi*s who have
written in Parker's own time. And yet there a'-e Roman
Catholic teachers who repeat this awkward fabrication,
and manifest falsehood again and again as though they
believed it to be true. For instance, on the night of my
secend lecture on this subject, a gentleman connected witli
this parish was induced by a friend to go with him to St.
Michael's cathedral. The priest who preached apologised
for Archbishop Lynch 's absence on account di illness and
said that he had been appointed to take his ]ilace and
preach on what would have been his subject. That sub-
ject was a continuance of the attack made in his pub-
lished lecture on the English Church. After a few honied
remarks about his desire to speak with all charity and to
avoid saying anything that would stir up bitterness of
feeling, he set to work and told that whole Nag's Head lie
to that whole mass of ignorant people, as though it wei e the
solid truth. My friend was altogether unfamiliar with the
subject, and thought that it was rather an awkward fact
in our historv.

The facts of the case are as follows : When Mary came
to the throne she either burned or expelled the majority
of the surviving bishops oi Henry VIII. and Edward
VI.'s time, and obtruded others ready to submit to the
Pope, and conform to the Roman system. Now, the rule
of the Catholic Church, as expressed in the 18th canon of
the Council of Antioch, and the Apostolical canon 16^ has
been that if a bishop be driven from his see by violence,
or by the secular power, he is still the lawful bishop of
that diocese, no niatter who may be obtruded into his
place.

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

197

It so happened in the Providence of God, that when
Mary died, and Elizabeth came to the throne, no less than
fifteen dioceses were vacant by death, as the result of the
plague that had swept over the land, leaving only ten of
Mary's obtruded bishops. These, with only two excep-
tions, refused to conform, and were deprived of their sees,
or rather of the sees of the previously-expelle-l bisliops
into which they hed been intruded. Very few, however,
of the expelled bishops of Edward's time had survived
the. persecution and hardships to which they had been
exposed in Mary's reign. The See of Canterbury was
vacant, and Thomas Parker was chosen to fill the vacant
throne in 15r)9, and four of the expelled bishops who had
not yet been restored to their sees, but who, according to
Catholic usage, were quite competent to perform the act
of consecration validly and canontcally, were appointed to
consecrate Parker, and they did consecrate him on De-
cember I7th, 1559, according to the revised second Ordi-
nal of Edward VI.

Now, all the documents connected with this consecra-
tion are duly and fully entered in the registries where
they ought to be entered. First, in the State documents,
we have duly recorded the Congd-d'Eslire, or instructions
to elect ; the election itself ; the royal assent, with com-
mission to confirm and consecrate; the restitution of
temporalities, with the homage. Each of these State
documents is duly entered, not only in the Ecclesiastical
Register, but properly and previously in the State Rolls.
These are two totally independent records of documents
the keepers of which have no connection whatever with
one another, and which yet so interlace that nothing but
genuineness'could make them tally."^

198

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

Again, the Ecclesiastical Registers themselves, in which
Parker's consecration is duly entered, are kept in differ-
ent places, at Lambeth, at Canterbury, in the Preroga-
tive Court at London, aiid all are under different custo-
dians, HO that any tampering with the records is impos-
sible. In addition to this, Archbishop Parker, who was a
wonderfully exact and methodical man, gave a series of
manuscripts to his own college, Corpus Christi, Oxford,
and among them copies of the Register of his own con-
secration, and letters of Lord Burleigh connected with it.
Lingard, the Roman Catholic historian, says : " To this
testimony of the Register what could the champions of
the Nag's Head story oppose ? They had but one resource,
to deny its authenticity : to pronounce it a forgery. But
there was nothing to countenance such a supposition ;
the most experienced eye could not discover in the entry
itself or the form of the characters or colour of the ink,
the slighted vestige of imposture. Moreover, the style
of the instrument, the form of the rite, and the costumes
attributed to the prelates were all in keeping, redolent
of the theology taught in the schools of Strasbourg and
Geneva." ;

In confirmation of the absolute correctness of these re-
cords, we have the letters written by English Reformers
at the time to the Continental Reformers at Zurich, and
only brought to light about forty years ago, which prove
in detail with the conclusiveness of undesigned private
and casual allusions the several Enjxlish consecrations of
that date, including Parker's. It is also confirmed in the
same unintentional way by Bishop Bonner, a Roman
Catholic, who knew all about it, and who expressly

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJKCTIONS.

109

states that Parker was consecrated by Barlow, Coverdale,
Scorey and Hodgkin, the consecrators named in the com-
mission and in the Registries.

Again, Machyn, a contemporary of Parker's, but in no
way mixed up in the strife of the times, enters Parker's
consecration in his diary, December 17th, as a notable
fact, but without the faintest idea of ever making any
controversial use of it. Parker, in his own private diary,
in words certainly intended for no eye but his own,
makes an entry of his own consecration on December
I7th. A similar memorandum is made by Parker's son.
In facc, the allusions to and confirmations of this transac-
tion found in all sorts of contemporary history and litera-
ture, put that fact, if any historical fact can be put, be-
yond the possibility of doubt. ^

And yet Roman Catholics who claim to be honest men
profess to disbelieve it, and they profess to disbelieve it
on the authority of the Nag's Head story. That storj' is
simply as Lingard narrates it : " In the year 1604, that
is forty- tive years after Parker's consecration, an exiled
Anglo-Romanist priest of the name of Holy wood, in a
controversial book printed at Antwerp, alleged that Par-
ker and some of the other bishops were consecrated (by
a mock ceremony) all together at the Nag's Head tavern,
by Dr. Scorey, who was himself in turn consecrated in the
like mock way by them. Holy wood says that he derived
this story from the hearsay conversation of a Mr. Neil,
who had been Hebrew lecturer in Oxford, but who like
himself had been displaced from his post for his religion,
in 1560, and who died in 1500, that is fourteen years
before Holwood's book was published.

200

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

During the twenty years succeeding 1604, every Anglo-
Roman writer with suicidal eagerness repeats this story
exultingly, although in varying and contradictory forms.
Prior to that date Anoflo-Romanists had assailed EnfT:lish
orders as invalid with an extravagence of assertion (juite
unrestrained, and upon every ground their imaginations
could devise ; and yet not only do they who were con-
temporary with the facts know nothing of Holy wood's
story, but their objections for the most part turn upon
the admitted fact of the actual consecration of our bishops
by Edward's Ordinal.

So that this story, which thus rests upon less than
nothing, is both in itself absurdly improbable, " to the
degree indeed of seriously compromising the common
sense of the man who can believe it, and is contradicted
by the strongest of evidence to the real facts, evidence
indeed of almost every kind possible in the case." (Had-
dan.)

It bears, too, on the face of it the proof of its falsehood,
for it describes Dr. Scorey, the consecrator, as not having
been consecrated until after he had consecrated Parker
and the others, and then as being consecrated by them on
the 9th of September, 1559. Whereas, there is the clearest
proof that he had been consecrated regularly eight years
before, in 1551. So that we are required to believe that
with every cathedral and church in England at their
disposal, with a solemn and formal Ordinal which they
themselves had revived I'eady for their use, with four
bishops at hand to Q,ct upon that Ordinal — ecclesiastics of
ability and position, who as bishops showed themselves
quite prepared to enforce Church order, and one of whom,

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

201

Parker himself, was singularly precise in all matters of
form and order — we are required to believe that these
men deliberately chose, with literally no imaginary motive
whatever to induce them to such a childish piece of insan-
ity, and at a tima when they had watchful enemies on all
sides eager to find a flaw in their proceedings, to be guilty
of a profane farce which would have given them no legal
title either to their bishoprics, or to their temporalities,
or to their seats in the House of Lords or Convocation,
and which would have left every act they did as bishops
not only spiritually but legally void ; and which, lastly, a
Queen like Elizabeth, especially at that critical moment,
would not for one instant have tolerated. And yet this .
is the story which is preached as the truth to an unin-
structed ma-ss of people by one who claims to be the chief
guardian of the truth in this city I

But, again, it is objected even if Archbishop Parker was
regularly and solemnlj' consecrated, there is no record in
the Episcopal Registry of Bishop Barlow's consecration,
who was the senior bishop in Parker's consecration :
and therefore Barlov/ was no bishop, and could not have
made Parker a bishop.

I reply, in the first place, that if it could be proved
that Barlow was never consecrated, it would not in the
least invalidate the continuity and succession of the Eng-
lish Church. One validly consecrated bishop is sufficient
to confer valid consecration ; but, as I have already
pointed out, the practice of the Catholic Church has al-
ways required three, as a safeguard against any possible
defect. Now, in this case there were four consecrators,
three of whom were unquestionably consecrated regu-
M

202

ANSWERS TO llOMAN OHJKCTIONS.

larly, so that the objection is of no practical consequence
But the objection is utterly frivolous. Certainly, all
Barlow's contemporaries, the bishop.s who knew all about
him, the King, the officers of the State, people of his own
diocese, took him for a properly consecrated bishop.
They necessarily knew the truth, and would have one
and all rejected him had he been obtruded without con-
secration ; and his bitter and watchful enemies, Bonner
and his followers, would also have known, had there
been any flaw, and would have eagerly urged it against
him. But no whisper of objection on this ground ia
heard until eighty years after his consecration, A. D.„
1616. At that time it was discovered that the Registrar,,
during the Archiepiscopate of Cranmer, had omitted to.
register the consecration of Barlow. But it was also dis-
covered that the same Registrar had omitted to enter
eight other consecrations, and several translations of the
same period. It is manifest, too, that this was done out
of sheer carelessness and neglect, by the fact that he
sometimes breaks off an entry in the middle, and in the
middle of an unfinished sentence.

But, besides, this carelessness, is not peculiar to Cran-
mer's registiy. In Archbishop Warham's, just before
and in Pole's, just after Cranmer's, precisely similar
omissions occur; and no one ever doubted the fact of
the consecration of the bishops concerned because no re-
cord can now be found of it. The missing record in this
case, it is to be remembered, is solely a record of conse-
cration. We have the record of his confirmation to the
two sees to which he was in rapid succession translated
duly entered. We have the presumptive evidence arising

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

203

from notoriety ; from the positive law of the Church,
which imperatively enjoined consecration ; from the law
of the land, which retjuired it and inflicted heavy penal-
ties if it was not performed ; from the tacit admission of
everybody, adversaries and friends alike; from over-
whelming motives leading to its performance, and ab-
sence of all motives for neglecting it. From, in a word,
every possible source from which presumptive evidence
can be drawn. Is this evidence to be set aside by in-
ability to find long after a record of it which a particular
official ought to have made, but did not — an official who
is known to have omitted out of sheer carelessness one
out of five of all the entries of the kind ? No
one now asks for the registry of a bishop's consecra-
tion. The known law of the Church requiring every
bishop to be consecrated, and the fact that all his con-
temporaries, who knew all about the matter, accepted his
consecration without cavil, would settle the matter for
all. And so it was with Barlow. Nothing but plain and
positive proof that he was not consecrated couid afford
any reasonable ground for doubting the fact.

As I have said, however, it is not a vital point, and
would not in the least imperil our position if it could be
proved that Barlow was never consecrated at all. The
argument, however, is surely a simply fatal one for
Roman Catholics to use. For if, because the registration
of a bishop's consecration is not to be found, we are
bound to infer that he was not a bishop at all, and that
all consecrations in which he took part are null and void ;
and the whole succes'^ion of bishops cut otf, then what
becomes of the Roman Church ? We saw a few Sundays

204

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

ago that according to the statement of Cardinal Baronius,
one of her most learned and devoted theologians, there
are fourteen of her Popes in succession of whose election
and consecration there is no record, and no scrap of proof
whatever, except only that they occupied the Papal See.
The Archbishop of Aix says, " that there were fifty
Popes at that one time of whom this is true." But
further, if the Nag's Head legend were as true, as it is
manifestly false, the English bishops of the present day
would still have an altogether unimpeachable succession.
There are two well constructed loop lines, which carry
the succession clear around the point of the fictitious
breach.

As I have already remarked, the judgment of the
Catholic Church has always been, that one validly conse-
crated bishop is quite sufficient for a valid consecration.
Now, on the 14!th December, 1617, George Monteigne
was consecrated Bishop of Lincoln by George Abbot,
Archbishop of Canterbury ; Mark Anthony de Dominis,
Archbishop of Spalato ; John King, Bishop of London,
Lancelot Andrews, of Ely ; John Buckridge, of Rochester ;
and J ohn Overall, Bishop of Lichfield. Now, even if the
orders of all the English consecrators of Monteigne were
defective, so that they could not validly consecrate him ;
Yet, the consecration of the Archbishop of Spalatio, made
him a true and lawful Bishop of the Catholic Church,
and George Monteigne was the chief consecrator of
William Laud, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury ; and
William Laud consecrated Matthew Wren, March the 8th,
1G34, and Matthew Wren consecrated Gilbert Sheldon,
on October 18th, 1660, and Gilbert Sheldon consecrated

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJKCTIONS.

205

Henry Compfcon, on Dec. 6th, 1 67'^, and Henry Compton
consecrated William Bancroft, January 27th, 1677, and
William Sancroft consecrated John Trelawnoy, on Nov.
8th, 1085, and John Trelawney consecrated John Potter,
on May 15th, 1715, and John Potter consecrated Thomas
Herring, on Jan. loth, 1737. and Thomas Herring conse-
crated Frederick Cornwallis, Feb. 18th, 1730, and
Frederick Cornwallis consecrated John Moore, Feb. 12th,
1775, and John Moore consecrated Charles Maurice
Sutton, April 8th, 1792, and Sutton consecrated William
Howley, October 3rd, 1818, and William Howley conse-
crated Charles R. Sumner, Sept. 21st, 1828, and Charles
JR.. Sumner consecrated John Bird Sumner, who became
Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1848, so that the Nags
Head fiction would have become harmless even, had it
been true.

Again the succession of the Irish Church has all along
been wholly independent of the English, and is traceable
back to St. Patrick, so that had any sucn breach as is
pretended, occurred in the English Church, it would have
left the Irish succession intact.

Now, in the year 1G18, Christopher Hampton, Arch-
bishop of Armagh, was one of the consecrators of Thomas
Morton, as Bishop of Chichester, who was one of the con-
secrators of John Houson, who was again one of the con-
secrators of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury,
whose succession goes on as I have shown above.

The same thing happened in 1684, when Ezekiel,
Bishop of Derry was one of the consecrators of Thomas
Spratt.

It may be well to remember in connection with the

206

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

Irish succession, that at the accession of Queen Elizabeth
only two Irish Bishops were deposed, and two oth3rs
resigned on account of their adherence to Rome. All the
rest continued in their sees, and from them all the
Bishops and clergy of the Irish Church to this day derive
their orders and succession. So that from this stand-
point our position is on every ground unassailable.

The other objections that are urged by Roman contro-
versialists against the continuity of the English Church
and the due succession of her bishops are either so fri-
volous or so suicidal that one marvels at their being so
much as thought of ; as, for instance, that owing to
known carelessness of many English clergymen, some of
those who have been made bishops may not have been
baptized, and that not being Christians they could not
by any ceremony be made Christian bishops, an inference
which could not, I apprehend, be disputed. But we have
seen that there were times in abundance when the world-
liness and carelessness and unbelief among the clergy of
the Roman obedience was, to say the least of it, just as
likely to have led to the neglect of baptism as even in
the most careless time amongst ourselves. And besides,
if it should have happened at any time in the history of
the Church, that some unbaptized man had been made a
bishop, it would not, as I have pointed out by the net
illustration, or perhaps more accurately by the weft and
woof illustration, in the least affect our position now,
but only those who lived in the time of the supposed non-
Christian bishop.

Again, it is said that our continuity is broken and our
orders invalid because we have dropped certain cere-

ANSWERS TO ROMAN mJECftom.

207'

monies and omitted certain words in the ordination of
priests and the consecration of bishops which were used
in the unreformed Church, such, for instance, as the de-
liverj'' of the paten and chalice to the priest with the
words, " Receive thou authority to offer sacrifice and to
celebrate mass both for the living and the dead," the in-
vestiture with stole and chasuble, the anointing of the
priest's hands, &c. Our answer is that none of these
ceremonies, which are now paraded as essential parts of
ordination, were used in any part of the Catholic Church
for six hundred years, that very few of them were used
for nine hundred years, and that which is regarded as most
essential for twelve hundred years ; and that the cere-
monies and words which we have dropped are not used in
the Eastern Church to this very day, though Rome
acknowledges the validity of their orders without hesi-
tation.

If we have no orders because we have desisted from
the use of certain ceremonies and words, then there were
no orders anywhere in the Church at all before the tenth
century, and therefore there can be none now, even in
the Church of Rome itself. It may be taken as certain
that from the beginning the laying on of hands by an
ordainer who was himself rightly ordained for that pur-
pose, accompanied by any words that sufficed to convey
the formal intention of the Church, but not necessarily
everywhere one and the same form of words, has been
held sufficient to a valid ordination, sufficient both as re-
gards matter and form. Authoritative Roman writers,
when they are not writing against us, lay this down as
an unquestioned truth. Thus Morinus (De. sacr. Ordin.,

2().S

ANSWKUS TO KOMAN ()B.IKCTIONS.

p. iii., en. vii., 1.) says that the whole Church, Latin,
Greek and barbarian, has ever recognized the laying on
of hands alon«> as constituting the essential part {ma-
teriam) of ordination. And he says that all the ancient
rituals, Latin, Greek, and all the ancient and more recent
fathers set forth this alone as the essential of ordination ;
and to set the matter at rest, as far as Roman Catholics
are concerned, Pope Innocent IV. (De Sacram iterandia
vel. non c. Presbyter) says, " "we find that the Apostles did
not use any other form in ordaining, except that they
laid their hands upon and prayed over those who were
being ordained." And he lays it down authoritatively
that it is sufficient as far as the words go for the ordainer
to s«y, " Be thou a priest," or other words of like force.

There is only one other objection which it is worth while
to notice, even for the sake of answering it. It is said,
your orders must be invalid, because from the very first
the Roman Church condemned them, and excommuni-
cated the English Church. The statement is not true,
and if it were it would not amount to a row of pins.
But there was no condemnation of English orders as in-
valid for 150 years after, till 1704, and then only in a
hesitating way, which cannot be regarded as a judicial
decision, And although the Pope did excommunicate
the Queen and the Archbishop, I cannot find that any
such excommunication of the English Church has ever
been pronounced by the Head of the Roman Church. I
may be mistaken, but it does not make any difference if
I am ; for the excommunication of the Pope would not,
as the history of the Church makes plain, afiect our con-
tinuity as a National Catholic Church or cut us off from

ANSWERS TO ROMAN OBJECTIONS.

200

communion with the Catholic Church. He could exchide
neither Churches nor individuals from the communion of
the Church universal. He could withdraw his own
Church from communion with particular hishops and
Churches, and often did so, V)ut this in no wise afFectcd
their relations to other bishops or Churches. This was
made abundantly evident by the fact that when the Pope
excommunicated the African and Asiatic Churches, they
not only continued to hold communion with one another,
but with all othei Churches except the Roman, and they
paid no heed to the fulminations of the Roman Bishop
except that they ansyered his excommunication of them
by their excommunication of him, and he was compelled
to withdraw his sentence without any submission or
acknowledgment of wrong on their part.

Again, from 361 to 413, the Patriarch of Antioch and
and the Antiochene Church were under sentence of
formal excommunication by the Bishop of Rome. During
this period the Second General Council was held at Con-
stantinople, and Meletius, the excommunicated Patriarch
of Antioch, presided, and the Pope and Roman Church
accepted without demur the creed and decrees of that
Council. So, again, at the Fourth General Council, held
at Ephesus, 431, the Bishop of Alexandria presided, and
Leo I. of Rome sent representatives, though the excom-
munication pronounced by his predecessor Stephen had
not been withdrawn. So that we need not concern our-
selves about the Pope's excommunication, even if it has
been issued. The whole Church as represented in General
Council can alone cut off any national Church, or even
an individual from the Catholic Church. Parts of the

210

ANSWERS TO ROMAN ORfECTIONS.

(Jhurch, like the Roman, may withdraw from other parts,
but that is all. It does not determine their connection
with the whole body.

The conclusion of the matter is that the historical con-
tinuity of the English Church of to-day is unbroken
from the very times of the Apostles ; the succession of
her bishops firmly established; the orthodoxy of her
faith beyond dispute ; and that she stands to-day in this
land as the visible, historical representative of the Catholic
Church of the first ages, and has a right to claim the ad-
herence and the allegiance of all the Christian people in
this realm.

APPENDIX.

HISTORICAL IDENTITY.

ri^HE argument of lectures IX. and X. ia not polemical
J- or aggresive, but apologetic and defensive. The
Catholic Church, as I have pointed out, starting at Jerusa-
lem on the day of Pentecost, spread from one land to an-
other till it had tilled the civilized world and extended
into regions far beyond. It was everywhere one and the
same body, and yet it was made up of many parts. Each
national or provincial church was entrusted with self-
government and managed its own affairs — subject only to
the control of the whole body — to which an appeal lay
from the decision of any of its parts. Each national
church was empowered to perpetuate itself from genera-
tion to generation, and to extend itself from one province
to another. Each such part was a witness to and keeper
of the truth in its own sphere, and holding the faith of the
whole body, and adhering to its order, was the Catholic
Church, of any land in which it might be established. It
thus becomes a matter of prime importance to be able to

212

APPENDIX.

trace the historical continuity of the Church back to the
Apostles and to Christ, to show that from their days to
these, the one body which they founded has perpetuated
itself. Any body claiming for itself the promises, privi-
leges and powers of the Church of Christ, must, as an es-
sential pre-requisite to the validity of its claims, be able
to show that it is the identical same body which Christ
founded, and upon which He conferred those privileges and
powers. This is a question wholly apart from doctrine or
from holding the Catholic Faith. It rests upon altogether
different considerations, and can only be established by
purely historical evidence. It touches the very foundation
of the Kingdom of God. A body may possess this quali-
fication of continued existence and identity, as the
Roman Church unquestionably does, and yet it may have
corrupted the Faith and overturned the order of the origi-
nal Catholic Church — have so added to and obscured it
that it is no longer the same as the Faith once delivered
Or a body may hold the Catholic Faith with more or
less of exactness, as is the case with many of the
Christian bodies that have come into existence in modern
times, and yet lacking this historical continuity. This
continued existence from the Apostles' time onward it
is difficult to see how they can claim as their own the
privileges which Christ conferred upon another bod}'
which he founded long ages before they came into
being. To take an illustration still fresh in the minds
of men. To Roger Tich borne certain estates and digni
ties belonged by the law of succession. He disappeared
from view. After some years a man appears on the
scene claiming to be the veritable Roger and asserting

APPENDIX.

213

his righu to the estates and dignities. He fails to es-
tablish his identity, his claims are disallowed, and the
consequences are well known. Another illustration of
this principle is supplied in the history of our own
land. More than two centuries ago the Hudson's Bay
Company was founded by royal charter. It had con-
ferred upon it, whether rightly or wrongly does not effect
the illustration, the exclusive right of trapping and trad-
ing in all that North-west land. If anyone wanted to
share the privileges and profits of that company, it was
not enough to call himself a trader, or even a Hudson's Bay
trader. He had to seek admission into the company in
the pi escribed way. He had to become identified with
it before he could claim its protection or share its advan-
tages. Another company might be organized on the same
model and for the same objects, as was the case with
the " North-west Company," but it could not confer upon
itself the rights and privileges which the sovereign had
conferred upon the original body. It had, after long years
of strife and bloodshed, to seek amalgamation with the
privileged society before it could secure for itself protec-
tion and peace, and the advantages which belonged to the
older company.

Perhaps the most easily understood illustration of the
principle for which I am contending is supplied by an
organization with which a vast number of our Canadian
people are familiar. The Orange society has been in exis-
tence for some centuries at least. It was established for the
purpose of maintaining and extending certain religious
and political principles ; whether they were right or wrong
is another question. It was a regularly organized society,

214

APPENDIX.

with its officers and members, its badges, its mode of ad-
mission, its constituted way of extending itself from one
neighbourhood to another. It confers certain privileges
upon its members, and aims at accomplishing certain
results. No one can become a member of this society ex-
cept by being admitted in the prescribed way, and no
new lodge can be formed, except by initiated members —
nor by them without receiving from the parent society a
charter or dispensation to organize, and no charter can be
granted except by officers appointed by the society to
grant it. In this way, this society, which began with one
lodge in one place, has extended itself from town to town,
and from place to place throughout the English-speaking
world. Each national and provincial association manages
its own affiiirs, and is subject only to the rules and gov-
ernment of the whole body. The members of every
regularly constituted lodge are received to the same stand-
ing and privileges in any lodge in any city or nation,
the world over. They are, in fact, one body. But if they
had gone to work otherwise than their principles of exten-
sion require, and had got up a lodge without any charter
or authority from the parent society, then, though they
might hold the same principles and aim at the same result
as the original society, they yet would not be a part of
that society, nor would the members of the new organi-
zation be any more members of that society than those
are who have never joined the one or the other.

There is a» case exactly in point in the history of
American Freemasonry. In the old slavery times a cer-
tu^in number of pro-slavery men in the South became dissa-
tisfied with the action or inaction of I'.he Freemason*
^society in the all-absorbing contest of that time. They

APPENDIX.

215

accordingly separated from the historical society. They
knew all about the principles and rules of Freemasonry.
They were refused a charter to form a pro-slavery society,
so they determined to form one without a charter. They
appointed the same officers, had the same forms and rules
of admission and government, badges of membership
and of office, and they aimed at the same results. When
organized they claimed to be Freemasons^ and asked to
have their lodges recognized, and their members received
as members of the original society. But not a bit of it.
They were told that they were in no sense Freemasons,
and could only be recognized as such by beginning de
novo, and by being admitted both as members and lodges
just as others whj never belonged to any society
would have to be admitted. They were only imitators of
the masonic society, not parts of it.

Now this same principle must hold true with regard
to the Church, which, we have seen by an examination of
Holy Scripture, is a visible organized society or kingdom
— differing not from other societies of men in its outward
form and mode of action — but yet possessing a super-
natural life ; by which it is united to Christ — made His
Bod}' ; His Bride ; the temple of the Holy Ghost ; the
dwelling-place of the Father and the Son. Our Blessed
Lord intended the Church which He founded to extend
over the whole earth and to last as long as the world
stands. (Matt, xvi., 18.) He did not Himself establish
it in all places. Nor did His immediate apostles during
their lifetime. He accordingly sent them with power to
appoint others to carry on their work when they were gone.
And he sent them into all the world with instructions

216

APPENDIX.

to admit new members in a prescribed way by Christian
baptism, and gathering them together in congregations,
to organize new branches and so extend the society into
every place. The history of that society can, without
great difficulty be traced either from the beginning down
to our own time, or from our time bacjk to the beginning.
As a matter of fact though we find that the enemy has
always been busy in inciting divisions and schisms ; yet
there has never been any great aifficulty in deciding
which was the old Church and which the new. There
have been many differences of opinion as to which was
the soundest and best, the old Church or the new, but not
as to the origin and history of the one or the other. In
other words the identity of the body has not been diffi-
cult to determine and is not now. That identification,
however, carries with it the rights and prerogatives of the
Catholic Church though not necessarily the truth of the
Catholic faith. Hence the blind madness with which
the Roman controversialists have assailed the English
Church. Hence the utterly reckless and unscrupu-
lous attempts they have made to disprove her historical
continuity with the Church of apostolic times. Hence
the fabrications, which though disproved a hundred times,
are repeated — as lately in our midst — as though they were
unassailable truths. Rome knows that to logical minds
this argument is unanswerable. Our Lord founded a
Church. It was not an invisible brotherhood, but a visi-
ble organized society, with officers, and members, and
modes of procedure. To that Church which He founded
— and not to any body which other men might found in
after times, and call by the same name. He gave certain

APPENDIX.

217

promises — upon it He conferred certain privileges — over
it He appoint td certain officers — these officers He in-
vested with certain authority — with it He declared Him-
self to be intimately and forever united. The conclusion
seems unavoidable, to assure ourselves that we are in that
body and are partakers of those privileges and promises
which He gave to it, and not to another ; we must be able
to prove that the body to which we belong is a continu-
ation and branch of that Christ-founded and Christ-en-
dowed Church. Rome knows that the historical proof of
this continuity is, in our case, beyond dispute. Hence she
flies to Nag's Head fables, and with suicidal madness in-
vents tests of continuity which would not only disprove
the continuity of the whole Catholic Church for the first
thousand years, but would disprove beyond dispute her
own continuity, and so defeat the very end she has in
view.

This historical identification is not necessarily depend-
ent upon the vexed question of apostolic succession, for
if it were even conceded, as those who reject apostolic
succession contend, that all power is vested in the whole
Church — comes from the people and is conferred by the
whole body upon the individual minister, instead of com-
ing from Christ through His appointed ministers to the
people. If this were conceded, it would not remove the
necessity which rests upon every body of Christians
claiming to be the Church of Christ to prove its histori-
cal identity with the Church which Christ founded. It
would not establish the claim of any body originated by
men in modern times, to be invested with the privileges
and promises and high prerogatives of that apostolic
N

218

APPENDIX.

church. For suppose it true that that body immediately
after the death of the apostles, conferred upon presby-
ters, as is contended, the power to extend and perpetu-
ate the Church, to grant charters for new lodges, to form
new congregations, to appoint their officers, and ordain
their ministers. Yet by the unhesitating confession of
the most learned controversialists who take this view.
By the year A.D. 146, this same body had transferred
this power to another class of ministers, viz., the bishops,
by whom alone it continued to be exercised for twelve
hundred years or more, and from whom it was never
withdrawn by the action of the whole body. That is
the whole body, the original Church, never withdrew
this right from her bishops and never conferred it upon
presbyters. Those of them who claimed the right to ex-
ercise this power took it upon themselves, assumed an
office to which the original body did not appoint them,
and proceeded to organize a new body without any char-
ter or dispensation or right conferred upon them by the
historical church. So that they are new bodies and can-
not be historically identified with old, or lay any logically
intelligible claim to its privileges.

The only question that can affect the force of this argu-
ment of historical identity is this. Does not a change
of principles — of doctrines and practices such as took
place when the ancient Church of England took on and
added to her primitive faith the Roman doctrines and
practices, or when again she lopped these off and returned
to her primitive condition, do such changes as these de-
stroy the identity of the body ? The Church of Eng-
land was Catholic for a thousand years, she became

APPENDIX.

219

Roman in addition to being Catholic for over three hun-
dred years — did the old body cease to be, and a new one
take its place when this change was made — or again
when she dropped this addition and fell back to her
primitive condition did she become a new body, histori-
cally separated from what she had been ? Or was she all
through the same society, existing under different condi-
tions and with different aims and modes of action for the
time being ? Let us see how other societies and organi-
zations are affected by similar changes of principle and
of action. Take the two great political parties of Eng-
land, the Whigs and Tories. It is well known that they
have both completely changed, in fact exactly reversed
their principles and line of action in regard to their
foreign policy, the Tories first fiercly opposing all in-
terference on the part of England in foreign politics and
affairs, and the Whigs maintaining her duty to do so, and
to make her influence felt especially on the continent ;
and then each of these parties wheeling right about .and
adopting the precisely opposite policy to that which they
had pursued before. Did the Conservative party or the
Whig lose its historical continuity and existence by this
change ? Clearly not. The great central line of policy
was retained by each, and though in this particular the
change was great, the identity of each was retained ?
So the Church of England through all the changes above
described, great though they were, he]d the great central
doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church un-
changed and remained the identical same body through
all.

The history of the Jewish Church supplies a striking,
and to my mind a conclusive analog}' on this point. 1 ha^

220

APPENDIX.

church became very corrupt at several periods in its his-
tory, but it did not therefore cease to be God's covenant
people and church. Thus in the reign of King Ahaz,
B.C. 728, the idolatrous religion of Syrians was intro-
duced even into Jerusalem itself. Altars were erected to
the Syrian gods or idols. The temple itself was altered
in many respects according to a Syrian model, and finally
it was shut up entirely (Jahn's Heb. Commonwealth,
B.k.V. 41). Again Manasseh, B.C. G44, upheld idolatry
by all the influence of regal powers, erected idolatrous
altars even within the Temple itself, set up an image
which was worshipped with obscene rites, maintained a
herd of necromancers, astrologers, soothsayers of various
kinds, and even sacrificed his own son to the idol Moloch
(2 Kings, xxii. 11). Again it appears that at the begin-
ning of the reign of Josiah, B.C. 611, the book of the
law of the Lord — that is the Scriptures — was almost
wholly forgotten, and its contents unknown, even Hilkiah,
the High Priest, knew almost nothing of it. And yet
the Jewish Church was not destroyed or set aside, and a
new church established in its stead. It was called to re-
formation, and was again and again restored in spite of
its terrible ignorance and unfaithfulness and sin, and
from this we are surely taught that though such sins in
God's people and by his church are very terrible sins,
and will be sorely punished, yet nothing but a deliberate
apostacy, a renunciation of faith in Christ and com-
munion with His people could destroy His church or
cause any national branch of it to terminate and cease
to be. A man may be desperately sick, the whole body
filled with wounds and bruises and putrifying sores, but

APPENDIX.

221

he is the same man still that he was when well, and he
will be the same if he recovers from his sickness. A man
who was once upright and honest and religious may fall
into most degrading and debasing sins, but fallen though
he be, he is the same man as before and he will be the
same if through the grace of God he recovers himself
and reforms his life and character. So with the Church
of England through all the changes of outward circum-
stance of sentiment and of spiritual condition, she has
continued to be the identical same body — the one true
Catholic and apostolic church of this realm.

INDEX.

LECTURE I.

The cau«e of these Lectures -The aim to point out differences between
the Catholic Keligion and the Roman— What the Catholic Church
is —Visible— Organised— Why called Catholic— Begun at Jeru-
• salem— How extended — Local designations— How Governed—
Councils without the Pope- Note (A). How the Council of Nice
was convened and presided over— Note (B). The Head of the
Church, pp

LECTURE II.

PAGE.

1-24

Points of Lecture I. recapitulated— How doctrines were defined — Not
one by a Pope for a thousand years— Popes condemned by Coun-
cils — Organization of Primitive Church— How Rome differs from
the Vatican Decrees — Pope substituted for Council— Dogma of
Infallibility — What it requires us to believe— Contradicts former
Roman Teachinfr — Note (A). The case of Honorius- Note (B).
Archbishop Connolly on rights of Episcopate, pp 25-40

LECTURE III.

Origin of Papacy — Supremacy rejected by Gregory I., A.D. 598 —
How the Primacy arose— Early efforts to extend jurisdiction —
The Petrine claims — No basis— Forgeries, Early, of Isidore —
liittledale— Foulkm— P^re Grtttry on Frauds of prersent Roman
Bystem, pp 41-62

224

INDEX.

LECTURE IV.

TAOE.

Arobbighop Lyncb on practical resulto of this syatem — His picture
of Roman Union — His definition of Catholic Interpretation not
Roman- Tbe Catholic mode of Interpretation- The Real Unity
of Rome— Infallibility practically valueless -Character of the
Infallibles- 'Never have guided men in emergencieH, pp 63-78

LECTURE V.

Recapitulation— How Papal Sovereignty obtained— Forged Decre-
tals — Deliberate aim of Gregory VII. to subvert old Constitu-
tion and set up new— Work of the Canonists— The decretum of
Gratian— Its Character —The Chaos of the tiraeu united with
usurpation— Popes took advantage of political exigencies— The
chief instruments — The Mendicant Orders — The Papal Legates
— Interference of Popes in affairs of National Churches— Never
acquiesced in in England — Gascoigne's picture— Other Churches
never recognized this Sovereignty — All Europe cried out against
it for centuries, pp 79-07

LECTURE VI.

Tbe Inquisition— Its Origin— What was re 'arded as Heresy— Popes
responsible for its initiation and action— Its Object — Became an
organized system of murder— The offences of which it took cog-
nizance — Mode of procedure- -How prisoners were treated—
Dickens' description of prison— Unfairness of Examination — All
Prisoners tortured — Its terrible nature — The Instruments — No
pity — Facts as to its awful work — Individual Narratives, pp 98-122

LECTURE VII.

Roman departure from Catholic Doctrine and Practice— Papal greed
of Power— Assimilation to Heathen Practices — Worship of
Images — Rejected by early Christians— By Pope Gregory I. —
Wide Spread in the 8th Century — Condemned by Council of
Constantinople — Sanctioned by Second of Nice — Rejected by
whole Western Church— Spread among half-converted Heathon
—What it Means— Roman Authorities— Mariolatry — No place
in Primitive Catholic Church — Teaching of Suarez — God sub-
ject to Mary— She appeaaeth her Son— Pius IX.— Leo XIIL —

-78

INDEX.

225

PAOE.

BlaaphemouH Prayera-

-Flesh of Mary in

Eucharist-

-Roman

Dootrine on

thi8 point

a Practical Apoatacy,

12.3-139

LECTURE VIII.

Purgatory— Another departure from Catholic Doctrine— Roman
Doctrine of Purgatory— Contradicts Catholic Doctrinw of Inter-
mediate State— What this was— Authorities— How Doctrine of
Purgatory crept in— Prayers for Dead, Meaning of— All we
know about life out of the body— Later Notions mere Specula-
tion --Indulgences grew out of Penitential Discipline — A Com-
plete Perversion of Primitive Teaching— Destroys true Devotion
—Robs the Poor— The Pope the Dispenser of Merits of Christ
— Cruelty— Mass Farming in France— A Swindle -Transub-
stantiation — Another Departure — Doctrine Defined— Not taught
before the 8th Century — Actual Presence Believed in by whole
Primitive Catholic Church — Unscientific Statements — Author-
ities against Transubstantiation— Withholding the Cup— An
Ip'-ovation of 12th Century— Contradicts Practice of Catholic
Church— Testimony against, Including Pope Galasius, pp 140-16!)

LECTURE IX.

Continuity and Catholicity of the Church of England— Origin of
National Designations — Church Existed in England in the 2nd
Century— Came from Gaul, Asia Minor, Spread into Ireland,
Thence into Northern England —This Church the real Converter
of the Saxons — Autonomous Rejected Roman Interference —
Roman Encroachments Under Norman Kings— Protests — Rich
— Grossetete — Statutes of Provisora — Praemunire - Wycliff e —
No break in the History— Same Organization under Different
Conditions — The Ancient Catholic Church Reformed Herself —
The Roman Church a Schism — Object of High Church Move-
ment, pp 170-189

LECTURE X.

Answer to Roman Objections — Freedom of National Chiirches —
Archbishop Theodore — Archbishop Parker's Consecration — The
Nag's Head Story — An utter Fiction, Proof that it is — Bishop
Barlow— Not a Vital Question— Turning the Table on Rome-
Two Loop Lines— Other Roman Objections Frivilous— Roman

Condemnation, pp.

190-210