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Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 
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 http://www.arcliive.org/details/catholicityinitsOOewerricli 
 
Catholicity 
 
 IN ITS RELATIONSHIP TO 
 
 Protestantism and Romanism 
 
 SIX CONFER.ENCES 
 
 Delivered a>.t Ne>vaLrk. N. J., a^t the Request of LeaLding 
 LcLymien <sf tKa^t City 
 
 BY 
 THE R.EV. F. C. EWER, S.T.D. 
 
 Mil^vdLukee: 
 ©"Ae Young ChvjrcKman Co 
 
CorvKiGHT BY G. P. Pittnam's Sons, itTt. 
 
 I =^ 
 
 LOAN STACK 
 
\9-18 
 
 TO THE 
 
 REV. S. BARING GOULD, 
 
 «HOSE TEACHINGS IN THE CHURCH HAVE LENT COURAGE 
 AND INSPIRATION TO THE AUTHOR, 
 
 T H I S V O L U M E 
 
 IS 
 
 GRATEFULLY DEDICATED, 
 
 BY HIS BROTHER IN THE CATHOLIC FAITH, 
 
 F. C. EWER. 
 
 140 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 The Addresses in .his volume were prepared 
 and delivered in compliance with the following re- 
 quest, signeG by some thirty laymen from every 
 Parish in the city of Newark, N. J., viz. : 
 
 " Impressed with a conviction that the Word of 
 God sets forth a distinct System of Truth, which is 
 held and fully taught by the Church ; and also that 
 a clear understanding and reception of the Funda- 
 mental Teachings of the Christian Religion are 
 necessary for the proper development of man's 
 spiritual life ; and, further, convinced that a desire 
 exists on the part of many earnest-minded men to 
 know of a System of Faith resting on a surer basis 
 than individual opinion, we, laymen of the Church 
 in Newark, respectfully invite you to deliver in our 
 city a series of Conferences on the Church as the 
 Custodian and Teacher of Divine Truth, in opposi- 
 tion to ultra-Protestantism, and to the anti-Catholic 
 claims of the Papal Church." 
 
 To this request the following reply was sent, viz. : 
 
Vi To the Reader. 
 
 New York, April 24th, 1878. 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 I was yesterday in receipt of your communica- 
 tion, requesting me to deliver in Newark a series of 
 Addresses on Catholicity in Its Relationship to 
 Protestantism on the one hand, and to Romanism 
 on the other. 
 
 I understand from the gentleman who brought 
 me your communication, that your desire is to have 
 the Conferences delivered on the Wednesday even- 
 ings in May and early June ; and that three of them 
 be on the subject of Catholicity in Its Relationship 
 to Protestantism, and three on Catholicity in Its 
 Relationship to Romanism. 
 
 I do not fail to recognize the importance of this 
 call ; first, in the subject it suggests, and secondly, 
 in the number and high standing in the Church and 
 in the community of the citizens by whom it is 
 signed. And I desire to thank you for the confi- 
 dence which it extends to me. 
 
 Your call comes at a time when I am very much 
 pressed with Parochial duties ; and in justice both 
 to the subject and to yourselves, I could have wished 
 to have the comparative leisure of the months of 
 June, July, and August, in which to prepare the 
 Conferences you desire. 
 
 But on the assurance of the gentleman who bore 
 me your letter, that you would be entirely satisfied, 
 
To the Reader. vii 
 
 and would not deem me discourteous, should I use 
 material for the first three Conferences which has 
 already been used and is somewhat known to por- 
 tions of the public, I comply with your request ; and 
 will endeavor to be with you for the first address on 
 Wednesday evening, May the first. 
 With great respect, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 F. C. EWER. 
 
 However, on further consideration, the author 
 resolved not to use any of the material contained in 
 his volume on " The Failure of Protestantism," as 
 that work had already passed through several edi- 
 tions, and would, moreover, have furnished to his 
 hand sermons, rather than such religious addresses 
 calculated for a secular audience, as the request 
 called for. 
 
 In preparing the following addresses from week 
 to week, therefore, as they were delivered, he has 
 endeavored, by the development of an argument 
 which begins in the First Address and does not close 
 until the end of the Sixth, to show the sceptic, first, 
 why he should be a Christian rather than an Infidel, 
 or a Unitarian in belief ; secondly, a Catholic rather 
 than a Protestant ; and lastly, an Anglican Catholic 
 rather than a Roman Catholic. 
 
 In compliance with the request of a number of 
 
viii To the Reader. 
 
 those who desire to have these Addresses in book- 
 form, a Sermon has been added, which the author 
 was invited to prepare and preach last year before 
 the members of an Evangelical Parish, in explana- 
 tion of the Object and Meaning of the Catholic 
 Movement in the Anglican Communion. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 First Conference. 
 
 Catholicity, a Continent of Certainty; Protestantism, 
 an Ocean of Conjecture I 
 
 Second Conference: 
 
 Catholicity, a Life and an Oi^anizer ; Protestantism, 
 a Disorganizer and a Death ^ 43 
 
 Third Conference: 
 
 The Catholic Church, both Perfect and Imperfect. — 
 Leaves Room for Play of Mental Activity. — Catho- 
 licity, the " Yea " of Christianity ; Protestantism, 
 the " Nay."— True Cause of Protestant " Reforma- 
 tion." — Protestantism, Diversity wtthout Organic 
 • Unity ; Rome Organic Unity without Diversity ; 
 Catholicity, Organic Unity in Diversity 74 
 
 Fourth Conference: 
 
 Functions of Reason in Religion. — Recapitulation. — 
 Catholicity in History. — Which is the Catholic 
 Church? — Difference between the Catholic and the 
 Roman Idea of the Unity of the Church. The Ro- 
 man Idea essentially the same as the Protestant. — 
 The Roman Idea not sustained either by Scripture 
 OT by History 1 29 
 
X Contents, 
 
 Fifth Conference: faoi 
 
 Constitution of The Catholic Church in Its Priestly, 
 Sacrificial, Prophetic, and Regal Functions. — Ro- 
 manism overthrows this Constitution. — The Church's 
 Government Episcopal, not Papal. — Gallicanism a 
 Logical Mistake. — Hierarchy within the Catholic 
 Episcopate. — Papal Supremacy not Sustained by 
 Scripture i66 
 
 Sixth Conference: 
 
 The Papal Autocracy not Sustained by History. — 
 Caution with regard to Papal Controversial Books. 
 —The Theory of the Anglican Church, Catholic, 
 though Her Present Ritual Practice be Uncatholic ; 
 The Theory of the Roman Church, Uncatholic, 
 though Her Present Ritual Practice be Catholic. — 
 Prophecy touching Rome's need for Conversion, and 
 Her Three-fold Denial of Christ. — Conclusion 2ig 
 
 Sermon : 
 
 The Object and Meaning of the Catholic Movement in 
 the Anglican Communion 367 
 
NOTES. 
 
 N. B. — This edition has been carefully corrected 
 from notes made by Dr. Ewer on the margins of his 
 library copy; but the following additions could not 
 be conveniently introduced into the body of the book. 
 
 Page 41, line 7, after "Himself," add "But how do 
 we know that this is the Body of God on earth ? 
 Gentlemen, there is and has been no other organic 
 form in time that claims to be God's earthly Body. 
 If then it must be that He is on earth in a body 
 somewhere, this alone must be that Body. If He is 
 on earth, surely that Body in which He is visible 
 would be self-conscious of its pre-eminence among 
 all other earthly organisms. But no other than one 
 only, viz., the Catholic Church, claims this pre-emi- 
 nence." 
 
 Page 171, line 2, after "Ordination," add "takes 
 a member of the Church and binds him into unity 
 with His Priestly body." 
 
Notes. 
 
 Page 172, line 11, after *'Body on earth," add 
 ** Christ's Real Presence in Heaven and Christ's 
 Sacramental Presence on our altars." 
 
 Page 226, line 15, after "it is all novel," add 
 " Thus when a Protestant rouses up to run headlong 
 away from Protestantism, Rome by the simplicity of 
 its system readily catches his attention, his compre- 
 hension and his acceptance." 
 
 Page 263, line 4, after "He knew that," add 
 " those who would be called." 
 
CATHOLICITY, PROTESTANTISM 
 AND ROMANISM. 
 
 FIRST CONFERENCE. 
 
 Catholicity, a Continent of Certainty: Protestant- 
 ISM, AN Ocean of Conjecture. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 The most solemn question a man can put to him- 
 self is, What is Truth ? We are somewhere in a uni- 
 verse of complicated fact and intricate phenomena; 
 but where ? We exist now ; but where along the flow 
 of the eternal is that " now " set ? In this universe, 
 whose bounds we know not, complexity pervades every 
 part ; it is within us, it stretches away behind the 
 farthest stars, it comes up to us from an eternity be- 
 hind, and goes on to an eternity before us. All the 
 facts and phenomena of this vast and intricate scene 
 move with perfect harmony, because guided by the 
 great single will of God. All, do I say ? All but mar 
 and demons. Set in this universe, to act in discord 
 
2 Catholicity, Protestantism and Rotnamstn. 
 
 with its laws and complex movement, is misery, dis- 
 aster and death. To move in accordance with the 
 All is peace, success, life. Now, to have the order of 
 ideas within correspond with the order of fact and 
 phenomena without, is to have within us the Truth ; 
 this, therefore, is to have the means of life. To have 
 the order of ideas within not correspond with the 
 order of phenomena without — this is error ; and acting 
 on it is disaster, misery, death. 
 
 You have not come up here to consider the cor- 
 respondence between the order of ideas within and 
 the order of all fact and phenomena without. Scientif- 
 ic, political, financial, artistic fact and phenomena you 
 care not for ; for this world passeth away. No, the 
 correspondence you wish, is that between the order of 
 ideas within and the order of those unseen facts and 
 phenomena that lie beyond the limits of the natural 
 and below the horizon of time. What is Truth there ? 
 Vour question is a question, then, of life or death. 
 We have to live but once ; we have to die but once. 
 How shall we live aright .?, How shall we die aright .' 
 Once only can we shape our course for eternity. It is 
 according to error or according to truth. It is either 
 to sail into correspondence evenastmg with the com- 
 plex facts and phenonaen.'\ o* the eternal and the su- 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. 3 
 
 pernatura., or to sail into a miserable discord with 
 them ; it is either, then, unto life, or unto that whose 
 only fitting name is death. For, an extraneous parti- 
 cle, caught in a vast machine and out of harmony with 
 its movements, is but crushed and ground by the re- 
 sistless, ceaseless action of that in which it is set. 
 God, time, eternity, and all that fills them — this is the 
 vast machine in which you are set. You have come 
 up here, therefore, to ask, What is Truth ? to seek to 
 bring the order of your ideas into correspondence 
 with the order of supernatural fact and movement, ex- 
 ternal to yourselves, unalterable and eternal. 
 
 But a question is "an hunger." For who would 
 ask for what he already has ? Three hundred years 
 ago Luther and Calvin announced that they had the 
 Truth. But the stormy seas of private judgment and 
 of human criticism upon which they launched it, and 
 the detective solvents of inexorable logic which they 
 challenged, have been too much for it. Calvin can- 
 not answer Channing ; Channing cannot answer Par- 
 ker ; Parker cannot answer Frothingham. Lapsing 
 time, too, hath brought its strain upon it \ lapsing 
 time, which is the Divine criticism on all systems, hath 
 confronted it with unexpected situations, hath stretched 
 it upon new problems for which, in its human infirmity^ 
 
4 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 it had not foreprovided ; and, lo ! it is rent and gone 
 to pieces. After three hundred years you behold it a 
 miserable raft, its fragments floating apart like the 
 mere flying rack of the heavens. And you behold 
 poor remnants only of the great nations clinging to its 
 parted and broken logs, and earnest thinking men at 
 their wits' end to know what is Truth. It is a ques- 
 tion of the preservation of Christianity on earth. 
 
 Let me pause here a moment. How is it that I 
 am summoned here by citizens of widely variant views ? 
 What has happened in the last ten years t The world 
 does not stop. Truth may be drowned by the cries 
 of ridicule ; but the hearts of the silent people, who 
 are watching it, are ever loyal to it, even in its degra- 
 dation on Calvary ; and there is no device yet dis- 
 covered that shall transubstantiate, in their eyes, 
 either ridicule or prejudice into argument. In 1868 
 the solemn Indictment against Protestantism, drawn 
 up in the fear of God and in behalf of dying souls, and 
 uttered from Christ Church, Murray Hill, was met, 
 not by argument, but only by a gale of holy maledic- 
 tion and impotent scorn. But those who felt with the 
 penman of that Indictment have bided their time. 
 For there is no device yet discovered that can prolong 
 the life of an excitement, and save it from sinking in- 
 
Protestantism and Romanism, 5 
 
 to a calm in which the quiet voice of argument can 
 again be heard. I look around, and, lo, ten years 
 have wrought a change. In St. Louis, in Wisconsin, 
 East and West, the challenge to Protestantism is taken 
 up again and begins to swell. And here, in 1878, I 
 call you to mark the pregnant fact, that, as that In- 
 dictment was not in a single instance answered in 
 1868, so it has not been answered since. And here, 
 as a priest of God Almighty's Catholic Church, I call 
 again from these steps of His holy Altar for an answer 
 to that Indictment, if it can be given. 
 
 If any one claims again that steamboats and 
 cotton mills are Protestantism, one can only say that 
 again the claim calls for no notice. Protestantism a 
 failure 1 Why, look at your lucifer matches, your 
 locomotives and suspension bridges ! And one, gaz- 
 ing with sad eye upon the five points of Calvinism, 
 upon the Lutheran dogma of justification by faith, 
 upon the rule of private Scriptural interpretation, upon 
 absolute predestination, effectual grace, final persever- 
 ance and infant damnation, looked away from Protes- 
 tantism as he was bidden, and observed the patent 
 reapers and sewing machines, and failed to see the 
 connection. No one ever charged the inventive 
 faculty of man with being a failure when acting in the 
 
6 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 natural realm. It was the inventive faculty of fallible 
 man operating in the supernatural realm, and substi- 
 tuting there a human for a Divine contrivance oi sal 
 vation that had failed. 
 
 In short, the attempt was made to identify Protes- 
 tantism with the Nineteenth Century ; and, because the 
 Nineteenth Century was clearly a success, to non-suit 
 the indictment against Protestantism. This was 
 shrewd, but not sagacious. With many it succeeded 
 for a time. Grave critics in newspaper and magazine 
 flew at the volume of sermons entitled " The Failure of 
 Protestantism," condemned it out and out, declaiing 
 in the same breath that they had not even read it, and 
 did not need to. One eminent New York clergyman 
 received a service of silver plate from his parishioners, 
 for proving that the Nineteenth Century was not a 
 failure, and that Romanism was an error; neither 
 pastor nor people having the slightest conception of 
 the comical attitude in which they had placed them- 
 selves. 
 
 No one had charged that the Nineteenth Century 
 was a failure, or claimed that Romanism was true. 
 Protestantism is something that exists in modern 
 times ; now, if not only modern times, but also every- 
 thing that is in modern times, are successes, then are 
 
Protestantism a?id Romanism. 7 
 
 die Comtean school of Positivism, and Emersonian 
 Pantheism, and Spiritualism, and Fourierism and 
 Mormonism successes. 
 
 Protestantism was set up as the Cause of all the 
 glories of the Nineteenth Century. What ! the reli- 
 gious dogma that says : " Away with God's Apostolic 
 visible Church, and let every man be his own church, 
 his own Priest, his own interpreter of the Bible, and 
 his own judge as to what the Bible is," the cause of 
 all this science and modern light .? 
 
 The real cause of the light and advance of modern 
 times is not a theological dogma which had its birth 
 in the Sixteenth Century. But it is the human mind, 
 which began to awaken into activity far back in the 
 middle ages, four hundred years before the Protestant 
 dogma was thought of. As that human mind began to 
 arouse out of its sleep in the Eighth Century, it began 
 to be prolific. It abandoned the rude structures of 
 those ages, and brought out, long before the Conti- 
 nental Reformation, the most ornate specimens of 
 architecture the world ever saw ; in the Eleventh 
 Century it invented paper, and produced printing 
 before Calvin and Luther saw the light ; in the 
 Twelfth Century it devised banks of exchange and 
 discount, and, not long after, invented gunpowder, 
 
8 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 conceived the idea of the post-office, discovered and 
 applied the principle of magnetism in the mariner's 
 compass, and thus gave such a start to commerce and 
 geographical discovery as they had never had before ; 
 it invented painting in oil-colors before Luther was 
 born ; in the Thirteenth Century it introduced as- 
 tronomy and geometry into Europe, and, not long 
 after, brought in algebra also, and fostered all three 
 sciences ; it produced a Dante, a Petrarch, a Chaucer, 
 a Boccaccio and a Roger Bacon, long before Luther 
 was born ; five hundred years before Calvin and 
 Luther, it established free schools for the country 
 urchin and the town child ; centuries before, too, it 
 gathered up out of the Gothic and Vandal ruins the 
 precious literary treasures of Greece and Rome ; and 
 founded universities at Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, 
 Vienna, Heidelberg, Paris, and innumerable other 
 cities. 
 
 No, the cause of the light and advance of modern 
 times was this general awakening and ever increasing 
 activity of mind ; an activity which began far back in 
 the tenth century or earlier ; which not only brought 
 out all this that I have mentioned, but more also ; 
 which has been bringing out new blessings to man ever 
 since ; which has rolled up and out a thousand things 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. 9 
 
 — most of them good, some of them bad ; which, 
 • after a while, rolled up the Protestant dogma as one of 
 its many and varied inventions ; and which is rolling 
 up to-day in England and America the solemn pre- 
 sentment of that dogma and of its disastrous fruits at 
 the bar of this enlightened century. 
 
 Now there are those who would have one think 
 that Protestantism is not merely one of the hetero- 
 geneous mixture of things, which, awakening mind in 
 its power, but also in its fallibility, turned up, six 
 hundred years after that mind had'begun to produce 
 its marvellous fruits, but that it really is, somehow or 
 other, the cause of all the good of modern times, gun- 
 powder, glass, paper, printing, painting, telescopes, 
 astronomy, algebra. Magna Charta, and everything 
 else. This were to suppose a mother producing chil- 
 dren before she was born. Protestantism was but 
 one of the effects of the general awakening of mind, 
 not its cause ; and our charge is that it happened to be 
 one of the bad effects — not in that it struck at Roman 
 error, but because it has destroyed Catholic truth 
 also. '' Where Protestantism prevails, there everything 
 prevails which blesses mankind ; ergo^ Protestantism 
 is true." This is the argument. Nay, it should have 
 been said that where active mind prevails, there thou- 
 
lo Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 sands of things prevail which bless mankind, and some 
 things that are curses. Where Protestantism prevails, 
 quotha ? Why, one might as well say where Spiritual- 
 ism prevails, where infidelity prevails, there everything 
 prevails that blesses mankind : ergo, infidelity is true 
 
 To say nothing of the specifications in those eight 
 Murray Hill discourses, what were two of the main 
 counts in the Indictment ? First, that whereas, two 
 hundred and fifty years ago, the Protestant religious 
 dogmas held captive to themselves great thoughtful 
 peoples of the Germanic, the Swiss and the Anglo- 
 Saxon man, those dogmas had failed to retain the 
 hold they once had, and have, to an overwhelming ex- 
 tent, lost, at last, the intellect of those peoples : and 
 that, while two hundred and fifty years ago Protest- 
 antism held the masses as well as the intellect of those 
 peoples, it has failed to hold and has lost those 
 masses as well as the intellect : that Protestantism, 
 as a form of Christianity, startds to-day breast-deep in 
 torrents of skepticism, which itself hath let loose, 
 which are deepening around it, and in which it is 
 drowning ; and that it stands there to-day aghast and 
 incompetent. This was one count in the Indictment. 
 Gentlemen, you have seen that it has not been denied. 
 
 A second count was that the fundamental religious 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. i ' 
 
 premises of Protestantism were essentially anti-Chris* 
 tian, and must end, by inexorable logic, in infidel con- 
 clusions ; that if Calvin's and Luther's and Zwingli's 
 premises were to be accepted, then Channing's con- 
 clusions were nearer right by logic than Cromwell's, 
 and Theodore Parker's nearer right than Channing's, 
 and Frothingham's and Adler's the Tightest of all, and 
 quite unanswerable by a Protestant : that when the 
 Calvinists burned Servetus at the stake, they burned 
 Calvin*s own brain-child. It was furthermore claimed 
 that if this logical aspect of Protestantism was correct, 
 it ought to have shown itself finally in practical his- 
 torical results. And the charge was made that what 
 thus ought to have followed logically, had actually 
 followed historically, and was patent to all in the com- 
 paratively empty churches and the widespread skep- 
 ticism of thoughtful Germany, America and Switzer- 
 land. This was another count. 
 
 I reiterate : with all that was said ten years ago 
 on the subject, in sermon, newspaper and magazine, 
 not then did any one, not at any time since has any 
 one come candidly up and grappled with these two 
 main counts in the Indictment. Can they be met 
 and answered ? If so, why have several editions of 
 the volume containing the Indictment been allowed 
 
12 Catholicity^ Frotestantistn and Romanism. 
 
 to be read, openly or secretly, (for the volume was 
 forthwith placed on the Index Expurgatorius of Prot 
 estantism) and to work like leaven in the com- 
 munity for ten years ? If they cannot be answered, 
 it is not strange that earnest-minded citizens should 
 arise and ask, What is Truth ? 
 
 To resume ; those who Say to the world, " We 
 have the eternal truth," speak, of course, with author- 
 ity ; and that authority must be one of two things, 
 either baseless or founded on a rock. Protestantism 
 cried, " We have the Truth," and nations listened. 
 What strange thing do you at once behold as the 
 nations clustered to the chair of Protestantism ? I 
 will tell you. The tones of Protestantism to the 
 world were the tones of authority. It summoned the 
 people to itself to instruct them. And yet it asserts 
 its own fallibility. Every religion which does not at 
 least claim for itself infallibility, convicts itself by that 
 fact that it is liable to lead men astray in that solemn 
 concern which, fixed but once, knows no cure. Be- 
 hold, then, this amazing event — the dying nations 
 flying for the eternal truth to a system that proclaims 
 its liability to plunge them into error. For such a 
 system to teach in the name of a God, Whose truth is 
 one, fixed and eternal, and Whose ways alter not, nor 
 
Protestantism and Romanism, 13 
 
 conflict with each other, is the consummation of the 
 absurd. No, gentlemen, as Jesus Christ was the 
 only human being who dared to call himself God, so 
 Catholicity is the only Christian body that dares to 
 call itself infallible ; that dares to begin its dis- 
 courses, to give its truth, to pronounce its judgments 
 and to pardon sin, " In the name of the Father, and 
 of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." The Sovereign 
 Lord God hath Himself prepared a remedy for 
 Protestantism ; and that remedy is the anarchy with 
 which it rends its own domain in a sublime suicide. 
 And so it lies writhing under the human, and dying 
 under the Divine criticism. 
 
 Out of the sixteenth century, then, there sounded 
 the cry, " We have the Truth." We have listened to 
 that cry and have seen what has come of it. It was 
 a cry of mere human voices. 
 
 On the i8th of July, 1870, that cry sounded again 
 to the world. It arose, not from the plains of Saxony, 
 not from the lakes of Switzerland, but from beneath 
 the shadow of the Apennines. This time it was in 
 the singular number : " I alone have the Truth." All 
 mankind are bid to note that an august Prelate, when 
 speaking from his throne as doctor, and instructing 
 the world in faith or morals, is infallible. But, never- 
 
14 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 theless, gentlemen, you have heard that second cry, 
 and have turned your ear away from the Vatican. 
 And do I do other than speak your thoughts aloud 
 when I give the reason why ? 
 
 If we are to yield our own ideas and accept, with- 
 out arguing, what is told us as the truth, we must first 
 of all be convinced that we have reached the fountain 
 from which only eternal truth flows. In short, reason 
 is truly called by Catholicity "the prelude of faith." 
 Why, then, is it that, since the i8th of July, 1870, we 
 are all to believe that the Pope is infallible ? Prior to 
 that date the world did not believe it ; voices which 
 spoke from high places in even the Roman Catholic 
 hierarchy itself "had declared that this doctrine of 
 Papal Infallibility was not and could not become an 
 article of Catholic faith. Not only had the once pow- 
 erful school of Gallican divines emphatically repudia- 
 ted it ; not only had Roman Catholic bishops and 
 clergy in Ireland, not very many years back, put on 
 formal record their denial of it ; not only had such an 
 approved manual as Keenan's Controversial Cate- 
 chism declared it to be no article of Catholic belief, 
 and affirmed that no Papal decision could bind, under 
 pain of heresy, unless received and prescribed by the 
 teaching body of the Church; but many European 
 
Protestantism a fid Romanism. 15 
 
 bishops had, in recent times, distinctly denied it to be 
 a part of Catholic doctrine ; and American bishops, 
 just before the Council and during the Council, had 
 expressed their conviction that it was out of harmony 
 with both Scripture and tradition, and that it contra- 
 dicted the history of the Church as a teaching power." 
 And yet on and after the i8th day of July, 1870, 
 we are told that the 170,000,000 of Roman Catholics 
 accepted the Papal Infallibility. Something must, 
 then, have happened on that i8th day of July eight 
 years ago as a reason why the world is called on to 
 believe the Pope to be infallible. What happened ? 
 A solemn dogmatic decree was promulgated. That 
 was all. Who promulgated it ? It was the Pope him- 
 self, the Patriarchal Council approving. Ah, then, the 
 decree rests upon two supports, the Pope and the 
 Council. Let us examine each support. And first 
 the Council. The Council, as one of the supports of 
 the decree, was either fallible or infallible. If it was 
 fallible, then, for all we know, it may have made a 
 mistake when it announced the Papal infallibility. 
 But if, on the other hand, it was infallible, then, by as- 
 serting something else and not itself to be infallible, it 
 has infallibly pronounced its own fallibility. Indeed^ 
 the decree itself declares the Council to be fallible '- 
 
i6 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 for it says : " The definitions of the Roman Pontiff 
 are, of themselves, and not in virtue of the consent of thi 
 Churchy irreformable." If, then, the Council, by its 
 own admission and by the Pope's assertion, is liable 
 to error, we have no guarantee whatever that it spoke 
 the truth when it taught that the Pope was infallible. 
 Thus, either way, one of the two supports on which 
 the decree rests — namely, the Patriarchal Council — 
 proves utterly rotten and worthless. 
 
 Reason is the prelude of faith. Let us pass, then 
 to the other support on which the decree rests — 
 namely, the assertion of the Pope himself. Prior to 
 the 1 8th day of July, 1870, the question to be decided 
 was whether or not the Pope was infallible. On the 
 i8th day of July the Pope himself settles the doubtful 
 question. How ? Why, by simply declaring that he 
 is infallible. Is this logic? "I am infallible." Why? 
 ** Because I am infallible." Behold here, gentlemen, 
 born in the womb of an occasion most illustrious, and 
 issuing from a gathering which, for stateliness, robed 
 splendor and solemnity, has rarely had its equal, this 
 flagrant instance of the fallacy known as " Begging the 
 very question at issue ;" an instance which is perhaps 
 the sublimest in its presumption and the most absurd 
 in its simplicity that the world ever stood amazed at 
 
Protestantism and Romanism, 17 
 
 There are people in this world thoughtless and 
 discourteous enough to say that the feminine mind 
 has some peculiar notions of its own touching logic j 
 that if you ask why a certain thing is so, a reason, 
 entirely satisfactory at any rate to itself, is " Because." 
 One is reminded, mutatis mutandis, of what the able 
 critic of The Church Times said of Cardinal Manning. 
 One " does not know whether such ungallant sugges- 
 tion be well founded or not in the case of woman j 
 probably not. But it applies with singular force " to 
 the promulgator of the above decree. 
 
 What connection there may be between the angry 
 portents of heaven and the deeds of man in the moral 
 and intellectual realms, who shall say? That the 
 former are rolled out of the physical realm coinci- 
 dently with the occurrence of the latter in the moral 
 realm by that God, Who holdeth and guideth both 
 realms as one by His one will and power, may be too 
 much for science to fathom, but not too much for faith 
 to receive. At any rate we know what God hath 
 said : *' And there shall be signs in the sun and in the 
 moon and in the stars ; ... for the powers of heaven 
 shall be shaken." At any rate you have seen Mel- 
 chior, Gasper and Balthasar guided to the spot where 
 the young Child lay. And, at any rate, we know that 
 
1 8 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 darkness came at noon-day, while the Jews were ac 
 complishing their purpose. When on the i8th day 
 of July, 1870, the aged man, crowned with the tiara, 
 arose with great form and pomp from his throne in 
 the Vatican Basilica, and made the awful declaration 
 to the universe, '* I alone have the Truth," above the 
 dome of that Basilica without, there had already gath- 
 ered out of the reservoirs of the air a storm, which 
 those who saw it describe as almost unequaled in 
 blackness and turmoil and terror. And as the poor, 
 feeble human voice lifted itself from earth, it spoke 
 into the deepest gloom, and was instantly answered 
 from heaven by angry flashes of the most blinding light- 
 ning and peal on peal of sudden thunder, as though in 
 a Divine derision to drown the Pontiffs awful words. 
 
 From the University of Wittenberg and from the 
 lake-shores of Geneva and Zurich we heard the cry, 
 '*We have the Truth." But it was only the cry of 
 human voices, claiming no infallibility. Again from 
 the banks of the Tiber it arose, "I have the Truth." 
 But it was again the sound of a poor human voice 
 only ; a voice claiming indeed infallibility, but the 
 claim based on supports both of which crumble tc 
 dust at the touch. And so you have turned your eai 
 away from the Vatican. 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. 19 
 
 But a question is not only " an hunger," it is also 
 * a hope." For who would ask for what he despairs 
 of ever having ? And so you have come up here with 
 the great question on your lips. Have you seriously 
 asked yourselves why you have come up here ? Is it 
 — since you cannot rely upon having the truth from 
 Rome, from Geneva, from Wittenberg — in order to sit 
 at the feet of another mere man, and be instructed in 
 new dogmas of grace, justification and salvation, which 
 he, too, has excogitated and deems correct ? No, 
 gentlemen, you have not placed me in so absurd an 
 attitude. You announce that you have already had 
 enough of the mere fallible human voice crying to you, 
 " Put your trust in me." 
 
 There is a second explanation, then, of your pres- 
 ence here ; and does this account for it ? Having, 
 namely, in your minds the various statements touching 
 grace, justification, the atonement and salvation, which 
 men have propounded as the Truth, do you come here 
 for still another theory, in articled, dogmatic statement, 
 in order that you may sit as judges, weighing the new 
 with the old, and decide which is the most Biblical 
 and probable, or select parts from all and form another 
 theory to suit yourselves and perhaps to announce to 
 the world ? But this would be merely using me for 
 
20 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 new material, and then falling back on yourselves foi*^ 
 the Truth ; while there is that within you which, in its 
 hunger, cries, I have not the Truth to give, nor power 
 to summon it forth, nor reagents to test it. No, gen- 
 tlemen, in coming up here, as you have not placed me 
 in a mortifying position, neither have you placed your- 
 selves in so absurd an attitude. 
 
 There is only one more explanation. You will 
 neither trust me nor yourselves. Ah, then, gentlemen, 
 you seek no less than the Divine voice to give you the 
 Truth. But do you expect to hear the Divine voice 
 speaking the Truth to you through me to-night ? No. 
 For we accept the 'Divine voice without arguing ; and 
 you have come here to consider, to weigh, to reason. 
 To consider what ? Reason is the prelude of faith ; 
 and you have come up here to reason within yourselves 
 and to consider whether there be anywhere on earth 
 any channel of the Divine voice, any audible source 
 of infallible Truth, and if so, where you are to find it. 
 For such and such only will neither deceive nor fail 
 you ; with such and such only will you be satisfied ; 
 before the presence of such and such only will you be 
 at rest. Then, having accepted, without arguing, the 
 Truth from a source that will not deceive us, we may 
 afterward reverently examine and admire its pearls 
 
Protestantism and Rofnanism. a I 
 
 and rubies, and compare them with the diamonds of 
 glass and the emeralds of paste. 
 
 If there be on earth the audible Divine voice, 
 where shall we go to find and listen to it ? This is 
 the question of to-night. It is very difficult to disen- 
 gage one's self from the influences of education and 
 from long habits of thought. Ideas and prejudices 
 which we have gained in our childhood, youth and 
 early manhood from our parents, from the Bible, from 
 the atmosphere of Christianity around us, root them- 
 selves into us until they become almost a part of the 
 very fabric of our minds. And yet I am going to ask 
 you to join with me in the difficult task of utterly dis- 
 engaging yourselves for a brief while from all impres- 
 sions of every name and nature touching even God, 
 which you have had all your lives, and touching the 
 future life, revelation, Christ or salvation. They may 
 all return upon you when I have gotten through ; but 
 for the nonce let us put them all away in order that 
 we may come with virgin minds to a certain pathway 
 where I wish to take you. In that one pathway at least 
 we wish no disturbing elements, no shadowy forms of 
 previous notions and prejudices beckoning us hither 
 and yon, as we cautiously move on. Then we shall be 
 all alike as we enter. It is a pathway of very simple 
 
I 2 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 Jeasoning ; and I beg each one of you to examine 
 Carefully every single link in the chain from first to last. 
 
 Why is it necessary for me to ask you away from 
 all your previous impressions into this pathway at all ? 
 It is because we are, with our different educations and 
 religious influences, all in confusion ; and I desire 
 that we go back and start even, and all over again, 
 without a Bible, without a Christ, without a Church, 
 without Sacraments, without any religious notions — 
 and see where we shall come out. 
 
 Let me say, in the first place, then, that as we 
 stand surrounded by the innumerable sects and forms 
 of Christianity, the plain man is utterly bewildered 
 with the conflicting voices. He thinks there are a 
 thousand and one questions which he must carefully 
 and painfully settle if he would get out of the maze 
 and reach the truth. No, gentlemen, this is a mis- 
 take. Numerous as the forms of Christianity are, and 
 certainly their name is legion, they fall as inevitably 
 and infallibly apart into classes, orders, genera and 
 species, as do the innumerable flowers of the vege- 
 table kingdom. Settle three questions and your 
 trouble is gone. The first two are not difficult or 
 complex questions either. And it is up to them that 
 I would bring you face to face to-night. 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. 23 
 
 Now all chains of reasoning must hang upon staples. 
 It is impossible to conceive of a chain of reasoning 
 extending back infinitely into the past and hanging 
 nowhere. In the mathematics, reasoning starts from 
 axioms. I start then with certain statements which I 
 ask you to admit without proof. I ask you to admit : 
 (i) That there is a God ; (2) That that God is a perfect 
 God of love ; (3) That we each of us exist ; and (4) 
 That our senses give us tolerably accurate intelligence 
 of that by which we are surrounded. Bear in mind, 
 gentlemen, that we all admit that God is a perfect 
 God of love ; for that is of importance. Indeed, 
 Voltaire himself once said, that even if there were no 
 God, it would be necessary to invent one. If you 
 do not admit this, then I have nothing further to say. 
 If you do admit it, then I go on ; and let us see where 
 we shall come out. I do not ask any of you to take a 
 single step where you cannot follow ; but having 
 taken any step, I simply ask you, in this course of 
 Conferences, not to go back. 
 
 We all start even, and therefore I will take some 
 one of us, not as a guide, but as a specimen for each 
 of the rest ; and let that one be myself. 
 
 I exist, then. And, looking round about me, I 
 find myself in a vast temple. Above me is its mighty 
 
«4 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 dome ; spread out beneath me is its vast floor. It is 
 the Temple of Nature. How did I get here ? (Re- 
 member, we have wiped out all our previous religious 
 impressions.) How did I get here? I know not. 
 I only know that I entered it through the gateway of 
 birth, and that I shall go out of it through the gate- 
 way of death. Within this Temple of Nature I find 
 innumerable objects, and I find physical, mental and 
 moral laws operating. I can observe and group its 
 facts, form theories, test my theories by experiment, 
 ascertain its laws, and come to fixed and certain 
 conclusions, in which I can rest and on which I can 
 act. For I have senses which place me in connec- 
 tion with all around me, and enable me to be. intelligent 
 concerning the abode within which I am enclosed. 
 I know that I shall exist here but a few years, and 
 then I shall go out of this temple through the door- 
 way of death. Whither shall I go? I cannot see 
 beyond, and I do not know. I can follow a fellow- 
 man up to death ; but the moment he has passed 
 away my faintest whisper, my loudest cry does not 
 reach him. He is gone from me as completely as 
 ' though he had been suddenly annihilated. I stand 
 and rap at the door of death ; what is there beyond ? 
 I listen j there is no reply. Is there an existence 
 
Frotestantism and Roviaiiism. 25 
 
 Deyond and outside of this Temple of Nature? If 
 so, will my existence be eternal or not ? Are there 
 rocks and dangers there for me to escape? What 
 are the beings that live in the realm of super-nature ? 
 Moreover are there invisible facts and phenomena and 
 laws that prevail here in the supernatural? I know 
 not. How then am I to know the Truth with regard 
 to the latter that I may so shape my course here as 
 to enter upon a successful existence there? I know 
 not. I am completely cut off from them by the walls 
 of nature. I cannot see them through those walls ; I 
 cannot hear their sound and movement. If I form 
 theories about them, I cannot bring those theories to 
 the test of experiment ; and so I am totally cut off 
 from ascertaining whether my theories are true or not. 
 How then am I to act here with certainty ? Standing 
 at the door of death, I can, indeed, conjecture concern- 
 ing those facts, phenomena, laws and requirements in 
 which I may be living now and into which I am to 
 plunge; I can conjecture about all the unseen supernat- 
 ural that plays here in this Temple of Nature ; about 
 the law of the forgiveness of sins and justification, and 
 the means of salvation. And so, too, can another 
 man conjecture. And his mere guess, though it con- 
 tradict mine in every particular, is as good as mine j 
 
26 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 for both our guesses are mere guesses, and are reallj 
 worth, so far as certainty is concerned, just nothing at 
 all. Why sow seed in cloud-land ? Why waste time ? 
 Let me turn back, then, from the door of the super- 
 natural here and hereafter at which I am standing to 
 this Temple of Nature, where there is something posi- 
 tive ; where, if I form a natural theory, I can test it 
 by natural fact and come to some settled and positive 
 conclusion. As for supernatural fact and law and 
 process, we, shut up as we are in this Temple of Na- 
 ture, are all by nature drowning in an ocean of mere 
 fruitless conjecture and guesswork. 
 
 And yet, if I am to live eternally in the realms 
 of the supernatural and among its phenomena and 
 laws, if its laws play here unknown to and unseen 
 by me, and have a bearing upon me, then, that I 
 should have no guesswork, that I should be able 
 to bring the order of my ideas within into harmony 
 with the order of those supernatural facts, phe- 
 nomena and laws, that I should have no less than the 
 positive and infallible truth concerning them, this, to 
 me, is of the vastest importance. It were the most 
 exquisite cruelty to shut me in here and leave me 
 drowning in an ocean of mere conjecture about 
 eternity and its laws and requirements. My danger 
 
Protestantism and Romamsm. 27 
 
 of unending disaster is enormous ; for truth is one, 
 like the centre of a circle, while the possibility of va- 
 riation from it and of error, is infinite like the radii 
 that point in every direction. This, then, is my situa- 
 tion by nature. 
 
 Now, just here, gentlemen, I call you to take the 
 first step along the pathway with me. It is this : God 
 is love j I have admitted that. Therefore there is no 
 escape from the logical conclusion that He cannot 
 leave me in my miserable plight of fruitless guesswork. 
 He cannot leave me in my awful position of drowning 
 in an ocean of mere conjecture and incertitude about 
 topics, concerning which it is of the vastest importance 
 that I should have knowledge no less than exactly 
 true ; for anything short of infallibility itself in the 
 matter leaves me still in uncertainty and danger. I 
 can run no risk whatever where the stake is so fearful, 
 because eternal. God is love ; and the first conclu- 
 sion is, He must and has done something to help me. 
 And, furthermore, it must be that in helping me He 
 will do so effectually, /. ^., He will make no mistake. 
 He is not going to attempt to help me, and cheat me 
 by leaving me worse off than before. For He is 
 perfect and knows what the real help will be, and all- 
 powerful and able therefore to effect it, or He is not 
 
28 CainoCicity, Piotestaniism and Roma?nsm. 
 
 God at all. Being God, then, and infinite Love, He 
 must, can and has helped me, it may not be to al! 
 truth, but to such truth at any rate as is essential to 
 my case, and has somehow helped me effectually to 
 this truth. 
 
 Is there any flaw in this first link "i I cannot see 
 any ; and I seem to hear you say, " No ; go on. " 
 
 Very well^the next point is kow has He helped 
 me ? Gentlemen, there are only three ways possible 
 and only three ways thinkable. One is so to place 
 me that I can help myself in this matter of supernatu 
 ral truth ; the second is to send some one else to 
 help me ; the third is to help me Himself. If He has 
 not adopted the first, then He must have chosen one 
 of the other two. If He has not chosen the second, 
 then there is no escape for me ; for He must have 
 adopted the third. 
 
 First : He could take me temporarily out of this 
 Temple of Nature, give me such new senses as would 
 put me en rapport with the invisible facts and phenom- 
 ena of grace and the supernatural, leave me to ascer- 
 tain of myself their laws just as I ascertain here the 
 laws of nature ; and then, when I am equipped with 
 tlie knowledge of the truth, put me back into this 
 Temple and leave me here to live aright and to die 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. 29 
 
 aright. But I know He has not done this. Therefore 
 He must have adopted one of the two other only 
 thinkable ways. If, then, He has not enabled me to 
 help myself, He must, secondly, have sent some one 
 else to help me ; or, thirdly, He must have helped 
 me by breaking through the dome of N ature, coming 
 in to me Himself, and so placing Himself en rapport 
 with me as to communicate with me intelligibly to 
 myself. 
 
 Here, then, our pathway forks. And here, at this 
 point, you are face to face with your first great ques- 
 tion. How will you decide it ? Which way will you 
 take as you go on t To the left or straight ahead ? 
 If you decide that H^ sent some one else, you are a 
 Unitarian. If you decide that He came Himself, you 
 are a Trinitarian. 
 
 Indeed, there are independent reasons why God 
 must be Triune. For the Divine Being must neces- 
 sarily have the highest object of blissful contempla- 
 tion, the highest means of happiness, or He would 
 not be supremely happy. But God is Himself the 
 highest of Beings. All creation is, of course, inferior 
 to Him, and cannot therefore in itself furnish Him 
 with siich highest and most blissful contemplation. 
 Such highest object of blissful contenr.plation must 
 
3© Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 therefore be found, no otherwhere than in the arche 
 typal structure Itself of God. Now an object of con- 
 templation must be different from, it must be, in some 
 sense, external to that which contemplates it. But 
 how can there be in the i?iternal structure of God an 
 external object of contemplation ? Only if God has 
 existed from all past eternity in a Tri-unity, whereby 
 the Father can behold His own blissful perfections as 
 existing in and reflected from the Son, Who is Person- 
 ally, though not in Substance, external to Himself; 
 and the Son, those same objects of blissful contempla- 
 tion reflected in the Holy Ghost ; and the Holy Ghost 
 can gaze upon His own perfections as they reside in 
 the Father. The Trinity of Persons in the One Sub- 
 stance of God is what alone enables the Divine Be- 
 ing to find within Himself a divine Sabbath of active 
 self-contemplation in supremest bliss from all past 
 eternity; and this, because that which causes the 
 consummation of bliss, viz. : the infinite perfection 
 of love, joy and peace, is found within God, and not 
 within creation, and mutually reflected within Him 
 from Eternal Person to Eternal Person. 
 
 There are those who assert that it is impossible 
 for a human mind C}- any strength to believe in the 
 Tri-unity of God. But Plato, who possessed one of the 
 
Protestantism and Romanism, 31 
 
 profoundest, if not the profoundest uninspired mind 
 that ever existed, did not think thus. He declaieU 
 that the more deeply one thought of the Divine Being 
 the more one found it impossible to conceive of Him 
 as a strict Unit. It were certainly modest in us all 
 to think just as deeply as did Plato, before we assert 
 that the Tri-unity of God is something that a though 1-=^ 
 ful man cannot hold. 
 
 Plato argues that, as creation has not had an 
 eternal existence in the past, as there must, therefore, 
 have been a time when God alone existed, it is im- 
 possible for the human mind, in contemplating the 
 Divine Being as existing prior to and without any 
 creation, to conceive of Him as a strict Unit. For 
 if He had been a simple Unit, there having been, be- 
 fore creation, nothing external to such unit to awaken 
 its attention as an object of contemplation, such unit 
 could never have aroused out of its inactivity and 
 non-self- consciousness to have produced creation at 
 all. Therefore there must have been from all past 
 eternity within God's Archetypal Structure Itself, in 
 some way, exterior objects of Divine Contemplation \ 
 and the human mind is forced to admit the necessity 
 of a species of Plurality within the Unity of God. 
 
 It is most remarkable, that Plato asserts that this 
 
32 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 Plurality must be a I'riplicity. The names which he 
 gives to the three Principles are singularly in harmony 
 with those which were subsequently fully revealed in 
 Holy Scripture. To the first of his conceptions he 
 applies the name 'AyaTr??, which means Love ; to the 
 second he gives the name Novf, which means Intelli- 
 gence ; and to the third the title of life, "ivxh. 
 
 However, I am not here addressing Unitarians. 
 I am addressing those whose God is not the god 
 of Mohammed. It was long since decided, and ad- 
 mirably set forth by the great French Dominican, 
 that there are only three possible religions, viz.: one, 
 whose statement is, " Man is God ;" a second, whose 
 statement is, "God is God;" and a third, whose 
 statement is, "God is Man." The first is the religion 
 of Polytheism ; the second is the religion of Moham- 
 medanism ; the third is Christianity. Christianity 
 declares that God has become Man, and so communi- 
 cates with us directly. Mohammedanism says, this 
 is impossible ; God remains and is only God, and His 
 communication with man is only through a prophet — 
 through a second cause, through a creature. This 
 also is the fundamental statement of Unitarianism ; 
 therefore Unitarianism is a European variety of the 
 second form of religion, or Mohammedanism, agree 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. 33 
 
 ingwith it in its mighty fundamental statement, " God 
 is God," but simply varying that mighty statement 
 into "Allah il Allah, and Christ is His prophet." 
 But I am addressing, I say, those whose God is the 
 God of St. John, of St. Augustine, of Luther, of Cran- 
 mer and of Wesley. It is unnecessary, therefore, for 
 me to enter fully into the question whether, in help- 
 ing us, God sent some one else. It is only necessary 
 to say that if He sent some one else, then He has 
 made the mistake of attempting to help us out of our 
 conjectures, and failing to do so. For it is a patent 
 fact that the Unitarians, acting on this supposition, 
 are left conjecturing as to what is Truth ? and what is 
 God? and what are His ways? and what is Christ? as 
 badly as ever. Semi Arians against the Arians, Arians 
 against the Socinians, Channing against Parker, Bel- 
 lows against Frothingham. As, therefore, on the theory 
 that some one else was sent, we are plunged into the 
 absurdity of supposing that an all-powerful and all- 
 perfect God of Love tried and failed to help us, that a 
 perfect God is, therefore, imperfect, and a loving God 
 either incompetent or unloving, we are forced to reject 
 the second of the three ways of helping us. 
 
 There is but one more thinkable way. He must, 
 then, have adopted that. There is no escape for us ; 
 0* 
 
34 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 we must move straight along our path with the settled 
 and permanent conclusion that God broke through 
 the dome of Nature and came in among us Himself. 
 
 I am not only driven helplessly to this conclusion, 
 gentlemen, by logic, by the absolute necessities of my 
 case, and by the attributes of God, but I am confirmed 
 in it, moreover, by the fact that here before me, in 
 this very Temple of Nature, there is an extraordinary 
 Book, which, whatever I may say of it, I know as a 
 historic fact, foretold, long before the extraordinary 
 Being came Whom they call the God-man, that, sooner 
 or later, no less than God should come, as the desire 
 of all nations, and be " with us," that He should be 
 born of a virgin, and that His name should be called 
 Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Ever- 
 lasting Father, The Prince of Peace. 
 
 It must be God, too, for I must have nothing less 
 than certainty as to supernatural truth and the laws 
 of His grace. And certainty demands infallibility. 
 All creatures, even the highest, are finite ; they fall 
 short of omniscience itself. For if the being be less 
 than omniscient he may innocently lead me astray 
 through ignorance. I am driven helplessly to admit, 
 then, that God has come to help us. 
 
 I pass on, then ; but, lo, I come suddenly to a spot 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. 35 
 
 where the path forks again. We must pause again. 
 Gentlemen, you are brought here face to face with 
 your second great question. For God, having once 
 come in a visible form, having so come that He can 
 be touched by us, and can speak to us audibly through 
 an organic form of human matter, one of two things 
 must have happened subsequently. There are only 
 two things possible to have happened ; only two things 
 thinkable. They are these, namely : He must either 
 have so gone away again as not afterward to be visi- 
 ble, tangible and audible through a one organic form 
 of humanity on earth, or He must have remained with 
 us, visible, tangible and audible through a one organic 
 form of humanity on earth. There is no tertium quid. 
 There is your second great question. If you decide 
 for the first alternative, then you are a Protestant. If 
 you decide for the second, that God has still remained, 
 and will to the end of time remain, in a one, undying, 
 ever-fresh, amazing, organic, visible, audible, tangible 
 and recognizable body of human matter, known as the 
 Body Mystical of God on earth, out into which His 
 Body Natural has without break or fissure expanded, 
 then you are a Catholic. Whether you are of the 
 Anglican, Roman or Greek part is a subsequent ques- 
 tion ; but you are a Catholic. 
 
36 Catholicity, Frotesta?itism afid Romanism. 
 
 What is the relationship, then, between Protest 
 antisra and Catholicity ? As we stand berewhere the 
 path forks a second time, shall we take off to the left 
 into theProtestant by-path, or shall we go straight 
 en? Let us see. 
 
 " Oh, yes," says Protestantism ; " God came 1,800 
 years ago to place Himself physically en rapport with 
 us ; He stayed thirty-three years ; and then He went 
 away, and is no longer on earthy visible and tangible 
 in any one organic speaking body of human matter. 
 But when He thus went away He left behind Him, for 
 our certamty in matters of doctrinal truth, grace and 
 salvation, a Book. Behold this, our sublime Bible. 
 It is with this that we are en rapport since He left ; 
 and then He sends His influence from heaven, which 
 in some recondite, spiritual and transcendental sense, 
 helps each of us to find the truth as we apply ourselves 
 to this. His precious legacy." 
 
 Certainly, I reply, this is an intelligible theory, 
 and commands my respect. But I am to decide which 
 way I am to go. Permit me to ask of you, then, What 
 is the supernatural truth touching punishment here- 
 after t " Some of us who accept the ' Bible only,' 
 claim that it is eternal, and others hold that it is not." 
 Touching the necessity of Baptism and the Sacraments 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. 37 
 
 generally ? " Some of us hold that they are necessary, 
 and others that they are quite unnecessary." Touch- 
 ing the number of the Sacraments ? * Well, some of 
 us claim that they are ordinances only, and not Sac- 
 raments at all ; so that some claim that out of the 
 seven there are only two, and others that there are 
 none at all." Touching the atoning Cross ? " Some 
 of us claim that Its effect was universal ; others that 
 Its effect was particular only." But, touching Its 
 necessity for salvation at all ? '* Well, some of us that 
 accept the ' Bible only ' claim that It is necessary, and 
 others that It is not." Touching the necessity of a 
 good life ? " Well, there are some that claim it to be 
 necessary to have wrought at least one hour, from the 
 eleventh to the twelfth, for the penny of eternal life ; 
 others that the work of salvation is all completed if 
 one, as the clock of life is striking twelve, utters the 
 all-powerful and magical sentence ' I apprehend the 
 Cross.' " Touching hereafter ? " Some claim that 
 there is only an eternal Heaven and an eternal Hell ; 
 others that besides these there is an intermediate tern 
 poral state of waiting ; and still others, that there is 
 no Hell at all." Touching Satan ? " Some of us think 
 there is such a being, others deny it." Touching God 
 Himself ? " Well, we are not agreed j some of us that 
 
38 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 accept the * Bible only ' hold that God is a Trinity ; 
 others, that The Father alone is God,' " and so on to 
 the end of the chapter. 
 
 But if God came and thus went away and left only 
 a Book and a vague influence, I do not see, O Prot- 
 estantism, that we are very much helped. I do not 
 see that we are not all still drowning in an ocean of 
 mere conjecture as to what that Book says. I do not 
 see that we are not all left still conjecturing touching 
 the mightiest and most vastly important facts, phe- 
 nomena and laws of grace and salvation ; — God, who 
 He is ; man, and what his state is ; hereafter ; here, 
 and the supernatural generally. Nay, your Book, 
 with which alone you say you have been left, hath 
 only stimulated conjecture concerning these things a 
 thousand-fold. Before, we knew it was all guesswork \ 
 now you are all busy at guesswork, and do not realize 
 it. This is the worst of all. For before, we faced 
 conjecture, and knew what we faced — it was conjee, 
 ture, unreliable, unverifiable. Now you face mere con 
 jecture, and are all and severally cheating your 
 selves into thinking, each his own is not conjecture 
 at all. 
 
 By your theor)', O Protestantism, a loving God 
 flew to a world that was drowning in an ocean of con- 
 
I'rotestantism and Romanism. 39 
 
 jecture, gave it a great hope of rescue, and then fled, 
 leaving that behind Him which only hurled them back 
 into a vaster, blacker and more tempestuous ocean of 
 conjecture than ever. By your theory, O Protestant- 
 ism, a loving God has done Satan's work ! By your 
 theory an omnipotent God has risen from His Throne 
 to strive to do a work, and could not ! By your the- 
 ory an allwise and perfect God has devised and exe- 
 cuted a plan, which has miserably failed amid the 
 laughter of Hell ! Your recondite, spiritual, trans- 
 cendental, vague influence from Heaven, to guide you 
 into certain Truth — what has come of it ? 
 
 I love you, O my relatives ! I respect your sacred 
 memories, O my forefathers ! but your Protestant by- 
 path, and the dark and inextricable swamps into which 
 it leads — it is no way for me to tread. I must bid 
 you farewell and go on to the uplands of Truth. Ven- 
 erable is the past, but venerable are not its errors 
 They tell us that mediaevalism is dead beyond resur- 
 rection. So it is. But the sixteenth century is just 
 as dead, too. Begone, sheeted and stinking corpse ! 
 The nineteenth century hath come. We will live with 
 the living, and not in tombs. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have led you up to the presence of 
 your second great question. It was this : God having 
 
40 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 come in a visible form, must have done one of two 
 only things : either have departed or remained ; and 
 remained, too, not in the vague, spiritual, transcen- 
 dental sense of a mere impalpable influence — for that, 
 we see, is practically to have departed — but remained 
 in a real, tangible, visible and organic form, through 
 which He can and does speak audibly to the world. 
 These are the only thinkable alternatives. If He de- 
 parted and left a book only, then we are Protestants. 
 If He remained, " God with us," then we are Catholics. 
 But we cannot adopt this position that He departed 
 bodily without being driven by logic to deny our fun- 
 damental statement that God is a perfect, all-powerful 
 and loving God ; without being driven to the position 
 that He is a God who strove to do what He could not ; 
 a God devising a plan that failed ; a God wishing to 
 help us, but powerless ; a loving God giving us a hope 
 but cheating us, and leaving us worse off than before. 
 We are driven helplessly, then, on to the other alterna- 
 tive, namely, that having come in a speaking body of 
 human matter, He remains in a speaking body, an 
 organic form of human matter. And we find this one 
 organic form, the human part of the God-man to-day 
 on earth, in His Body Mystical, out into which His 
 Body Natural of Palestine has, without break or fis- 
 
Protestantism and Romanism. 41 
 
 sure, gradually expanded over the earth, as human 
 beings, plucked like branches from the root of the 
 first Adam, have, out of all generations, been grafted 
 into unity with It by Baptism, and as His one Body 
 and Blood, passing through the Eucharist equally 
 into all the branches, have incorporated them into 
 Himself. 
 
 He is still the God-man on earth. He perpetually 
 incarnates Himself. He is still '*with us," taking 
 human nature to Himself, and so abiding in a one 
 visible Form of matter. That Form is the Catholic 
 Church. It is not a mere society of men ; it is the 
 one organic Body Mystical of Christ. By It and 
 through It, and Its marvelous arms and limbs. He 
 literally touches us that His graces may flow through 
 His touch. In It as Its living soul, and through It, 
 He speaks to us audibly, that we may be certified we 
 have the truth. 
 
 We are not cheated. We still have, by logic, by 
 the necessities of our case, by the sanction of the 
 Divine attributes, and in actual, historic and present 
 existence, the Omniscient God on earth, remaining 
 among us, according to the promise He made at a 
 moment when, otherwise, we would have thought He 
 was departing — "Lo, I am with you always, even unto 
 
42 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 the end of the world." In Him, in this God embodied 
 in the one Church, in this God continuously visible 
 and audible, therefore, behold, gentlemen, the Foun- 
 tain of infallibility which you seek ; for God Himself 
 cannot err nor falsify. And as the one Holy Catho- 
 lic Church in all Its parts. His own Body, raises Its 
 voice and chants in unison round and round the world, 
 in unbroken strain, following the tireless sun through 
 the centuries and the millenniums, the solemn Catho- 
 lic Creed of Nice, Constantinople, and Athanasius, 
 listen : it is the voice of God on ■ earth, Who chanted 
 the great prophetic psalm, "Deus, Deus," from the 
 Cross, chanting aloud that all the peoples in all time 
 may hear, and be without excuse, the unaltering irre 
 formable Truth. 
 
SECOND CONFERENCE. 
 
 Catholicity, a Life and an Organizer; Protestantism, 
 A Disorganizer and a Death. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 St. Thomas of Aquinas defines Life as a spontane- 
 ous motion. It is something more than this. It is ^ 
 mysterious principle pervading the universe, whicL 
 possesses a centralizing force. It organizes and hai 
 monizes. It sustains in existence the organic form 
 which it has constructed. It is the mother of order 
 and beauty. It builds the crystalline forms with their 
 glittering angles j it works out for itself, and then pro- 
 duces the rustic tracery of the tree ; it frames and 
 holds together the bird, the beast and man ; it con- 
 structs the family, the State, the Church ; its fountain 
 is God, and its sanction is, " Thou shalt do no mur- 
 der." On the other hand, Death is a disorganizer. 
 It is a despoiler of beauty. On its anvil it smites the 
 diamond into powder ; it lays the tree low ; it slays 
 bird and beast and man ; it sends hate, divorce and 
 orphanage into the family, feuds into the State, schism 
 into the Church ; its fountain is in hell, and its fiat is : 
 
44 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romamsm, 
 
 " That which is, shall not be ; that which is gathering 
 into unity, shall be scattered into severalty ; that 
 which is organizing, shall be decomposed." Life, 
 then, is the love of beauty and of order; Death their 
 foe and destroyer. 
 
 It is my privilege, gentlemen, at this conference to 
 present Catholicity to you as a Life and as an Organi- 
 zer j and it will follow that the fountain whence She 
 springs is God, and not Satan. 
 
 What was it that this life, issuing from the bosom 
 of God, went forth to organize and to compact ? What 
 was it that was to be gathered together out of its 
 severalty into unity? It was the human race ; which, 
 when it fell away from God, went into pieces, and lay 
 upon earth disintegrated and dying. It fell from Him 
 Who was not only the Life, but Who was also Love. 
 Cut off from Charity, therefore, selfishness, hates, en- 
 vies and angers were the mutually repellant force in 
 its bosom, sundering its individuals apart from each 
 other, its families and its States. 
 
 The life, which we call Catholicity, goes forth into 
 these ruins as an organizing and integrating force to 
 build a structure of order and beauty. What was its 
 cohesive operation as it thus went forth ; and what 
 ^he marvelous structure it erects and sustains t It 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism, 45 
 
 formed an organism in which are four great couplings 
 or unifications. The first of these unifications had, 
 indeed, existed in the eternity of the past — namely, 
 the unity of the Father and the Son in the archetypal, 
 interior structure of God ; the second and the third of 
 the great couplings take place during the scene of 
 time present ; in order to carry the fourth, final and 
 permanent unity, namely, of human beings with Christ, 
 through the eternity of the future. Go back with me, 
 then, to the first, and behold this living force of Catho- 
 licity going forth to its great integrating, organizing 
 and centralizing work among the poor fragments with 
 which it has to deal. Behold the unifications which 
 it successively effects as it proceeds in its benign work. 
 I St. From all past eternity the Father and the Son 
 in God have been of One Substance. If the Father 
 is God, the Son is God of God ; if the Father is Light, 
 the Son is Light out of Light ; and as the Father is 
 liife, the Son is Life of Life : /. e. life flows out of the 
 Father, Who is its fountain in God, and owing to the 
 unity between the Father and the Son so fills the Son 
 that the Son can come to the earth with the great 
 statement, " I am the Life." Here, then, we have 
 the first unification ; in God from all past eternity the 
 Father and the Son are One. It is in the Trinity and 
 
46 Catholicity, Protestantism and JRomanism. 
 
 the entire unity of Its Persons that we have the hope 
 and the prophecy of human reintegration. For, 
 secondly, God the Son descended into the Temple of 
 Nature, took manhood to Himself in the womb of the 
 Virgin, was born and stood among us the God -man. 
 Here we have the second great unification effected ; 
 Christ's Manhood, namely, so entirely one with His 
 Godhead, that there was no obstruction to hinder the 
 life, which from all past eternity He had from the 
 Father, from flowing from His Godhead into and 
 filling His Manhood. 
 
 3d. The third great unity in the successive steps 
 was the oneness between Christ's Man's Nature and 
 His Church ; a union, as we saw at our last confer- 
 ence, without break or fissure between them. In- 
 deed, Scripture exhausts all metaphor in the effort to 
 make us realize the consummate integrity of this third 
 great unification. The oneness of man and wife, 
 though they be declared by God to be one only flesh, 
 is not sufficient. The oneness of the head and human 
 body, though ''from the head all the body is by joints 
 and bands knit together," is not sufficient. If we are 
 the branches, He is not the stock, but the whole vine. 
 Indeed, the Church is so one with Him that it is 
 called by His name, Jesus Christ. Owing, therefore^ 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 47 
 
 to the unity between the Man's Nature of Christ and 
 His Church, the life which had flowed from His God- 
 head into His Body Natural now flows out from the 
 latter and fills His Church. 
 
 4th. There is but one more unification, the fourth, 
 which completes the vast constructive work. In it 
 the poor broken fragments are reintegrated into this 
 structure, organized, harmonized and sustained: 
 namely, the unity effected by the Holy Ghost in Bap- 
 tism between each separated individual of the race 
 and this one Catholic Church. The life therefore that 
 is in the Church, now flows into the baptized man 
 owing to his unity with the Church. 
 
 Behold, then, gentlemen, the kindly, loving, recon- 
 structive force of Catholic life at its work, gathering 
 poor disintegrated humanity, one by one, through the 
 fourth unification into oneness with its one Holy 
 Catholic and Apostolic Church — which was already 
 one with the Manhood of Christ ; which Manhood was, 
 through the second unification, already one with the 
 Godhead of Christ ; which Godhead, through the first 
 unification, was always one with God the Father in 
 the eternity of the past. Behold how life, flowing with 
 a unity of purpose through these living links, binds all 
 together — Christians, Church, Christ and the Father 
 
4$ Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 Who is the Fountain of Life — into a unique and sub- 
 lime structure, and carries reintegrated humanity out 
 of time present to sustain it in God through the 
 eternity of the future. Behold, too, in all this, how 
 the one Holy Catholic Church and Its Baptismal 
 Sacrament are inseparable, indispensable and undying 
 elements in the whole grand organism of life and 
 unity. " Thou shall not commit murder," is the sanc- 
 tion of the sacredness and pricelessness of that one 
 visible Apostolic Church, and of its blessed life-giving 
 Sacraments. To slay the Godhead of Christ and the 
 Trinity and the Incarnation as do the Arians, Socinus 
 and Priestly ; to slay the Church as does Protestant- 
 ism ; to slay the Sacraments as do Simeon and Chil- 
 ling worth, is to break in upon this structure of unity, 
 and to slay God's plan of salvation. 
 
 But, gentlemen, in all this, what have I been giv- 
 ing you ? I have simply been giving you that plan of 
 salvation, that Gospel in little, that solemn Creed of 
 Nice, Constantinople and Athanasius, which the three 
 Communions, Anglican, Roman and Greek, of the 
 One Catholic Church, which the three national types 
 of Catholic man, Saxon, Latin and Oriental, hold in 
 common, and chant ceaselessly to the peoples as the 
 sun goes round the world through the centuries ; the 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism, 49 
 
 Christian Creed, which that one tripartite Holy Catho- 
 lic Church alone, too, holds. For Protestantism, 
 which is the disintegrating, destructive, disorganizing 
 and scattering element in Christianity, does not and 
 cannot hold that Creed, or proclaim it to the nations. 
 Do you ask why ? Two reasons. Following its death- 
 giving instincts, it rends that Creed apart, disintegrat- 
 ing it article from article, and then cheats the world 
 by declaring of each and every separate article, " I 
 believe it." But the Creed, like all of Catholicity's 
 works, is organic and a unit ; it is built up, a thing of 
 life like a flower ; article grows out of previous article, 
 and opens out into the following ; so that its articles 
 cannot thus be sundered from each other, or re-ar- 
 ranged, any more than a flower can be torn apart, 
 petal from petal, and sepal from stamen, and pistil 
 from ovary, and remain a flower. Though you may 
 have in your hand afterward all its parts, you have not 
 the flower. For this holy and unalterable Creed of 
 Catholicity expresses something as a whole, over and 
 abov^e the sense of its separate articles, which is the 
 very thing, the very Gospel, the very plan of salvation 
 Protestantism will not admit, hates, and with murder- 
 ous instinct would slay. It makes necessary the four 
 great unifications, and among them, as a part of the 
 3 
 
5© Catholicity y Protestantism a7id Romajiism. 
 
 plan of salvation, the one great Catholic Church in Its 
 Saxon, Oriental and Latin sides ; Its Apostolic min- 
 istry, and Its Sacrificial, Sacerdotal and Sacrainental 
 systems. 
 
 Secondly : but I hear you say. gentlemen, surely 
 Protestantism asserts that it believes in a Catholic 
 Church. True ; but what does it mean ? It means, 
 and it means avowedly, merely some vague, disinte- 
 grated nebula of all tolerably good folk, baptized and 
 unbaptized, for it includes the Quakers and others. 
 Nebula, do I say ? A nebula is something we can 
 see, at least with a telescope, and map out in its gen- 
 eral shape, however hazy. But this indiscriminate 
 muster of Protestantism retires, when we look at it, 
 into the complete indistinctness and incertitude of a 
 profound and permanent invisibility. Gentlemen, this 
 is not the organic Catholic Church of the Creed. 
 This is not to believe the Creed, but to believe some- 
 thing else of Protestantism's own invention. To be- 
 lieve the Creed, is to believe what that Creed was 
 written to mean, and what it always has meant froni 
 time immemorial. But to excogitate out of the pro- 
 found depths of ingenuity a totally new and modern 
 idea, and to cover that totally different and antago- 
 nistic idea with the garment of an ancient phrase, and 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 51 
 
 then send the new idea forth, a mere wolf in sheep's 
 clothing, is to act the part of the disingenuous, and tc 
 do the work of him whom the Saviour called •'' the 
 liar from the beginning and the father of lies." The 
 phrase " Holy Catholic Church " is a cover of definite 
 shape that will fit only one receptacle ; and it cannot 
 be made, by any manipulation, to hold under itself 
 and within its rims the innumerable suppositions of 
 Protestantism sprawling off hither and yon at their 
 own wild will. 
 
 But life is not only an organizing and uniting 
 force, it is also, as St. Thomas says, a spontaneous 
 motion. Now *' all motion," (I quote from another) 
 " bears in its very essence the idea of a starting point, 
 of a point to be reached, and of an effort to pass from 
 the one to the other." If, then, Catholicity be a life 
 and not a destroyer, if its fountain be in God and not 
 in hell, then, as such life, it must exhibit not only this 
 constructive force which I have shown, but also this 
 element of motion, and these peculiarities of motion — 
 namely, a starting point, a point to be reached, and a 
 flowing from the one to the other. 
 
 High up in far-away mountains there is a vast 
 reservoir of water. From the end of that great lake 
 its floods tumble in white cataract into a basin on a 
 
52 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 lower level, and form there a second enormous reser- 
 voir. From the opposite end of this second lake the 
 waters tumble again into a third basin on a still lower 
 level. From the opposite end of this third basin they 
 fall again into a fourth lake still further below. From 
 the lower end of this fourth sheet of water they issue in 
 innumerable radiating rills and streams over the level 
 lowlands, filling them with verdure, with beauty and 
 with fruits. You have here in these four lakes, one 
 below the other, and the luxuriant plain spread out at 
 their foot, an apt illustration of life and grace issuing 
 as a motion from God the Father, and reaching at 
 last by Mediation the lowlands of poor humanity, to 
 turn them from a desert into a garden. Life and 
 grace, which we all need in place of death and weak- 
 ness, issue from God the Father, their original Foun- 
 tain, and fall first into God the Son. They next fall 
 into the Man's Nature of Jesus Christ. From this 
 they descended on Pentecost into the great lake of the 
 Catholic Church, filling its enormous basin ; whence 
 they issue finally and flow, through the openings of 
 the Sacraments, into the many stream beds of human 
 lives, and fill the world with the flowers of sanctity 
 and the fruits of good works. God the Father is the 
 starting point of this life. God the Son, in Pli? 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 53 
 
 Catholic Church and through Its Sacraments, is the 
 mediatory receptacle, from Whom this overflowing life 
 and grace reach humanity, which is the term of all. 
 
 In our last conference I conducted you up to Jesus 
 Christ in His visible Catholic Church as its Soul and 
 Life. It was here that you found, embodied on earth, 
 Him who is Infallibility itself, because He is God. 
 It is through this. His one visible, organic Body Mys- 
 tical, inseparable from Himself, unless indeed you 
 slay the God-man now on earth, that you heard Him 
 chanting continuously the unalterable and irreform- 
 able truth. And that in which He chants aloud this 
 truth to all the nations is the Catholic Creed. 
 
 What, then, is the Creed ? What is the infallible 
 truth? In what I have said above, I repeat, I have 
 been giving you simply that Catholic Creed. P'or the 
 Creed is nothing less and nothing more than a history 
 of the course which life and grace take from stage to 
 stage, as they issue from God the Father, and, pass- 
 ing through the Godhead, and the Body Natural and 
 Mystical of the Son, reach at last, through Baptism, 
 human beings that need them. The Creed is the 
 Gospel in little ; the good news unto men ; the way 
 of salvation. For the Creed begins with : " / believe 
 in one God the Father Almighty. Maker of heaven and 
 
54 Catholicity^ Protestaiitism and Romanism. 
 
 earthy And of all things visible and invisible" It 
 begins, then, with the Father as the Fountain of aU 
 things j the Fountain, therefore, of the life and grace 
 which we need after the fall. But it is the history, 
 not of all things, but simply of the course of that 
 grace. It passes next, therefore, and announces the 
 reservoir into which life and grace first flow from the 
 Father : " And in one Lord Jesus Christ the only begot- 
 ten Son of God;" and it announces the first unifica- 
 tion ; that, namely, between Father and Son, existing 
 in the eternity of the past : " Begotten of His Father 
 before all worlds^ God of God; Light of Light; very 
 God of very God; Begotten not made ; Beingof one sub- 
 stance with the Father; By Whom all things wert 
 made. " 
 
 It then gives the next reservoir into which the life 
 and grace flow, and announces the second great unifi- 
 cation — namely, God and man in Christ — " Who for 
 us men, and for our salvation ^ came down from heaven. 
 And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin 
 Mary^ And was made man" But human nature, 
 before it could, even as it stood on earth in the person 
 of Christ, receive and be filled with the very fullness 
 of life and grace, must first undergo, even in Christ, a 
 time of probation, of temptation, of trial. There are 
 
Catholicity and Protestantisui. 55 
 
 profound reasons for this, almost if not quite beyond 
 the grasp of human ken, but which God Himself 
 displays in furtive flashes out of that sublime passage 
 beginning, '' For it became Him for Whom are all 
 things, and by Whom are all things, in bringing many 
 sons to glory, to make the Captain of their salvation 
 perfect through sufferings," and ending with, *' For in 
 that He, Himself, hath suifered, being tempted, He is 
 able to succor them that are tempted." The Creed, 
 therefore, goes on to give the process by which the 
 Man's Nature of Christ was prepared through '''suffer- 
 ings, crucifixion under Pontius Pilate^ death and burial, 
 to rise again the third day, and to ascend,^^ not astronomi- 
 cally, but to ascend in the highest moral and spiritual 
 elevation, even into the condition and lofty spiritual com- 
 panionship of the Most High, " to receive there," in that 
 moral and spiritual exaltation, " the gifts for men," 
 and, on Pentecost, to pour those gifts forth from His 
 Body Natural which had thus gained them, and fill 
 with them His Body Mystical, the Church. Hence 
 the Creed goes on to say, " /believe in the Holy Ghost, 
 the Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the 
 Father, and^^ not from the Father only, but also from 
 " the Son ; and L believe in the one Holy Catholic and 
 Apostolic Church.''^ 
 
56 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 Here we strike the third great unification — the 
 oneness, nay, the identity of the Church with the 
 Man's Nature of Christ, even as it is said, " The 
 Church, which is His Body, the fullness of Him that 
 filleth all in all ;" and as it is said again, " Ye are the 
 Body of Christ and members in particular." Let us 
 pause here a moment before we go on to the conclu- 
 sion of the Creed. 
 
 You will remember that at the close of our last 
 conference we were left forced into a certain conclu- 
 sion. We were forced by logic, by the necessities of 
 our casCj and by the attributes of God Himself, into 
 the conclusion that God, having descended visibly into 
 the Temple of Nature, having so come that He could 
 touch and be touched by us, and that He could speak 
 to us audibly through an organic form of human mat- 
 ter, must have remained with us in a one visible form 
 of human matter. This kind of remaining only, we 
 found, would be an effectual relief. The other only 
 thinkable suppositions left us worse off" than ever. 
 Besides, why should one small country, one brief gen- 
 eration, thus have the inestimable boon of His pres- 
 ence en rapport with itself, and not all nations and all 
 subsequent time as well ? Let us take up this sub- 
 ject, then, where we left it at the last conference, 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 57 
 
 particularly as it relates to the spot in the Creed at 
 which we have arrived. 
 
 We having been forced into the conclusion that 
 God must remain on earth en rapport with us, the 
 problem here is, How was He thus to remain in a one 
 organic body of human matter ; a continuous body, 
 too, that should be His own Body, still surrounding 
 His Soul and Divinity, and in unbroken unity with 
 Them ? There are many reasons why, if the first or 
 natural form of His Body had continued visible among 
 us, it would not have satisfied the requirements of our 
 case. For that first form and condition of His visible 
 Body was loca. ; it could stand on only one contracted 
 spot, while we need Him simultaneously in all nations, 
 all round the world, in a Body that shall speak to us, 
 forgive us our sins, touch us and feed us. To that 
 first condition of His visible Body, which we call the 
 Body Natural, a few thousand only could have clus- 
 tered at one time \ while we all, and all round the 
 world, need to gather simultaneously to " God with 
 us," at any time and at all times. The overwhelming 
 majority of the human race, moreover, are sons of toil, 
 and could not have traveled to Him. Besides, there 
 were something shocking in the supposition of that 
 fair ^orm upon whose bosom St. John leaned, continu* 
 3* 
 
$8 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 ing visible for centuries, descending to the wrinkled 
 brow and thin silver locks of extreme old age, and 
 lasting, undying, beyond even that, in a decrepitude ol 
 millenniums which we know nothing of. This were 
 the extreme of the unnatural. God never acts in a 
 shocking or unnatural way ; and such act were be- 
 neath the dignity of God. And yet logic, our neces- 
 sities and the attributes of God have driven us to the 
 only conclusion that God must remain on earth in His 
 one organic Body \ that He must so remain as not to 
 shock us j that He must so remain that His Body 
 shall be, however aged, yet ever fresh and youthful ; 
 ever one, yet everywhere simultaneously present 
 throughout the world. Mighty problem ! Who shall 
 solve it ? Not you, gentlemen, nor I, nor the wisest 
 philosopher that ever lived. But what is thus beyond 
 human ingenuity — what is quite impossible to men — 
 is easy to God. For there are natural laws of growth 
 and expansion, and there are supernatural laws of 
 growth and expansion. The Divine voice had said in 
 the ancient time that *' The stone cut out without 
 hands," the Human, visible Nature of Christ, should 
 ** grow and become a great mountain and fill the whole 
 earth." And the Divine ingenuity, in the fullness of 
 time, found out a way by which His Body Natural 
 
Catholicity and Frotestantistn. 59 
 
 could expand without break or fissure into His Body 
 Mystical, the Catholic Church, and fill the whole earth. 
 The Natural and the Mystical forms of His Body of 
 human matter are but two consecutive visible condi- 
 tions of that Body ; the one local, the other universal \ 
 its natural condition going up and disappearing on Oli- 
 vet, only that the Mystical condition might thencefor- 
 ward alone be visible and tangible on earth. Natural 
 bodies expand from infancy to childhood, to youth, to 
 manhood, by natural law ; God's Human Body then 
 continued ceaselessly to expand, but by supernatural 
 law. Besides, at the very time when we would have sup- 
 posed that, on Olivet, He was departing out of his con- 
 dition of visibility among us. He took occasion solemn- 
 ly to disabuse us of this error ; to disclose to us that He 
 was not ; to say to us, " Lo, I am still with you, even 
 unto the end of the world." Of course He had always 
 been with us in His impalpable omnipresence. If He 
 had meant to say that He would merely continue thus 
 to be invisibly and inaudibly with us, a mere influence, 
 He would have been uttering a needless truism. Nay, 
 it was no such truism that He was guilty of But 
 what He impressed upon us was that, as He had been 
 en rapport with us, so He would continue to be until 
 :he end. The event at Olivet was a disappearance of 
 
5o Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 the first and temporary condition of his visibility to 
 make way for the second and lasting condition. He 
 that first took our human nature, binding it to Him- 
 self in the womb of the Virgin, goes on taking our 
 human nature to Himself till the number of the elect 
 is made up. The Incarnation is a perpetual fact. 
 What is the supernatural law, then, under which His 
 own Personal Body continues to expand ? It is this : 
 human beings are baptized into Christ, according as 
 it is said, " We are members of His body, of His flesh 
 and of His bones.' " Human beings, sprouting like 
 so many separate branches from the poisoned root of 
 Adam, are plucked thence by the Holy Ghost, and, in 
 Baptism, grafted into the new tree, Christ ; our bodies 
 into His, our souls into His, our hopes, our imagina- 
 tions, our passions, our reason into His ; and so the 
 Tree enlarges ; so His Body visible expands ; so " the 
 Stone grows and becomes a great Mountain and fills 
 the whole earth ; " according as it is said, " Ye are the 
 Body of Christ and members in particular." Branch 
 after branch being thus grafted into the Vine, Christ 
 then sends forth through the Eucharist His one Body 
 and Blood into all the branches simultaneously, and 
 binds them up together into His own visible Catholic 
 Body ; according as it is said, " For we being many. 
 
Catholicity ana Protestantism. 6i 
 
 are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers 
 of that one bread." And so, since the Resurrection 
 and until the end of time, it is life that still playeth in 
 His Body on earth. The Catholic life is among us ; 
 the life that centralizes, organizes, integrates, har- 
 monizes, beautifies, builds and sustains that Body. 
 No, no ; death, that disorganizes, loosens and scat- 
 ters, hath no part in It. It hath overcome death ; 
 and, lo, " The gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against It." 
 
 Life is not only thus, gentlemen, the love of order, 
 and of organism, and of unity, but it is also the love 
 of freshness and of beauty. God Himself, who is the 
 Life, must by the laws of His Being finish His works. 
 He must adorn the meadows with flowers, the streams 
 with rocks and cascades, the lakes with green islands, 
 each billow with a white blossom atop, and the very 
 night with diamonds. And life from God could nof 
 enter into and play within the great Catholic Body, 
 without Its breaking forth also, not only into the 
 beauty of meekness and of purity and of all sanctity, 
 but also into the wonders of fair religious statuary, 
 paintings, architecture and music, the robed proces- 
 sion, the incense, the banner, the fringed canopy, the 
 brilliant altar, and the fair pomp and form. It was 
 
62 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 that whose other name is Death, the destroyer, the foe 
 of organism, of freshness and of beauty, that smote all 
 this in the sixteenth century, and tramples the flowers 
 to-day as the fecund Life sends them forth once more 
 to clothe the wide waste of desolation. 
 
 Here, then, we have, gentlemen, the infallible God 
 in a Body on earth, even in the One Holy Catholic 
 and Apostolic Church, as its Soul. And because we 
 say of a man that we see him when we look at his 
 form, though his soul be invisible, so we all around 
 the world, as they in Palestine, have the Infallible 
 God still visible, tangible and audible among us ; we 
 see Him, we touch Him with reverent hand. 
 
 Now, His Body of human matter having thus 
 grown out by supernatural law into so marvelous and 
 everywhere present a structure, it follows, if He is to 
 continue to apply Himself to the world through It, as 
 He did in Palestine through His Natural Body, that 
 It must have everywhere new and marvelous limbs 
 and organs which He may stretch forth to poor hu- 
 manity, and by which He may touch us, and teach us, 
 and pardon us,. and feed us. In Palestine, with the 
 limbs of His Body Natural, He tenderly touched the 
 white eye-balls of the blind and the silent ear chambers 
 of the deaf He laid His loving hands on children, oo 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism, 63. 
 
 the sick, on the sinner, and on bread and wine, that 
 pardon, and blessing, and transformation, and all gifts 
 and graces might flow from Him through His Body, 
 and through even His garments, to those that were 
 touched. What, then, are the new and marvelous 
 limbs of this His marvelous supernatural Body ? They 
 are the Catholic, life-giving, grace- conferring Sacra- 
 ments and Ministry. These are but limbs of His 
 Personal Body Mystical, which He stretches forth 
 to us, by which He touches us, and conveys to us 
 His graces all around the world. 
 
 A hand and arm separated from a living human 
 body is but a piece of powerless clay. But slip the arm 
 into its socket in the living body, and the soul within, 
 using that poor piece of clay, performs with it its 
 own mighty deeds. So a man separated from Christ's 
 Body Mystical — a man considered merely in himself 
 alone — is the very type of powerlessness. But when 
 set in a socket of Christ's Mystical Body as a Priest 
 or a Bishop, the God within that Body, using the poor 
 frame of clay as His own arm and hand, performs with 
 it His divine and mighty deeds among us. pardons in 
 the Sacrament of Penitence, transforms bread and 
 wine at the Altar, blesses, regenerates in Baptism, 
 anoints with the Holy Ghost in Confirmation, makes 
 
64 Catholicity^ Frotesta7itism and Romanism. 
 
 of twain one flesh, confers the grace of Orders through 
 His touch, and either raises the sick from death or 
 sends the soul healed into eternity. The Sacraments 
 and the Ministry are His limbs with which He touches 
 us. Tactual succession t Why of course '* God is with 
 us " in a Body, and literally touches us. When His 
 arm and hand, a Priest, baptises an infant, it is not a 
 man that is baptising, or mere water that we are look- 
 ing at ; we are looking at Christ's own arm and hand 
 stretched forth and visibly taking our dear one and 
 grafting it into Himself; at the holy Altar we see in 
 the human Priest God's visible hand touch and bless 
 the bread before our eyes and convey it to us ; when 
 one is confirmed or ordained to the Priesthood we are 
 literally beholding Christ stretching forth His marvel- 
 ous hand, a Bishop, and conveying the Holy Ghost 
 either to the work of the ordinary Christian or to the 
 work of the Priesthood. And it is He that at last 
 takes our poor soulless body and, in the requieni, lays 
 it tenderly away till He shall summon it at the resur- 
 rection. Beware ; he that hath eyes to see let him 
 see. The quickening touch of God's Body on earth ? 
 Ah, gentlemen, as true are the words of Manning, as 
 they are consummately beautiful : " When the Wis- 
 dom of God came into the world, He laid His hands 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 65 
 
 jpon a multitude of things ; upon the sick, the afflicted, 
 the hungry, the dying; upon little children, upon the 
 bread He blessed and brake in the wilderness ; upon 
 sorrow and upon pain ; and, lastly. He laid them upon 
 the Cross j and wherever He laid His hands He left a 
 sweetness and a fragrance which wisdom can perceive 
 and wisdom alone can know." Look, gentlemen, at 
 your Protestantism. O Protestantism, in thine un- 
 wisdom thou wilt drag the world, and even the little 
 ones of thy bosom, away from the touch of Christ. 
 
 Here, then, stands the Catholic Church with con- 
 tinuous life from the first ; here It stands all round 
 the world. In It is God, for It is His personal Body ; 
 through It He applies Himself by Ministry and Sacra- 
 ments to poor humanity ; to It He made the solemn 
 promise that He would guide It, when It spoke as a 
 unit, into all truth ; not that It could possibly speak 
 error any more than could His Body Natural '"n 
 Palestine, It being the organ of His Soul and Divin- 
 ity ; but He made the solemn promise in kindly 
 and descending consideration to our weakness. If 
 He promised to guide It, when It spoke as a unit, 
 into all truth, how can any one suppose it to be falli- 
 Dle, and liable to lead us into error, without charging 
 Christ with breaking His promise, and so not being 
 
66 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 God at all ? Thus it is always that the Protestant 
 denial of the infallibility of the Catholic Church is a 
 first fatal step in that inevitable logical descent, which 
 ends in denying the Godhead of Christ and setting 
 up Unitarianism with its murder of the Atonement in 
 the world. 
 
 What, then, has the Catholic Church, as a unit, 
 spoken ? What is the infallible Truth ? It is the 
 Creed which I have given you. This is all that It has 
 formally announced by Its six general Councils. This 
 is the antagonist of Protestantism, since life is always 
 the antagonist of death. But, besides the formal 
 statements of the Creed, there are other things which 
 we know to be true also ; not because the whole 
 Church Catholic hath formulated them in general 
 Council and accepted them as thus formulated, but 
 because the Church's documentary voice has always, 
 and in all Its three parts, everywhere declared them, 
 and would have thrown them into formulas had it been 
 necessary; viz., the Sacerdotal and Sacramental 
 systems, the Apostolic succession, Priestly absolution, 
 the real objective presence of Christ in the Eucharist, 
 Baptismal regeneration. Prayers for the dead, and 
 lights, incense, vestments, adoration and song as the 
 five essentials of Christian worship. Of these all; 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 67 
 
 every part of the Catholic Church, ancient, mediaeval 
 and modern, Latin, Saxon and Oriental, Anglican, 
 Roman and Greek, have held no doubt, but have con- 
 tinuously and consentingly asserted them in ritual 
 and official documents. The points on which the 
 Anglican, Greek and Roman Communions differ are 
 points over and above these ; points upon which the 
 whole Church has not yet spoken. 
 
 Let us return and go on with the Creed. After 
 making its great announcement, " / believe in the one 
 Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church'' it proceeds to 
 announce the fourth and final great unification in the 
 reconstructing work that Life is effecting — namely, " / 
 acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.'"' In 
 this Baptism each individual is brought into unity with 
 the reservoir of grace. And then comes the grand 
 close. For, of course, there follows from the internal 
 life-action of this great organic Catholic Structure; 
 • * The communion of all the saints ' ' within It. Further- 
 more, as death is only by sin, there follows from the 
 cure of sin the cure of death. The Creed's next arti- 
 cle is, therefore, " / look for the resurrection of the 
 dead'' What, finally, is the end and purport of all 
 this flow of grace and life, and of all these four unifi- 
 cations ? What is the final result of aP this Integra- 
 
68 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Roma7itsm. 
 
 ting, organizing, centralizing, harmonizing and sus^ 
 tain-ing force of Catholic life as it goes forth from God 
 to broken humanity? It is salvation. Therefore the 
 Creed rounds out and completes its history with the 
 final statement, ^^ And the life everlasting in the uorld to 
 come, Amefir Thus is the Creed a consecutive history 
 of Life as a motion, of Life as a redintegrator, organiz- 
 er, harmonizer and sustainer — of Catholic Life, the foe 
 of death, with which the race was struck at the Fall. 
 
 In the wonderful land of the West there are two 
 processes going on simultaneously, the one on the 
 lowlands, the other on the uplands. In the serene 
 and sunny valleys of Sonoma and Suisun, of Santa 
 Clara, Los Angeles and Sacramento, those paradises 
 on earth, the vine dresser, the florist and the agricul- 
 turist ply their peaceful, kindly crafts : healing all 
 abrasions in the soil, terracing rugged slopes, gather- 
 ing out unsightly stones, and covering everywhere with 
 verdure and billowy beauty. But high up on the 
 sides of the Sierra there is a different work and a dif- 
 ferent scene. There, it is the miner that has left his 
 record. With his sluice-heads and the tremendous im- 
 pact of their out-bounding water-spouts he has turned 
 up the mountain sides for miles ; turf and flower and 
 rounded mound fly to pieces before him ; he strips 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 69 
 
 away the soil from the land j he turns the streams 
 from their own sweet ways of mystery ; he disem- 
 bowels the hills ; he decomposes them, throwing up 
 great mounds of boulders, and spreading wide ex- 
 panses of sand in his exploiture of the gold. And 
 he has left behind him, wherever he has trodden, one 
 vast, broken, verdureless scene of desolation and 
 death, which it will take kindly nature centuries to 
 heal, to cure and to cover. One cannot help standing 
 in admiration before this daring and this power of 
 our human nature. Its work on the slopes of the 
 Sierra is, indeed, a mighty work. But, gentlemen, it 
 is a ghastly work. 
 
 The instinct of Protestantism is the instinct, alas, 
 of disruption, disintegration and death. Leaping up- 
 on Jesus Christ, it hath rent His Body Mystical, the 
 Church, apart from His Body Natural of Palestine, 
 and sent Him, with His Body Natural, into a far-away 
 astronomic heaven. Leaping, then, upon the Body 
 Mystical, the Catholic and Apostolic Church on earth, 
 it hath disconnected Its outward and visible from Its 
 inward part ; and, while it lauds its disembodied 
 " Church invisible and spiritual," buries the dead visi- 
 ble part as some offensive thing, fit only to be put out 
 of sight. Leaping upon Christendom, it lacerates u 
 
7© Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 into numerous fighting sects, and, alas, glories in its 
 disorganizing work, as producing a beautiful and ac- 
 tively writhing variety. Leaping upon the rounded 
 perfect number of the seven Sacraments, it slays five 
 outright ; and, instantly springing upon each of the 
 other two, it tears its soul from its body; Baptism is 
 left without the divine regenerating force of life, the 
 Eucharist is despoiled of its tremendous, adorable 
 PYeight, and is left a mere natural and lifeless piece 
 of bread and a memory of the natural man. Leaping 
 upon man as an immortal being, it disjoins body from 
 soul, and, ignoring the former, appeals only to the 
 latter with, "Save your soul; oh, save your soul." 
 But, O Jesus, Thou didst tell us to fear him who is 
 able to destroy both body and soul in hell. Leaping 
 upon man as a worshiping being, it sunders body from 
 soul, and forbids the worship of the body — no fasting, 
 no reverent bending of the head on entering God's 
 presence in God's House, or at the Sacred Names, as 
 little kneeling and as little standing as possible. But, 
 O Jesus, Thou hast taught us that the body is a crea- 
 ture of God as well as the soul ; and Thou hast taught 
 us to worship the Lord our God ; and to pray that 
 " both our hearts and bodies may be directed, sancti- 
 fied, and governed in the ways of this Thy law, and in 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 71 
 
 the works of this Thy commandment." O Jesus, 
 rhou hast taught us, too, that we are to worship Thee 
 in spirit and in truth. And how can we worship Thee 
 in truth if our body play not with our spirit in its 
 changing moods of glorious praise, of lowly humility 
 and of reverent adoration ; how can we worship Thee 
 in truth if our body belie the moods of the spirit 1 O 
 Jesus, Thou hast taught us, too, that our body ii 
 grafted into Thine ; that it is precious to Thee, too, 
 as it is to the very instincts Thou hast planted in us ; 
 and that Thou wilt rescue it from death. And Thou 
 hast taught us to pray, ^* that, through Thy most mighty 
 protection, we may be preserved both here and ever in 
 body and in soul." Nay, cries Protestantism, we have 
 decomposed the man, and the body is dead as a wor 
 shiper. Not satisfied with slaying the Body Mystical, 
 it has cut the Church asunder, not only longitudi- 
 nally, but also transversely. For it has sundered 
 Church Militant here from Church Expectant and 
 Triumphant there, hurling the beloved departed so 
 far away, that the gulf between the living and the 
 dead is bridgeless, that all communication is gone, 
 and that neither can give the other the charity of its 
 prayers. O God upon Thy Throne, must not even 
 Thine heart have been filled with amazement as, to 
 
72 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 Thy listening ear, the voice of Thy needy children's 
 prayers for each other died away into silence ! It 
 decomposes the organic Christian Creed, and holds 
 out in its hand the poor disjecta membra of the once 
 fair flower, that the world may admire its death. It 
 lays hands on the ancient Apostolic three-fold Minis- 
 try, slays the Bishop and the Deacon, and, at last, leaves 
 the world without even a Priest. 
 
 While the Anglican rubrics, as all other Catholic 
 rubrics, speak of but one Priest, of but one Celebrant 
 at each Eucharist, and of but one Officiant at each 
 Morning or Evening Prayer, thereby symbolizing the 
 truth that there is but one great Priest, Jesus Christ, 
 and that it is heresy to divide Him (one Celebrant, I 
 say, who may be assisted, indeed, in epistle and gos- 
 pel, and one Officiant, who may be assisted in the 
 Lessons), it has with its disruptive force, as the foe of 
 unity, invaded our own Church, and sundered the 
 Officiant's and the Celebrant's part of the service into 
 halves, or into more numerous fragments still, and has 
 parceled them out to various Officiants, breaking up 
 even this symbol of the Oneness of Christ. While 
 the rubrics say the services shall be musically ren- 
 dered, thus securing the unity of the worship as a 
 symbol of the unity of the parish and of the Church 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 73 
 
 which worships with one voice, it has, with its instinct 
 of disruption, gone down into our congregations, disin- 
 tegrated this mode of unison in rendering the service, 
 and separated it into a broken mumble of voices. 
 
 With boisterous might it has divided religion from 
 aesthetics, and has then proceeded to deprave archi- 
 tecture and to trample ecclesiastical fine arts under 
 its feet. It has debased manners, until the "gentle- 
 man of the old school " is a phrase descriptive of a cul- 
 ture and a suavity that are well-nigh gone. It has 
 gone down beneath with its besom to sweep hell 
 away ; nay, in its Unitarian form, it has even mounted 
 to the Throne of God Himself, and has there disin- 
 tegrated and separated Father, Son and Holy Ghost 
 from each other, slain the Holy Ghost, destroyed the 
 Son, and left the Father without a Son, sterile and 
 alone upon His throne. 
 
 Behold, then, gentlemen, Catholicity, a Life issuing 
 from God ; an organizing, centralizing, harmonizing, 
 constructive and beautifying Force ! And behold, 
 too. Protestantism, the mother of uncomeliness, a dis- 
 organizing, decentralizing, disruptive and destroying 
 power ! One cannot but admire its mighf and its 
 daring. Its work on the slopes of time is indeed a 
 mighty work. But, gentlemen, it is a ghastly work. 
 4 
 
THIRD CONFERENCE. 
 
 Catholic Church, Perfect and Imperfect. Leaves 
 Room for Play of Mental Activity. Catholicity the 
 "Yea" of Christianity; Protestantism the "Nay." 
 True Cause of Protestant Reformation. Protest- 
 antism, Diversity without Unity ; Rome, Unity 
 without Diversity ; Catholicity, Unity in Diversity. 
 
 Certain attacks having been made by the pulpit 
 and the press upon the author of these Conferences, 
 subsequently to the delivery of the First and of the 
 Second, he stepped out in front of the rostrum, and 
 made the following remarks before beginning the Third 
 Conference, viz.: 
 
 I have come up to the consideration of this topic 
 not to attack a single human being living. I am, on 
 the other hand, criticising a system. The whole 
 issue is too solemn, too lofty, too vital in itself for 
 either side so far to forget itself as to lose temper. I 
 am attacking not Protestants, for I have many re- 
 spected and many dearly loved friends and near rela- 
 tives who are Protestants ; but I am attacking Pro- 
 tesiantism. I am attacking not Roman Catholics, for 
 I have loved and respected friends who are Roman 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 75 
 
 Catlkolics ; but I am attacking Roman/m. I speak, 
 gentlemen, not at my own motion, but in obedience to 
 your call. Hitherto, abstracts only of these Confer- 
 ences have appeared in the secular press. Indeed who 
 could expect that any daily paper could find space, in 
 this busy age, for six long addresses, each four solid 
 columns in length ? But it results as a fact, that the 
 public outside of this building cannot adequately as- 
 certain the ideas of this counter- Reformation. Before 
 me indeed is a great sea of heads ; but you, gentle- 
 men, are nothing in comparison with the vast public. 
 They cannot comprehend what it is that has banded 
 together the 17,400 of the nobility, gentry and clergy 
 of the "English Church Union," the 12,000 of the 
 '' Church of England Workingmen's Defense Associa- 
 tion," the 14,000 members of the " Confraternity of the 
 Blessed Sacrament," nor the thousands that signed 
 the late monster petition to the authorities in England. 
 And certainly the position of the Catholic school of 
 thought cannot properly, nor indeed at all adequately, 
 be answered, unless it is comprehended. 
 
 The Tribune^ day before yesterda)', very naturally, 
 therefore, fell into the mistake of speaking of this 
 great movement, which began more than a half century 
 ago, as a retreat toward the Roman Church ; and Mr 
 
76 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 Beecher, in his two sermons on Sunday last, virtually 
 gave the same impression. All this shows how radi- 
 cally the movement is misunderstood. 
 
 In a brief word, then, Catholics claim that Prot- 
 estantism has failed as a preservative of Christianity 
 on earth. The two main counts in the indictment 
 presented ten years ago against Protestantism were, 
 that if its premises were true, its logical conclusion 
 was not Christianit)' but infidelity ; that Theodore 
 Parker and Frothingham were the legitimate brain- 
 children of John Calvin and Martin Luther ; and that 
 it is impossible for any of the Trinitarian Protestant 
 sects to answer Parker's and Frothingham's arguments. 
 It seems amazing to me, that it should have become 
 necessary to reiterate this. I thought I had stated it 
 distinctly enough, even for prejudice to understand it. 
 Secondly, that what ought thus logically to happen 
 after three hundred years of Calvinism and Lutheran- 
 ism, has happened historically — namely, that while 
 Protestantism two or three hundred years ago held 
 great thoughtful peoples, it has failed to retain its hold 
 on those peoples ; that with rare exceptions it has to- 
 day lost both their intellect and their masses. Ten 
 years ago, with all that was said in pulpit and press, 
 these two counts in the indictment were in no one 
 
Catholicity a?td Protestantism. 77 
 
 case met and answered. But ten years have begun to 
 work a change. Robert Dale Owen, in his calmly 
 written Introduction to " The Debatable Land," ad- 
 mits them, and says the time is passed for the Prot- 
 estant ministers to close their eyes to the facts. Mr. 
 Beecher last Sunday admits, and even more fully than 
 your speaker had ever charged, that it is indeed true, 
 that lands once believing the Protestant presentment 
 of Christianity are to-day honey-combed with atheism, 
 pantheism and infidelity generally. He says that 
 skepticism is wide-spread in the pews even of the very 
 Protestant churches themselves ; that a photograph 
 of what is going on in the brains of the people as the 
 preachers preach would be curious ; that sober-faced, 
 thoughtful gentlemen sit in the pews, and listen, and 
 say in reply in their minds, "* Maybe-Maybe,' which 
 means * No.' " 
 
 Ah, then, it is beginning to be admitted at last 
 that Protestantism is effete. To say nothing of 
 Noah's ark against which, by the way, the stubborn 
 multitudes, who were shortly after drowned, protested 
 most vigorously, T am afraid Mr. Beecher is about as 
 wise in remaining in Protestantism, as I should be if 
 I insisted on sailing to Albany in a sloop, or going to 
 Boston in a stage-coach, instead of using the railroad 
 
jS Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 or steamboat. Mr. Beecher's entire sermon condenses 
 d^wn to the following statement : " Yes, Protestantism 
 has destroyed Christian belief and created infidels, 
 pantheists and atheists by the thousands. And, isn't 
 it glorious ! " Mr. Beecher, Mr. Beecher, you shouldn't 
 joke in the pulpit. 
 
 Now, this counter- Re formation of ours goes on to 
 say, " Yes, and Romanism is a failure, too ; the six- 
 teenth century burst that bubble ; and to-day Roman 
 lands also are honey-combed with infidelity." 
 
 Is Christianity a failure, then ? Why, it would be, 
 were there no other presentment of Christianity than 
 the Roman and the Protestant presentments. But 
 there is a third presentment, radically difierent both 
 from the Roman and from the Protestant. And this 
 third presentment is " Catholicity ;" an explanation 
 of which you, gentlemen, have asked for in these Con- 
 ferences. Eighteen hundred years ago this Catholic 
 presentment of Christianity went forth into Europe, 
 and, in less than four centuries, captured not only the 
 thinkers but also the masses of Europe. But in the 
 middle ages Romanism arose as a poisoned present- 
 ment of Christianity ; and afterward, in the Sixteenth 
 Century, Protestantism came on as another poisoned 
 presentment of Christianity. And it is because they 
 
Catholicity a?td Froiesta7itism. 79 
 
 are both of them poisoned presentments that the 
 thinking world has virtually rejected both. Very well, 
 what is he cure for all this? Surely Catholics were 
 grossly illogical to say, as Mr. Beecher thinks we say, 
 " Cure one failure by going back to something that 
 had previously failed." 
 
 Nay, say we, if Protestantism and Romanism have 
 both failed, let us have the Catholic Christianity once 
 more ; if it be tried for a century or two, it can do 
 again what it has already done; it can regain to 
 Christianity what Protestantism and Romanism be- 
 tween them have lost. A country enjoys the blessings 
 of a constitutional government for six or seven hun- 
 dred years. It subsequently suffers the evils of a more 
 and more absolute monarchy for a thousand years. 
 Revolt finally supervenes, and it suffers the evils of 
 anarchy for three hundred years j when at last men 
 arise declaring that they have had enough both of 
 tyranny and of anarchy, and demand the constitutional 
 government again. Mr. Beecher calls this going back 
 to Noah's Ark ; he prefers the anarchy. 
 
 In the great world to-day Early Church and Catho- 
 lic Christianity is a still small voice, it is true. But 
 now that Romanism has filled the world with its great 
 strong wind and its fire for 700 years, and Prot- 
 
So Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 estantism with its earthquakes for 325 years, pos- 
 sibly the world will listen to something that is not in 
 the wind, and not in the fire, and not in the earth 
 quake. 
 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 In our First Conference we found Catholicity 
 to be a Continent of Certainty, and Protestantism 
 an Ocean of Conjecture. In our Second, we found 
 Catholicity to be a Life and an Organizer and Prot- 
 estantism a Disorganizer and a Death. In taking 
 up for the last time the subject of Catholicity in 
 its Relationship to Protestantism, let me say that 
 I listen with respect to an objection which I am sure 
 has arisen in your minds since last we met, and which 
 I should have treated at the close of the last Confer- 
 ence, had I not feared exhausting your patience by 
 detaining you too long. 
 
 If the Catholic Church is the Body of God Who 
 is still on earth, how is it, you will ask, that It exhibits 
 so many infirmities, not only in the life, but also in 
 the religious opinions of Its members touching points 
 lying outside of the Creed ? 
 
 All God's great works are composite and intricate. 
 And the answer to this question will advance our con- 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 8 1 
 
 caption of the Church ; for, as I understand the subject 
 you have assigned to me, it is primarily "Catho- 
 licity;" and secondarily " Its Relationship, first, to 
 Protestantism, and secondly to Romanism." 
 
 In the first place, then, it is with the Church — it 
 is, that is to say, with the God-man on earth in the 
 centuries, as it was with the God-man in Palestine. 
 In His Divine element He was perfect, indefectable 
 and infinite. But in His human element He was 
 finite ; He grew in stature and in wisdom ; was often 
 wearied, soiled and hungry ; " His visage so marred 
 more than any man that many were astonied at 
 Him;" His poor frame stretched at last and out of 
 joint upon the Cross, bruised and swollen with lash- 
 ings, thorn-pierced, spear-pierced and dead. 
 
 Furthermore, it is with the Church as it is with 
 the Bible. The Bible contains not only a Divine 
 element, but also human elements ; the Bible is there- 
 fore both infinite and finite, both perfect and imper- 
 fect. Parts of It are written in imperfect Greek ; Its 
 style is sometimes involved; St. Paul's Epistle to the 
 Laodiceans is gone from It; passages are in It which 
 all agree should be out of It; one-half of the Chris- 
 tian world — more than one-half of the Catholic world 
 even — hold that the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. James' 
 4* 
 
82 Catholicity^ Protestantism a7id Romanism, 
 
 Epistle, St. Jude's, the Second and Third of St. John, 
 the Second of St. Peter, the verses from the 9th to the 
 20th in the xvith chapter of St. Mark, the statement 
 concerning the bloody sweat in St. Luke, and other 
 passages here and there, are not fully canonical. The 
 majority of quotations in the New Testament vary 
 from the Old Testament text. In St. Mark, the Mag- 
 dalen came to the sepulchre at the rising of the sun ; 
 but, according to St. John, it was still dark when she 
 came and found the tomb empty. In short, the Bible 
 goes down through the ages bearing the Divine ele- 
 ment unharmed within It, but showing at the same 
 lime the unsightly bruises and the dark stains of Its 
 human elements with which the Divine is inseparably 
 bound up. The Bible has 925,877 words ; and yet 
 while that band of words is organized into the one, 
 perfect, outward body expressive of the infallible 
 message of heaven, each word, in itself considered, is 
 a poor finite word, and each sentence, in itself con 
 sidered, is liable to imperfections and fallibility. 
 
 So also the Church is at the same time infinite 
 and finite, divine and human. Infinite and infallible 
 because It is as a whole the one organic Body of God, 
 expressing perfectly His truth and conveying perfectly 
 His graces ; finite, because that Body is made up o' 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 83 
 
 human atoms, each of which, individually considered, 
 is fallible and progressive, and of provinces and great 
 Communions, each of which, in itself considered, is 
 liable to imperfections and error. The whole Angli- 
 can Church together, therefore, is fallible ; the whole 
 Roman Church is fallible ; the whole Greek Church is 
 fallible. The whole body of bishops is in itself alone 
 a fallible body. For it is to be remembered that God 
 did not promise to be with any part of His Churcl^, 
 however large or small, to preserve that part from 
 error when acting independently of the rest as a de- 
 finer of new truth. No, He only promised to be with 
 His whole Church and guide It into truth when It 
 acted together as a definer of new truth. However, 
 more of this when we come to Romanism. 
 
 Furthermore, with regard to these infirmities in 
 the Church. Man is often compelled to combine 
 many means to produce one end \ but God not seldom 
 brings out one single means to accomplish many dif- 
 ferent ends. And it is to be remembered that if God 
 is on earth en rapport with us, He is here not for a 
 single purpose, but for a two-fold purpose — to meet 
 our two-fold necessities : namely, not only to speak to 
 us all infallibly, but also to cure each of us individu- 
 ally. The Catholic Church is, therefore, under one 
 
84 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 aspect, the Body of God speaking the perfect truth 
 and imparting grace ; but It is also, under another 
 aspect, the human race convalescing. And that theie 
 should be pains during convalescence is not surpris- 
 ing, nay, it is inevitable. 
 
 A word or two more touching differences of 
 opinion in the Church on points lying outside of the 
 Creed and of those verities mentioned in the last 
 Conference. Suppose God, having defined through 
 the Church, the essentials of truth, should go on con- 
 stantly defining new truth on subordinate points as 
 they arise. Should He thus do everything for the 
 individual, should He define all religious truth infalli- 
 bly, the individual would relapse mentally into leaden 
 inertness in the matter of theology. Christ, therefore, 
 neither does nothing, nor yet does He do all. But 
 while helping the individual where otherwise he would 
 be left helpless, He leaves to each a necessity for 
 action — mental action as well as moral action. This 
 is one of our necessities, and is attended to simulta- 
 neously with His other works in the Church. How is 
 it accomplished ? Why, outside of the Creed and the 
 verities mentioned in the last Conference, outside, that 
 is to say, of the fundamentals of truth, outside of the 
 essentials of salvation, Christ leaves in the Church a 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 85 
 
 region where mental activity can reverently play, where 
 each can reason on those non-essentials, which are 
 yet not without their importance, where each can in- 
 vestigate, form theories and discuss. The essentials 
 being fixed, no eternal harm follows from temporary 
 differences on other matters. 
 
 But at the same time we are all in one Body, we 
 are all in one System, in the centre of which stands, 
 as a sun, the Creed with the essentials of truth. And 
 that sun of truth exerts throughout the system a cen- 
 tralizing force of gravity, which is felt by all the erratic 
 and conflicting theories and reasonings that are within 
 the system, which restrains them from developing and 
 straying to lengths that would be finally disastrous, 
 and which, in the long run, draws them all into suffi- 
 ciently harmonious revolutions about itself. Thus 
 Catholicity is a system which holds all up to God, 
 holds all up to The Life, holds all up to The Truth. 
 While it is, therefore, the great benign, unifying force, 
 it does not at the same time crush the individuality 
 out of any man. For it is to be borne in mind that if 
 the Body Mystical, the Church, is a creature of God 
 and therefore sacred, so, too, is each separate indi- 
 vidual a creature of God and therefore sacred. 
 Neither of these sacred creatures must crush the 
 
36 ' Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 other. If the Church crushes the individual, oi the 
 individual the Church, it is murder. If the Church 
 allows itself to be crushed by the individual, or the 
 individual allows himself to be crushed by the Church, 
 it is suicide. In Romanism the Church crushes the 
 individual. In Protestantism the individual kills the 
 Church. He who perverts from Catholicity to Ro- 
 manism commits the sin of.suicide. He lays himself 
 beneath the wheels of the car of its Juggernaut. 
 
 Now, cut off by self-action from this grand, unify- 
 ing Catholic system. Protestantism is left to fly away 
 from the " Yea " of Christianity into a condition of 
 perpetual and uncontrolled fluctuation and instability 
 touching even the very essentials of truth themselves ; 
 and finally to drop off into the utter darkness and 
 nothingness of the "Nay" of Christianity; "while 
 the Son of God, Jesus Christ, Who is preached among 
 you by us," His Priests, " is not yea and nay, but in 
 Him is only yea." 
 
 Thus the Church hath the Divine and infallible 
 element of truth and grace bound up into benignant 
 oneness with the fallible and progressive elements of 
 humanity ; and, like the Bible, displays sad evidences 
 of its human elements as well as glad evidences of its 
 Divine. 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 87 
 
 We have only this Conference in which further to 
 treat Catholicity in its relationship with Protestantism. 
 Permit me, then, to present very briefly a third aspect 
 of the two. 
 
 Before Jesus Christ came, as the human race had 
 gone into fragments through the fall, so Truth itself 
 was also in fragments. There were glittering shards 
 of Truth in all the ancient false philosophies, in the 
 Kings of China, the Vedas of India, the Zend-Avesta 
 of the Persians, and in every cultus of ancient Pagan- 
 ism. Catholicity, coming with Jesus Christ in the 
 centre of time, was the restorer of Truth as well as of 
 man. It was the gathering up and harmonious con- 
 centration of all those verities that were dispersed in 
 previous modes of worship. It was the cleanser of 
 them all. It was the supplier of the parts that were 
 lost ; and it was the restorer to the world of the 
 rounded sphere of Truth in all its integrity. 
 
 But, sixteen hundred years afterward. Protestant- 
 ism came to smite the rounded truth, and to disperse 
 its fragments broadcast once more. I cannot refrain 
 tiere from quoting, with slight variations, a striking 
 paragraph of the Count de Maistre's : '* Consider," he 
 says, " the Catholic Truth as an assemblage of posi- 
 tive dogmas ; the unity of God, the Trinity, the I near- 
 
88 Catholicity^ Protestantism a?td Romanism. 
 
 nation, the Real Presence, etc. The sixteenth-century 
 sects denied one and another and another of these 
 dogmas. But those dogmas which they retained are 
 common to Catholicity. So that Catholicity includes 
 all that the sects believe — this is incontestible. The 
 sects, be they what they may, are not religions , they 
 are negations ; that is to say, they are nothing in them- 
 selves ; for directly they affirm anything they are 
 Catholic." 
 
 And Mr. Baring-Gould, in one of the most remark- 
 able books of the century, " The Origin and Develop 
 ment of Christianity," admirably illustrates the same 
 truth. "Catholicity," he says, "proclaims the union 
 of the Divine and human natures in Christ. Arianism 
 appeared, and, abandoning more or less completely 
 the first of these two terms, reproduced the second 
 alone. What did Arianism affirm ? The humanity of 
 Christ. Catholicity equally affirms this ; it believes 
 all that Arianism believed. What did Arianism add 
 to that article of faith ? A negation of the first term, 
 i. e., nothing. Catholicity proclaims the co-existence 
 of grace and free-will — that is to say, of divine and 
 human action. Pelagianism started up and left on 
 one side the first of these terms and reproduced the 
 second alone. What did it affirm ? The existence 
 
Catholicity atid Protestantism. 89 
 
 of human liberty. Catholicity had affirmed it long 
 before and believed in all that Pelagianism held. 
 What, then, did Pelagianism add to this article of 
 belief? A negation of the first term, /. e., nothing. 
 Catholicity proclaims the double necessity of faith and 
 good works. Luther arose, and omitting the second 
 of these two points, asserted the former only. What 
 did he affirm ? The necessity of faith. Catholicity 
 had insisted on this with unchanging voice. What 
 did Luther add ? A negation of the second point, /. ^., 
 nothing. Finally, Catholicity proclaims the Sacra- 
 ments, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Real Presence, 
 etc. Protestants reject these ; in other terms, they 
 substitute for them simple negations, which are noth- 
 ing. As every heretical or schismatical sect retains 
 this or that verity which suits it, to the exclusion of 
 other truths, and as this process takes place from a 
 thousand different points of view, it is sufficient to 
 add together the articles separately admitted by these 
 communions, mutually antagonistic, to arrive at the 
 sum of all Catholic verities. Also, it is sufficient to 
 strike out the points which each rejects, or to sub- 
 tract them from the total, to arrive at zero, and thus 
 to show that there is no phase of truth which they do 
 not deny. In the first case they conclude directly for 
 
90 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 Catholicity, which is the entirety of which they are 
 the fragments ; in the second, they conclude indi- 
 rectly, by showing that outside of Catholicity is noth- 
 ing but a process of disintegration of all belief." 
 
 But as you stand in presence of the amazing de- 
 struction of the sixteenth century, I hear you musing 
 within yourselves and saying, " Surely vast results 
 cannot come from trifling causes ; and was there not 
 a reason for Protestantism ? " 
 
 Certainly, gentlemen, there were mediaeval abuses. 
 The Goths and Vandals had swarmed the decks and 
 interior of the Catholic ship as she sailed down time, 
 and brought their unseemly things with them ; but 
 how could this be reason for burning and sinking the 
 ship ? If God makes the human eye, and inflamma- 
 tion gets into that eye, is that a reason for dashing 
 out the eye itself from the head ? There was, indeed, 
 cause for Reformation. But a cause for Reformation 
 is not a cause for destruction. To cleanse a palace 
 by burning it down and tearing up the very stones of 
 its foundation were, surely, the wjrk of folly and of 
 madness. Destruction is a soriy s-ynonym for reforma- 
 tion. The Anglican movement was a Reformation j 
 the Protestant movement was a wide-spread destruc- 
 tion. In England Catholicity was cleansed of its 
 
Catholicity a?td Protestantism. 91 
 
 impurities and is saved. On the Continent Catho- 
 licity was destroyed and lost. Ah ! gentlemen, if 
 philosophy would really account for that torch of the 
 incendiary and knife of the assassin that wrought such 
 havoc in Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia with 
 the true Catholic dogma, practice and life, it must 
 look deeper than into mediaeval abuses. And what 
 is deeper, gentlemen, than the human heart itself.-* 
 What, since the first resistance of Adam and the fall 
 of man, hath more mysterious chambers? Within it, 
 deep-seated, there is, alas ! a basilisk ; and that 
 monster is ever ready to rouse himself and resist the 
 principle of submission to Divine authority in matters 
 of Faith. It was not in the Sixteenth Century alone 
 that this basilisk was in the human heart. For, the 
 spirit of resistance to Divine authority has manifested 
 itself more or less in all centuries since the fall. But 
 the Sixteenth Century was exceptional in another 
 respect ; for it stood at the close of a long turmoil. 
 It was a vast crisis. Every great war is always fol- 
 lowed, like every great tempest, by a ground-swell, 
 which heaves up from the bottom of human nature, 
 and rouses into action, whatsoever is of evil report. 
 And the thirteen hundred long years of continual 
 turmoil and war, in which the ancient polities and 
 
92 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 civilizations, after centuries of struggle, went down in 
 a vast shipwreck, and out of which modern Europe 
 slovily and painfully emerged, were followed by a re- 
 crudescence and exacerbation of that human infirmity 
 and spirit of resistance to God, which appeared, 
 after the fall, in the unhappy Lamech and the de- 
 fiant Cain. 
 
 Indeed, Erasmus said : '^ I know, as a positive 
 fact, that there never were more luxury and adultery 
 than among the Evangelicals, as they please to call 
 themselves. " 
 
 George Wizel, in his letters, says : " When I saw 
 the evangelical people reject and ridicule all disci- 
 pline, all decent living, all that conduces to make men 
 better and truer Christians, and that my sermons, in- 
 stead of amending hearts, demoralized them, then I 
 began seriously to doubt this doctrine. My doubts 
 gained strength when I saw the debauchery, the hard- 
 ness, the avarice and pride of the leaders, their end- 
 less contradictions, and the discreditable turn the 
 enterprise assumed in other respects." 
 
 John Egranus says : " Here are fine results I His- 
 tory is open to demonstrate to us that, during the 
 eight centuries since Germany was Christianized, 
 there has not been in the land a perversity equal to 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 93 
 
 thit which, as every one acknowledges, reigns tri- 
 umpliant now." 
 
 Luther himself said that for " one devil of popery 
 expelled, seven worse devils had entered into his 
 evangelicals." And yet in his recklessness he prayed 
 that awful prayer : " O Lord God of heaven, may we be 
 steeped in all kinds of obscenities, in all abominations 
 of sin, rather than fall back into the blindness of Popery \ 
 and deliver us from even a spirit of compunction." 
 
 Bucer said : " The great bulk of those who joined 
 the reform proposed to themselves the following ad- 
 vantages : freedom from the tyranny of the Pope and 
 the Bishops ; that being done, they were all eager- 
 ness to give themselves up freely to their caprices and 
 to all their carnal passions. And, indeed, it is to 
 them a most agreeable thing to be able to say, ' We 
 are justified by faith only \ and good works, for which 
 we have no taste, are utterly useless.' Others have 
 favored the preaching of the Gospel solely because it 
 offered them the means of appropriating the goods of 
 the Church. The doctrine of the reign of Jesus 
 Christ has been faithfully announced in a great num- 
 ber of places, I own, but I should be sore puzzled to 
 name a single church where it is practiced, and where 
 Christian discipline is to be found." 
 
94 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Ro?nanisfn. 
 
 Luther describes the state of things. He says : 
 " There is not one of our Evangelicals who is not 
 seven times worse than he was when he was a Roman- 
 ist — stealing, lying, deceiving, eating and getting drunk, 
 and giving himself up to all kinds of vices." 
 
 Indeed, the statistics of crime in one single city 
 show this. There were condemned to death in Nu- 
 remberg for incest, highway robbery, murder, infanti- 
 cide, unnatural crimes, etc., in the fifteenth century, 
 before the Reformation, 41 ; in the sixteenth century, 
 after the Reformation, 190 ; in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury^ after the Reformation, 272. 
 
 Luther wrote to the preacher Riemann : " All the 
 good which we hoped for in this age has vanished as a 
 dream ; and in its place a flood of evil is produced 
 which leaves nothing to hope but the dissolution of all 
 things. May the day of God's wrath speedily come to 
 put an end to our miseries and to this infernal dis- 
 order." Again he writes : " For the price of the whole 
 world I would not have to begin again. This enter- 
 prise brings such agonies with it. Oh, dear Sirs, this 
 is no child's play ! " 
 
 If such was the case in the sixteenth and seven 
 teenth centuries, what would he have said of the 
 French Revolution of tlie Protestants in the eigh- 
 
 / 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism, 95 
 
 teenth, and of the Commune in the nineteenth cen- 
 turies ? 
 
 And so we have, gentlemen, on the Continent of 
 Europe, after the 1,300 years of turmoil, the rousing 
 of the Basilisk, and, as a consequence, not a Reforma- 
 tion, but a Deformation and a hideous destruction. 
 Shall we be stubborn heirs to this fearful legacy? 
 Shall this continue forever ? 
 
 But, notwithstanding all this, the natural human 
 heart is of itself so much better than the Protestant 
 system, that at last even it has reacted, and has risen, 
 an ally to Catholicity, to restore to some considerable 
 extent common morality. 
 
 Permit me next to present to you, in condensed 
 form, a fourth aspect of Catholicity and Protestantism. 
 
 As we go up the scale of being, we pass from the 
 simple to the complex ; from homogeneous unities to 
 unities each of which contains within itself variety. The 
 simple unity marks a low and imperfect order of ex- 
 istence. The chick is more complex than the ^g^ ; 
 the seed, with its radix and two cotyledons, is 
 simpler and lower in the scale of existence than the 
 fully developed tree. If we start from the simple 
 unitp of the atom and go up, we come to the more 
 complex unity of the stone. We pass from the stone 
 
g6 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 up to the plant, and find there more diversity still. 
 We pass up to the animal, and we find a still greater 
 variety in the unit ; we have matter and instinct. We 
 go up to man only to strike a unit comprehending 
 more variety yet ; for we have in him body, instinct, in- 
 tellect with all its diversity, the moral sense and immor- 
 tality. And so on up to God, in Whom is the complexity, 
 incomprehensible to us, of three distinct Persons in one 
 undivided Substance. The highest unit, then, is not the 
 unit of simplicity. It is the unit which is differenti- 
 ated within itself into variety and complexity. Such 
 a unit fills with satisfaction the mind of man and of 
 God. God did not make the solar system one single, 
 enormous globe ; nor did He make the earth one 
 smooth sphere of granite. No ; while He kept the 
 earth a unit, He developed it into the variations of 
 land and sea, of mysterious mountain and placid low- 
 land, of storm and sunshine, of town and farm, and 
 forest and lake. 
 
 Behold, then, in Catholicity the perfect unit, the 
 unit of the highest order. For while Romanism is 
 simple organic unity without diversity, and while 
 Protestantism is diversity without organic unity, Cath 
 olicity is organic unity in diversity. 
 
 The Oriental type of Catholic man does not object 
 
Caihohcity a7id Protestantism. 97 
 
 to the Catholic worship which is in harmony with the 
 Anglican type of man, nor does the Anglican object 
 to the Catholic worship that is in harmony with the 
 Russo-Greek type of man ; although each prefers his 
 own for himself. No one is disturbed if national re- 
 ligious habits differ, or if each have his services in his 
 own language. 
 
 No two men are alike ; and yet God has organized 
 His one visible Church to include all men. It is It- 
 self, then, Catholic and, outside of the fundamentals, 
 tolerant. That there should be schools of thought in 
 Catholicity is unavoidable and not perhaps wrong, so 
 long as those parties do not, in human infirmity, de- 
 velop the exclusive sect-spirit. In the Catholic Church 
 these two forces, the party-force and the Christ-force, 
 the sundering. and the cohesive, are two poles of one 
 power, and perhaps each, in our fallen condition, may 
 be necessary to the healthy existence of the other. 
 As in the solar system there is a centrifugal force to 
 keep the worlds apart and give variety, and a centrip- 
 etal to bind them, nevertheless, into oneness, so in 
 the domain of the Catholic Church the human spirit 
 of party goes forth into variety, and the Divine power 
 of God goes forth unto unity. Protestantism strikes out 
 the Catholic centripetal force, and flies off and to pieces 
 
98 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romamsm, 
 
 Rome strikes out the centrifugal force, and tumbles 
 from the perfect living unit into the unity of simplicity, 
 the unit of the lowest order. In Catholicity, while the 
 rights and prerogatives of the Church are proclaimed 
 and the correlative duties of the individual insisted on, 
 the rights of the individual as a creature of God are 
 not ignored, but respected. While there is hierarchy, 
 there is yet, normally, no tyranny. Over the child is 
 the parent, and over the parent is the. Priest, and over 
 the Priest is the Bishop, and over the Bishop is the 
 ecclesiastical authority of the Province, and over that 
 the great Communion or Patriarchate, and over that 
 the whole Catholic Church in space and time. This 
 is the hierarchy. For it is to be remembered thai the 
 Church of God is not a democracy, nor a republic ; it 
 is the Kingdom of God on earth. The King is Jesus 
 Christ, Who exercises His authority through officers 
 in regular gradation all the way down to the children. 
 This is the hierarchy. And in it each grade, if a 
 father to the grade below it, is itself a child to the 
 grade above. Thus authority is kept from being a 
 school of pride, finding its corrective in humility. 
 For if each grade, except the lowest, has something to 
 command, it has something also above it to obey. 
 This is the hierarchy. " Children, obey your parents, 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 99 
 
 is the law binding on every grade, arid it is the mother 
 of order throughout all the ranks. And yet in this 
 hierarchy there is normally no tyranny. For suppose 
 a father should command his child to steal ; is the 
 child bound to obey on penalty of breaking the fifth 
 commandment? No. That were tyranny. Even 
 the child has its rights. And the child knows that 
 the Priest is a higher father still, and has forbidden 
 him to steal. And in case of a conflict of commands 
 issuing from the grade above, and the grade above 
 that, the command issuing from the higher grade is to 
 be obeyed, rather than that issuing from the lower, 01 
 the fifth commandment is really broken. We must 
 obey the highest parent, all the way up to God. Sup- 
 pose the Priest should impose on his people something 
 wrong ; there is no tyranny in the hierarchy ; for the 
 Bishop is the right reverend father to control aright 
 the priest. Suppose the Bishop should set up his 
 private whim as binding upon Priest and people, still 
 there is no tyranny, for the Provincial authority is over 
 the Bishop, and the Bishop is bound to leave free wrtat 
 it leaves free, and to execute its will and law, and not 
 his own private notions. A Bishop once refused to go 
 to the Church of the Advent, Boston. The Priest ap- 
 pealed, and the Provincial authority virtually com- 
 
loo Catholicity Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 manded the Bishop to go. Thus, when the child is in 
 obedience to and in harmony with its parent, and the 
 parents are in obedience to and in harmony with the 
 Priest, and the Priests with the Bishop, and the Bish- 
 ops with the Provincial authority, and that with the 
 great Catholic Church, which is the Body of and in 
 harmony with Christ, all swing together in obedience 
 to and in harmony with God. 
 
 In mediaeval times the western part of Catholicity, 
 with all the evils which the Goths and Vandals 
 brought upon it, yet still presented the ancient aspect 
 of variety in unity. Even in later times there were 
 the varieties of the Ultramontane and the Gallican 
 Church. Nations had their different rituals. Why, in 
 Queen Bess's time, the Bishop of Rome offered to ac- 
 cept and acknowledge the Reformed Anglican Church, 
 Ministry, Prayer-book and all, just as She was, it 
 England would only admit his sovereignty over her 
 Queen. But Rome, that never varies, has changed all 
 this. She has brought her pressure upon all to Ital- 
 ianize and Romanize everything ; to wipe out all fair 
 varieties, and to reduce everything to a simple uni- 
 formity. The Gallican school of thought is crushed. 
 All now everywhere is Jesuit. The Gallican Ritual is 
 abolished ; all is Italianized and Romanized. The in- 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism, loi 
 
 fluence of .he great St. Ambrose gave to Milan certain 
 customs, and they held their ground till recently. But 
 Rome will leave no variety ; she is slowly wiping what 
 little there is left away. If she clothes an Italian 
 Bishop, who has no diocese, in oriental robes to say 
 Mass, it does not deceive the world that is gazing in 
 attentive neutralit}'. She will reduce all to the lower 
 order of simple unity in all things. She will brook no 
 variety in unity. 
 
 The statement, on the other hand, that Protestant- 
 ism is utter diversity without organic unity, needs no 
 enlargement or illustration. If there is any apparent 
 unity, it comes from the fact that Protestantism has 
 drifted so far off toward negation that there is little 
 care left in it as to what is believed. And so in my 
 native town, and elsewhere, it has come to pass, at 
 last, that the Unitarian exchanges pulpits with the 
 orthodox Congregationalist. Indeed the belief of the 
 Protestant world has settled down to about this : 
 namely, that there is nothing especially true in Reli- 
 gion ; and even if there were, it would not signify. 
 
 Permit me now to present to you a fifth aspect of 
 Catholicity in its Relationship to Protestantism. Out 
 of the sacred century I hear the utterance, " In every- 
 th'ng ye are enriched by Christ j so that ye come 
 
102 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 behind in no gift.' Go away, gentlemen, this even- 
 ing, sit down and seriously ask yourselves, Of what 
 practical use were that marvelous Fountain through 
 Which we may be so enriched that we come behind in 
 no gift, if Its existence is spiritualized away, and Its 
 location is nowhere in particular. Are we, as Chris- 
 tians, to strive to reach Him, after the manner of the 
 modern infidel when he dreamily seeks communion 
 with the God of Nature ? A thousand times, no. 
 The Christian's God is a God Incarnate ; a God, Who, 
 for our sake, has come forth out of indefiniteness into 
 definiteness. Christianity is not a system that 
 teaches that there is a Church, but no particular 
 Church ; and Sacraments but no particular Sacra- 
 ments ; and a Ministry, but no particular Ministry ; 
 and Religious Truth, but no particular Religious 
 Truth ; and a Lord's Day, but no particular Lord's 
 Day ; and a way of Salvation, but no particular way. 
 
 The Old Dispensation did not promise to us a 
 mere continuation of God, Omnipresent, Diffusive and 
 Invisible ; but it promised something new. It prom- 
 ised Immanu-el ; it promised that that God Who is 
 always Omnipresent, should also come and in a 
 special sense be " with us " in the New Dispen 
 sation. The perpetual Incarnation of God on Earth, 
 
Catholicity and Protestamtsjn. 103 
 
 wrought by the marvelous miracles of Font and 
 Altar, is what distinguishes the Christian Dispensation 
 from the Jewish ; it is what distinguishes the Chris- 
 tian's God from the infidel's God of Nature. To sup 
 pose, on the other hand, that Christ's Incarnation not 
 only began but also ended with His Body Natural in 
 Palestine — to suppose that that " Stone cut out with- 
 out hands " was not to " grow and become a great 
 Mountain and fill the whole earth," is to reduce the 
 Holy Sacraments to mere forms, and to remand the 
 world back either to Judaism or to Deism. 
 
 It is the Catholic Church, then, that is capable of 
 enriching all men, in everything. As the Church was 
 made by God to include all men, there is no taste or 
 requirement belonging to human nature which It can- 
 not satisfy. There are, indeed, morbid cravings, 
 which arise, not out of the elements that make up hu- 
 man nature, but out of defects in character. These 
 are negative, rather than positive wants. And these 
 the Catholic Church does not respond to. But what- 
 soever is a positive want, arising out of an element of 
 human nature, that She supplies. 
 
 Not so a sect. Some men, for instance, have 
 spiritual and natural requirements which the Quaker 
 sect could not possibly supply. Fancy a Methodist, 
 
104 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 full of enthusiasm, going into the ice-house of a 
 Friends' Meeting-house. Fancy a man with nature 
 tenderl) responsive to the supernatural attempting to 
 find food for his hungers at the empty board of a Uni- 
 tarian Lecture Hall. Other men have spiritual re- 
 quirements which the Methodist or the Presbyterian 
 sect could not possibly supply. Men differ; and 
 their differences are so many and so wide apart, that 
 nothing partial, nothing but what is as broad as human 
 nature can meet the wants of each and all. No sect, 
 whatever good it may do to a limited number of per- 
 sons of similar dispositions, can in the nature of things 
 be co-extensive with man in all space and time. 
 Sects, therefore, always have been and always will be 
 local both in space and time. They always have been 
 and always will be, of comparatively fleeting career, — 
 cut flowers without root, blooming rank for a while, 
 but soon withering away. 
 
 Now let us look at man — or rather at men, and 
 see what they are, and what kind of a Church God 
 would, therefore, be likely to provide for them. This 
 will display the relationship between Protestantism and 
 the Catholic Church, and show us where and how it is 
 that any given sect, or all of them together, fail to sat • 
 isfy the deep and lasting requirements of human nature. 
 
Catholicity and Protestantisfn. 105 
 
 Take for instance any given man. Wiioever he is, 
 he is but a very partial representative of our human 
 nature in its fullness. For he may have large imagina- 
 tion and little reason ; or large causality and compari- 
 son and feeble social qualities ; or large social nature 
 and little caution and little reverence ; he may have 
 great ingenuity and little memory for names and 
 dates. One man may have love largely developed, 
 and may be reached most easily through that faculty ; 
 another can only be reached through his fear; an- 
 other can be reached through his taste and assthetical 
 nature ; while still another can best be reached only 
 through his reason. Thus no given man is round and 
 full, possessing every human faculty and element, with 
 each in ripe development, and all in perfect harmony 
 with each other. Now each man being thus a partial 
 and imperfect representative of complete human 
 nature, it follows that the wants and hungers of differ- 
 ent men, as we find them in life, are widely diverse 
 from each other. They differ according as the ele- 
 ments of our common human nature — reason, ambition, 
 passion, imagination, etc., are combined in different 
 proportions in each. This being the case, what would 
 be the Church that God would provide for men? 
 
 Surely It would not be fitted merely to meet the wants 
 5* 
 
io6 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 of any one set of men. Doubtless It would be a 
 Church capable of meeting and supplying all the 
 positive wants of any man. It would be a Catholic 
 Church in the broadest sense of the word. It would be 
 endowed with, and capable of imparting, all supernatu- 
 ral truths possible to the grasp of human nature ; even 
 truths which some men can never grasp or hold. It 
 would include, too, all processes to draw men ; intel- 
 lectual, to suit the cold brain ; loving, to suit excitable 
 natures ; calming, to suit quiet natures j threatenings, 
 for human fears, even though some men may not be 
 timorous ; warnings for human caution, even though 
 some men be not cautious ; beauty and stateliness to 
 correspond with human taste, even though some men 
 be devoid of the esthetic faculty ; and so on. Such 
 is the Church which human endowments and corre- 
 sponding human needs call for. Such is the Church 
 which God, knowing those human needs, would be 
 likely to organize. Such He has, indeed, provided 
 for the world in The Church Catholic. 
 
 But on the other hand, how is it with the sects ? 
 How have they subsequently arisen ? The Catholic 
 Church is, alas, harassed with differences inside Her- 
 self. But why is it that select sets of men separate 
 themselves from the Church Catholic, and maintain 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism, 107 
 
 their own private " churches ? " Let us look at this, 
 and study it a little. 
 
 Just as some men are color-blind, and cannot dis- 
 tinguish blue from green, or scarlet from magenta, just 
 as some men cannot tell one piece of music from 
 another, so there are sets of men who are lacking in 
 other respects. Indeed every man is, as I have said, 
 lacking in some respects. And so men fall apart into 
 groups. What then do these several groups do ? 
 Take the Congregationalists. Now individual freedom 
 is good ; and external authority is good. But each 
 becomes bad if unchecked by the other. Internal 
 freedom, unchecked by external authority, runs out 
 into license. Authority unchecked by freedom, stiffens 
 into tyranny. But, nevertheless, there are some men 
 who have the consummate and irrepressible desire 
 within for the full and free play of all their motions of 
 personal and private will, unchecked by its proper 
 qualifier, viz., the instinct for objective authority of 
 any kind. They are unbalanced. It is hard for 
 them to realize that there can rightly be any ex- 
 ternal authority bringing itself to bear upon them to 
 check freedom from running into license. Being im- 
 perfect and wanting in this respect, these men do not 
 wish to accept God's Church, because It contains 
 
io8 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 something disagreeable to them, namely, an element 
 of authority over all Its members, restraining Its Bish- 
 ops, Priests and laity from doing, each, just as he 
 pleases. These men, therefore, go forth and form a 
 religious organization with the idea of authority cut 
 out. They set up a Congregational sect ; where each 
 parish shall be as independent of every other, and each 
 man in the congregation as independent of every other 
 as possible. Another set of people is lacking in 
 another respect, for instance, in a large and tender 
 sympathy for the Supernatural Objects of Faith, in 
 a sensitiveness to the beings and operations of the 
 unseen world. Now intellect is good and Faith is 
 good. But each needs the other as a check, if intel- 
 lect is to be saved from stiffening into hardness, cold- 
 ness and skepticism, and if Faith is to be saved from 
 softening into weakness and superstition. But, un- 
 checked by a due development of the Faith-side of 
 their nature, the intellect of this set of people has sole 
 play. All such supernatural and spiritual facts and 
 beings and operating laws are out of their conscious- 
 ness. The mention or thought of such is in some 
 sense disagreeable to them. They therefore arrange 
 a Unitarian sect, in which Holy Sacraments, Holy 
 places, Holy (or separate) persons shall be as much 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 109 
 
 excluded as possible j and where they may enjoy with 
 unalloyed attention the sermon as an intellectual treat. 
 Another set of men have a large sense of the absolute 
 sovereignty and authority of God. But they have this 
 sense to a great degree unchecked and unqualified by 
 its opposite complement, namely, a large sense also 
 of man's free will and responsibility. So, they arrange 
 for themselves, and for others like-minded, a Calvin- 
 istic sect. Another set of very excellent people are 
 lacking on the esthetic side of their natures. So, they 
 arrange for themselves a Quaker sect, where not a 
 note of music shall sound, and where the benches and 
 walls shall be unpainted, and where every gay ribbon 
 and bow shall be abolished. 
 
 Thus you will perceive that one main peculiarity 
 of sect-ism is, that each sect founds a system and sets 
 it up to suit, not what is in human nature, as one of 
 its elements, as a gift of God, but what is not in them- 
 selves. They cut out what the Catholic Church sup- 
 plies in order that men, who are all partial representa- 
 tives of human nature, may each be educated, or de- 
 veloped j in order that that in which each is lacking 
 may be drawn out and enlarged, till we all come to 
 " the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," 
 the perfect Man. 
 
no Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 Thus each sect is inherently intolerant of just that 
 fvhich it has no taste or talent for, but which it lacks. 
 Each sect is inherently negative and protestant. It 
 cries " Nay-Nay," not " Yea- Yea." You must nol 
 have music, cries one. You must not believe in this, 
 that, or the other doctrine, Sacrament or process, say 
 the several sects all round the circle. 
 
 One of the saddest features is, too, that each sect 
 encourages an uneven development of character. 
 Indeed, sectism is the struggle of self-willed man to 
 exclude the disagreeable. Sectism is founded on the 
 satisfaction of " negative cravings" — that is, of morbid 
 hungers that arise out of deficiencies in human char- 
 acter. On the other hand, the Catholic Church was 
 arranged by God to appeal to and satisfy every " posi- 
 tive craving," every hunger and want, that is to say, 
 that arise not out of deficiencies but out of the ele- 
 ments of human nature. The Catholic Church is thus 
 inherently positive, instead of being inherently nega- 
 tive. She is inherently calculated to break down, in- 
 stead of fostering selfishness and bigotry. ' For She 
 appeals to and finds Her raison d'etre in the fulness of 
 human nature ; while the sects find theirs in its 
 defects. 
 
 If my spiritual nature and wants and capacity arc 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. ill 
 
 partial, what quarrel ought I to have with my brother, 
 if, while I find my wants satisfied, he also finds his 
 different wants satisfied, too, in the ample treasuries of 
 our common home, the Church. Rather should I 
 thank God that my brother's needs are supplied, as 
 well as mine. Surely, I can, and surely I ought, with- 
 out selfishness, to live at peace side by side with him. 
 What does that man do but erect selfishness within 
 himself, and fan bigotry within himself, what, more- 
 over, does he do but commit the heinous sin of 
 schism, who presumes to take the Catholic Church, 
 which God had provided for us all, and because he 
 and a few of his friends do not, for instance, want 
 anything esthetical and stately in its worship, or be- 
 cause he does not want Priestly absolution, or because 
 he does not want the Sacrament of Confirmation, or 
 because he does not want for himself the rousing 
 storm of a mission, or of a revival, or because he does 
 not want asceticism, or any fasting, or any Saints' Days 
 or because he does not want to pray for his dear de- 
 parted wife, child or mother, or because he does not 
 want to cherish a likeness or a religious keepsake of 
 a Saint; if, I say, he presumes to take God's Catholic 
 Church and narrow It to his partial wants and limited 
 horizon by striving to cut out all these things, and 
 
112 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 thus to deprive his poor brother of them, even though 
 that brother happens to be made a little different from 
 himself in needs, capacities or grasp ? No ! away with 
 this spirit of selfishness and bigotry and sectarianism, 
 which feels that God's world and God's Church were 
 made for one's own select sect. 
 
 God's Catholic Church is like a landscape, that 
 comes behind in no gift to any man. The engineer 
 goes through that landscape ; and he sees and is fed 
 by what his peculiarities crave. He sees, all along, 
 just where he might put a railroad ; just how he will 
 follow the water courses ; just where he is going to get 
 his cuttings for his fillings, and his stone for his cul- 
 verts, and his wood for his sleepers, and his gravel for 
 his ballast. And the farmer goes through the land- 
 scape ; and, lo, the landscape is rich to him, too. He 
 gets out of it its capacity for grains and grapes and 
 grasses ; not but that the farmer would be the more 
 complete man if he also saw with the engineer's eye j 
 or the engineer, if he saw also with the agriculturist's 
 eye. And the artist goes through it ; and, lo, it pre- 
 sents its exquisite bits of scenery to him. And the 
 geologist goes through it ; and he reads on its up- 
 turned leaves the history of the past. The spirit of 
 Catholicity would cry, " Let it alone: let us each gel 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 113 
 
 all out of the landscape that ever we can." But the 
 spirit of sect would go there and would strip it of its 
 deep and infinite supplies to meet the wants of diverse 
 men, leaving only what would satisfy its own peculiar 
 self 
 
 Just because each and every man is a partial and 
 not a complete representative of human nature, just 
 because each man is wanting in some elements of 
 character, so do they all need a Whole Church capable 
 of educating all the elements of character. But 
 sectarianism says, on the other hand, because men 
 are fragmentary, so must we break up that Church 
 into little pieces — so that one piece shall have and 
 teach God The Father and the four Gospels alone, 
 without the Atonement or God The Son, or much else j 
 and another piece shall teach the Trinity and the 
 Atonement without the Sacramental System, or much 
 else ; and another piece shall teach free will without 
 God's sovereignty ; and another, God's sovereignty 
 without free will ; and another, faith without works ; 
 and another, works without faith \ and another, dip- 
 ping in Baptism without pouring; and another, 
 pouring without dipping; (and so on through the 
 whole diapason of doctrines and practice ;) and then 
 let us draw as many men as we can out of the great 
 
114 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Fomanism. 
 
 Cathedral with its many windows alow and aloft, lei 
 ting in the light from all around, nave, clere-story, 
 transepts, lady-chapel, lantern, choir, east end, and 
 west end, and shut them up in our little room with 
 its one or two windows letting in light at one side, one 
 end or one corner only. 
 
 God has made His Catholic Church, and endowed 
 It with every gift, not only that all may find in It what 
 they severally crave, but that each also may be schooled 
 in what he may be wanting. 
 
 But the sectarian cries to all the world, out of his 
 deficiencies and out of the antipathies which those 
 defects rear within him, " Come to our sect ; you do 
 not like Confirmation ; neither did we ; that is our 
 ' nay ;' we have founded a sect on that ' nay ;' come to 
 us j you will not find any Confirmation with us :" or, 
 " Come to our sect, you hate enthusiasms in religion ; 
 so do we ; that is our * nay ;' we have founded a sect 
 accordingly ; come to us, you will not find any revivals 
 among us : " or, " There is a deal of music in the 
 world, indeed, but you do not like music, you think it 
 is wicked ; so do we ; music is our * nay ; ' we have 
 founded a sect on our lacks, where we have no music, 
 but sit still for the Spirit to move us : " or " Come to 
 our sect j you hate these Religious ; so do we ; we 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 115 
 
 have founded a sect on our and your deficiencies and 
 dislikes ; you will not find any monks and nuns with 
 us:" or "You do not like anything stately and beauti- 
 ful in worship ; neither did we ; we have founded a 
 sect on our deficiencies in taste j you will not find any 
 boy-choirs or processions or ritual with us." And so 
 on to the end of the list of * Nays.' 
 
 But come, saith God, come, says Catholicity with 
 Her " Yeas," come to the Church. Do you want 
 freedom ? You will find freedom here. Do you want 
 authority t You will find it here. Do you want the 
 contemplative and praying life ? You will find it here. 
 Do you want the active, secular life t You will find 
 it here. And so through all the wants that arise, not 
 out of the defects, but out of the endowments of hu- 
 man nature. 
 
 If any part of the Catholic Church through the 
 lapse of the centuries grows untrue to Her functions, 
 and therefore untrue to man to whom She is sent, that 
 part must expect one of two things ; either a struggle 
 and a turmoil within Herself till She takes up again and 
 uses the weapons against the world which have been 
 allowed to lie idle and to rust in her armories ; or if this 
 does not take place. She must expect sects to spring 
 up around Her as Her punishment. For human 
 
Ii6 Catholicity^ Protesta?itis?n atid Rotnanism, 
 
 nature will have neither tyranny nor license, skepticisni 
 nor superstition, baldness nor mere empty formalism. 
 But there is another divine economy in the Catho- 
 lic Church, which lifts Her immeasurably above any 
 sect. If all men were made exactly alike in character,, 
 development and grasp, all would be equally receptive, 
 and the Church would be able to impart a fixed 
 amount of Her exhaustless gifts to each. But first, all 
 men start away in life, ignorant and devoid of even a 
 single one of the gifts and truths which the Church 
 bestows. Then, secondly, men develop afterwards 
 into differences of grasp ; their circumstances are 
 such, too, that their opportunities and time for ac- 
 quiring systematic, moral and ascetic theology, and 
 for attaining spiritual growth, differ. No man, indeed, 
 however aged and able, is ever in such position that 
 he may not learn yet more than he already knows, 
 that he may not attain to higher grades of spirituality, 
 that he may not look deeper into truths he has already 
 received, or the better understand the relationship 
 which these profound truths bear to each other. On 
 the other hand, the Catholic Church contains all spir 
 itual, theological, moral and ascetic truth, each in its 
 entirety. These are all, not actually, but potentially, 
 made over to each member of the Church, that all the 
 
Catholicity and Protestantism. 117 
 
 members may severally come into actual possession 
 of as much as ever each one can. Each one, whether 
 he is a child learning his catechism, or a youth in the 
 Bible class, or a youngj man, a middle-aged or an old 
 man, should thank God for all he knows or has as- 
 similated to himself; but his true attitude is not to 
 deny what, either through his want of grasp, or want 
 of years, or want of opportunity and time, or want of 
 complete development as a representative of hu- 
 man nature, he does not yet receive. He should 
 enjoy his actual possessions, and not be resistant to, 
 or protestant against, those potential possessions 
 which are his nevertheless, which have been made 
 over to him by the Church, as though they were 
 false because he has not happened to hear of them 
 before, or been able to grasp or profit by them. 
 
 Now if I had a museum, an academy containing 
 facilities for learning all of art, and of fine art, of 
 manufacture, and geology, and botany, and languages, 
 and every science, and, indeed, all knowledge, and if 
 I put into it a hundred thousand men of different 
 tastes and capacities, as into a school, I have en- 
 riched them, each and all ; I have held back from no 
 one, anything. There would, therefore, be no possi- 
 bility, either for the mind of any one of them to fail 
 
II 8 Catholicity,, Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 of its own proper food, or for any mind among them 
 all to have a stunted growth. 
 
 Now the Catholic Church of God is analogous to 
 such a complete school. No sect is a universal school. 
 What is the difference, then, between a man in the 
 Church and a man in a sect? In a sect he has 
 grasp of partial truth. But no one in the Church 
 has complete grasp of the whole truth either. So 
 there is no difference here. Nevertheless, the Cath- 
 olic Churchman has an immense advantage over 
 the other. For even if he also has not actual grasp 
 of the whole round of Catholic truths, and even if 
 he does use some only of the whole circle of Catholic 
 appliances tending to a complete spiritual and moral 
 growth and development, he is at any rate in the 
 Church where all the rest of the truths and appli- 
 ances are ; he is not cut off from them ; they are all 
 potentially his, and may happily, sooner or later, one 
 after another, become actually his, to his great en- 
 richment and advantage. God does not expect the 
 child to be as far advanced in learning or growth as 
 the youth, or the youth as the adult, or the young man 
 as the old man, or those with partial opportunities for 
 attaining all that is possible to be attained as those 
 with full. But, on the other hand, take this same 
 
Catholicity afid Protestantism- 119 
 
 person out of God's Catholic Church and put him in 
 
 a sect, which simply presents doctrines and practices 
 with which the tide of his partial development and 
 defective character is merely on a level, and behold, 
 he is absolutely cut oft* from all the rest of the circle 
 of truth, and from all the rest of the round of appli- 
 ances. Nay, worse, he is not only cut off" from them, 
 but he is encouraged in prohibiting them to himself. 
 What hope is there, then, except that such a man must 
 have a narrow, bigoted, stunted religious development 
 and life. 
 
 Some of you, gentlemen, are already Catholic 
 Churchmen. Have you carried these thoughts, of 
 which I am to-night the mouth-piece, out to their 
 legitimate conclusions in your hearts ? I am here 
 it is true for a course of conferences, and not of 
 sermons. I am here to speak to your heads and 
 not to your hearts. But suffer me, if, for a mo- 
 ment, I transgress the bounds of my present mis- 
 sion, and do not forget that I am a Priest speaking 
 to men who have hearts as well as heads. Let me 
 remind you, then, that in God's great Church the 
 Catholic has no quarrel with the Low Churchman. 
 The truths which the Low Churchman holds, he holds 
 in common with us. God bless him as he carries the 
 
I20 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 great truth of the Atonement, the Cross of our Blessed 
 Saviour, without which we are all lost, on and out into 
 a sinful world. God bless him, as, full of zeal and 
 of the love of souls, he gathers earnest men around 
 him in his lecture room, that he may exhort them 
 and that they may exhort each other and pray with 
 each other. We hold everything which he holds j 
 but we hold a great deal more besides of the great 
 round of Catholic truth. We can join him in his 
 prayer meeting ; but let us have no quarrel with him 
 if, after the meeting is over, he will not go with us, 
 besides, to the Altar and fall down in adoration before 
 our Lord Christ and God. The difficulty comes in 
 where he, instead of being passive as to the additional 
 and not incompatible truths, actually denies them for 
 us as well as for himself, and, in a spirit of sectism, has 
 a fierce quarrel with us for accepting from the Church 
 and believing a little more than he does. 
 
 Now, my Catholic friends, let us beware on our 
 side of that self same spirit of sectism, which would 
 prompt us to drive him out of the Church because he 
 holds only a part and not what we claim to be full 
 truth as set forth in the formularies of the Church. 
 For if, like bigoted sectarians, we drive him out 
 where could he go except into something where he 
 
Catholicity and Protestatitism. 121 
 
 would be actually cut off from learning those blessed 
 truths ? 
 
 But, besides, there is another reason why we have, 
 on our side, no quarrel either with our Low Church or 
 with our old fashioned High Church brethren ; but 
 rejoice rather that they are all in the Church, and 
 hope that one and all will stay. And that is, because, 
 even if we are fully conscious that they have not yet 
 received all the truth which the Church has to impart 
 to them in Her Prayer Book, we ourselves, even 
 though we receive a little more than they, are by no 
 means graduates. For we all are learners, as I have 
 said, and always will be, in Her vast school of infinite 
 truth. And we shall never, any of us, learn the 
 whole, till we get into that Higher School where we 
 shall see the Lord face to face in Beatific Vision. 
 The fact is, we are simply all of us. Low, High and 
 Catholic, standing at different positions on an in- 
 clined plane of grasp, opportunity and receptiveness ; 
 while Christ, through the Church, stands ready to en- 
 rich us all in everything, so that we come behind in no 
 gift. 
 
 Let us have, I say, no quarrel whatever with them 
 Let us pray God that they may cease their quarrel 
 with us 3 and that we may all love each other, and 
 
122 Catholicity^ Protestantism a?id Ro7nanisvu 
 
 bear with each other, and pray for each other, and 
 work with each other, and think no evil of each other ; 
 knowing that we shall all do well, if we only continue 
 sitting in humility and teachableness around the knee 
 of our great, kind, patient Mother the Church Catho- 
 lic j and realizing more fully, the more we learn, how 
 dangerous a little learning is ; how full it is apt to be 
 of the spirit of arrogance, bitterness and hardness ; 
 for down to a certain point the less a man knows, 
 alas, the more he thinks he knows. 
 
 Gentlemen : — You have assigned to me three 
 Conferences on Catholicity and Protestantism. In 
 bidding farewell to this first half of our subject, let us 
 see to what we trace back Catholicity, and to what we 
 trace back Protestantism. We follow Catholicity 
 back, with its stately Rituals and comforting dogmas, 
 to the sixteenth century ; back through the middle 
 ages to the ages of the Six Great Councils ; back to 
 St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, to St. Polycarp, Bishop 
 of Smyrna, to St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, whose 
 name St. Paul says is written on the Book of Life, to 
 St. Timothy, Archbishop of Ephesus, and St. Titus, 
 of Crete, to Sts. Andrew, John and James, and up to 
 Him who said, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
 they shall see God ; blessed are the meek, for they 
 
Catholicity a7id Protestantism. 123 
 
 shall inherit the earth ; blessed are they which do 
 hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be 
 filled ; blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain 
 mercy." We follow it up to Him who was much in 
 worship, much in holy meditation, much in prayer. 
 
 We follow Protestantism back to the sixteenth 
 century and up to Martin Luther, on the other hand, 
 who, writing of holy meditation and prayer, said ; 
 " When the monks, sitting in their cells, meditated on 
 God and His works, when, inflamed with the most 
 ardent devotion, they bowed the knee, prayed and con- 
 templated heavenly things with so much delight that 
 they shed tears ; here was no thought of women nor 
 of any other creature, but only of the Creator and His 
 marvelous works. And yet this thing, most spiritual 
 in the judgment of reason, is, according to Paul, a 
 work of the flesh. Wherefore all such is religious 
 idolatry ; and the more holy and spiritual it is in ap- 
 pearance, the more pernicious and pestilential it is." 
 I do not know, I am sure, why Scientific Meditation 
 has so become a lost art in Protestant lands that we 
 have to teach the art all over again ; I do not know 
 why worship has so died away that meeting-houses are 
 shut up from Sunday night to the subsequent Sunday 
 morning. I do not know why it should be that when 
 
124 Catholicity^ Protestantism aiid Eomafiism. 
 
 in Mecklenburg, an inquiry was made into the state of 
 the Established Lutheran Church in 1854, "it was as- 
 certained that, in the three head churches of the Prin- 
 cipality, there had been no divine service two hundred 
 and twenty-eight times, because there had been no 
 congregation." I do not know how it is that the 
 Hartford (Conn.) Courant should have informed the 
 world ten years ago thus: "The Congregational min- 
 isters of Connecticut have thoroughly convassed their 
 parishes to ascertain the actual religious condition of 
 the State. The result was unexpected. In one hun- 
 dred towns at least one-third of the families are not 
 in the habit of going to church. Irreligion was found 
 to increase in proportion to the distance from the 
 centre of towns. It prevails more in sparsely-settled 
 farming districts than in the manufacturing villages- 
 The Committee on Home Evangelization say in their 
 published report : * The returns give the impression 
 that the Roman Catholic population do not often sink 
 to so low a grade of heathenism as the irreligious 
 native-born population. They do not entirely aban- 
 don some thought of God, and some respect for their 
 religious observances. Uniformly the districts most 
 utterly given over to desolation are districts occupied by 
 a population purely native -American. A similar state 
 
CatJwlicity and Protestantism. 125 
 
 of things is reported to exist in some parts of Massa- 
 chusetts.' " I do not know why prayer hath so died 
 away. I only know what the Solifidian, Luther, 
 said. 
 
 We trace Protestantism back to Luther, who said, 
 again : " Thou seest how rich is the Christian ; even 
 if he will, he cannot destroy his salvation by any sins 
 how grievous soever, unless he refuse to believe." 
 Who said again : " Be thou a sinner and sin boldly, 
 but still more boldly believe and rejoice in Christ. 
 From Him sin shall not separate us ; no, though a 
 thousand times in every day we should commit forni- 
 cation or murder." Who said again ; " If in faith an 
 adultery were committed, it were no sin." To Martin 
 Luther, who said : " The Gospel does not bid us do 
 anything, or bid us leave anything undone ; it exacts 
 nothing of us ; quite the contrary. In place of saying, 
 * Do this, do that,' it simply requires us to spread out 
 our lap and accept, saying, ' Hold ! see what God has 
 done for you, and given His own Son to be incarnate 
 for you: accept the gift, believe, and you are saved.' " 
 And again : " You owe nothing to God, nothing, ex- 
 cept to believe and confess Him. In everything else 
 He leaves you perfect liberty to do exactly what you 
 like, without any peril for your conscience ; even — for 
 
126 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 He is quite indifferent to it — you may abandon your 
 wife, or desert your husband, or not keep any engage- 
 ment you have contracted, for what concern is it to 
 God whether you do these things or not ? ' To Lu- 
 ther, who wrote again to one suffering from remorse 
 on account of his sins : " Drink, play, laugh and do 
 some sin even as an act of defiance and contempt to 
 the devil. Therefore, if the devil says to you, * Don't 
 drink so,' do you reply to him, ' Aye, I will drink all 
 the more copiously in the name of Christ.' Thus do 
 just contrary to that which Satan (/. ^., conscience) 
 prompts. One can drive these Satanic thoughts away 
 by introducing other thoughts, such as that of a pretty 
 girl, avarice, drunkenness, or by giving way to violent 
 passion : such is my advice.'^ 
 
 We trace Protestantism back to Melancthon, who 
 said : " Whatever thou doest, whether thou eatest, 
 drinkest, workest with thy hand, I may add shouldst 
 thou even sin therewith, Ijok not to thy works ; weigh 
 , the promise of God." Who said again, " God ought 
 not to displease you when He damns the innocent. 
 All things take place by the eternal and invariable 
 will of God, Who blasts and shatters in pieces the free 
 dom of the will. God creates in us the evil in like 
 manner as the good. The high perfection of faith is 
 
Catholicity and Protestantisin, 127 
 
 to believe that God is just, notwithstanding that by 
 His will He renders us necessarily damnable." And 
 again : "We cannot advise that the license of marrying 
 more wives than one be publicly introduced. There is 
 nothing unusual in princes keeping concubines ; and 
 although the lower orders may not perceive the ex- 
 cuses of the thing, the more intelligent know how to 
 make allowance." 
 
 We trace Protestantism back to Calvin, who said 
 that God instigates man to the commission of what is 
 evil, and that man's fall into crime is ordained by the 
 providence of God. To Zwingli, who asserted that 
 God " is the author, mover and impeller to sin," and 
 that He uses the instrumentality of man to produce 
 injustice ; " He it is who moves the robber to murder 
 the innocent." We trace Protestantism back to Beza, 
 who said : " The Almighty creates a portion of men 
 to be His instruments, with the intent of carrying out 
 His evil designs through them."* 
 
 But, O Jesus, Thou didst teach thy Catholic Church 
 that " God is love ! " 
 
 Mr. Beecher, in his remarkable sermons of last 
 
 * I am indebted for many of these extracts from the Reformers 
 to Mr. Baring-Gould, who, in his " Origin and Development " and 
 ** Luther and Justification," gives the references. 
 
128 Catholicity^ Protestantis77i a?id Roinanis7n. 
 
 Sunday, in admitting, even more fully than one had 
 charged, the wide-spread prevalence of atheism, pan- 
 theism and infidelity generally in Protestant lands, 
 and even in Protestant churches themselves, says : 
 " No matter; Christianity, nevertheless, will not die." 
 Of course not : for Catholicity still stands with its 
 rounded sphere of truth, and the Gates of Hell will 
 not prevail against It. And even Protestantism, in 
 dashing the sphere to flinders, holds for a while shat- 
 tered shards of it. The sun of Catholicity, sending its 
 gravitating force even beyond its own system and into 
 the outer spaces, has had, and will have a restraining 
 power. It is the system of Protestantism that has been 
 aMacked in these lectures, not any man — not any man, 
 ] ying or dead ; not even the shockingly sinful Zwingli, 
 nor the unhappy, conscience-tormented Luther. Sys- 
 tems may be hateful, but all men are dear ; and false 
 systems are hateful because all men are dear. 
 
 If Protestantism be not a failure, if the Anglican 
 Church as a double witness against Protestantism and 
 Rome be not right, in God's name let it be known. 
 For we speak in sorrow, not in anger, to friends and 
 respected brothers, all of whom love Jesus Christ and 
 His Name as much as we do ; and we seek not vie 
 tory, but truth. 
 
FOURTH CONFERENCE. 
 
 Function of Reason in Religion. Difference between 
 THE Catholic and the Roman Idea of the Unity op 
 THE Church. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 God has given to each of us the gift of reason ; 
 and we have no right either to destroy or to misuse a 
 gift of His. The proper exercise of reason is, there- 
 fore, a responsibility from which no human being can 
 escape. The function of reason is unlimited in the 
 natural realm, except by the theological virtue of 
 Faith and by the Fifth Gift of the Holy Ghost, name- 
 ly, the Gift of Knowledge. Reason hath its function 
 in the supernatural realm also. For if God is on 
 earth in a speaking Body, or Catholic Church, we 
 must, first of all, be convinced of that fact. Reason, 
 therefore, is the prelude of faith. Being convinced, 
 we afterwards accept, without arguing, what God 
 through His Catholic Body states to be the Truth. 
 
 But there is a preliminary difficulty. What is this 
 Catholic Body ? Two different theories concerning 
 this point present their claims to us. Fortunately 
 
130 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 there are only two. Rome claims that she alone is 
 this Catholic Church. The Anglican Communion 
 claims that the Catholic Church includes all the Com- 
 munions that have the Apostolic and Catholic Minis- 
 try, Faith and Sacraments. What are we to do then 
 in presence of these two differing theories, the inclu- 
 sive and the exclusive .? Clearly we cannot escape the 
 responsibility of still further exercising our private 
 judgment, and of deciding, each for himself, which of 
 these two claims is right. 
 
 But before we go on, let us see what it is we have 
 already settled in our minds. You will remember 
 that in our First Conference the hand of logic led us 
 into a certain conclusion. That conclusion was, that 
 Almighty God, having broken through the dome of 
 Nature and come in among us to save us from drown- 
 ing in mere guess-work touching Supernatural law 
 and fact here and hereafter, remained en rapport with 
 us in a continuous organic Body of human matter, 
 called the Visible Body Mystical of Christ, or Holy, 
 Catholic and Apostolic Church. This, you will re- 
 member, was the answer to the Second Great Question 
 with which we were brought face to face in our search 
 for the truth. 
 
 When we thus speak of an organic body we mean 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 131 
 
 a body which has correlated parts ; i. e. differing 
 members whose functions are reciprocal, and whose 
 inter-action is orderly. Now, incidentally, we may 
 remark, that historic fact bears out the logical conclu- 
 sion at which we have arrived. For nothing is more 
 certain than that the Christian Body, that stood on 
 earth eighteen hundred years ago, was an organic and 
 visible Body. As we read the sacred Epistles we find 
 them addressed to the saints at Ephesus, at Corinth, 
 at Colosse. We find them containing instructions 
 and rules for those saints. It appears, then, that 
 some parts of this organic Body were rulers and 
 others were the ruled. We also see, early in the Gos- 
 pels, allusions made to two of its Sacraments ; and 
 afterwards, in the Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles, 
 we find that these two, with a third and others, £.re 
 regularly arranged as a part of the organic Body, and 
 commanded to be used. Christ saith to the Apos- 
 tles, " All power is given unto Me both in Heaven 
 and Earth ; " " Go ye, therefore. Baptise all nations ; " 
 *' teach them ; " " Do, (/. e. offer) This as a Memorial 
 of Me ; " " Whosoever sins ye remit they are remitted 
 unto them." We read, moreover, as follows, viz., 
 " Ordain elders in every city ; " " The husband is the 
 head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church. 
 
132 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 This is a great Sacrament, but I speak concerning 
 Christ and the Church;" '*Then laid St. Paul his 
 hands upon them, and the Holy Ghost came on 
 them ; " " Let them pray over him, anointing him with 
 oil in the name of the Lord." 
 
 Thus we see an organic Body created, with Sacra 
 ments, with members whose function it was to rule, to 
 instruct, and to administer those Sacraments ; and 
 with members whose function it was to be the re- 
 cipients of those teachings, of that discipline and of 
 those Sacraments. Nothing is more certain than 
 that, in the organization of that Christian Body, in the 
 appointing and arranging of its correlative parts, and 
 in the commission of its rulers, God, /. e. Christ, 
 worked directly. On Whitsunday God the Holy 
 Ghost descended upon this Body or Church to fill It 
 with Himself, and to make It, as an organic Body, a 
 living and life-giving appliance unto the world. 
 Later on, the Holy Ghost commands the rulers of the 
 Body to commit the powers they had received to 
 others, faithful men ; that those powers and functions 
 might continue in the Body, and not cease through 
 the death of their original possessors. Thus nothing 
 is more certain than that, as an historical fact, God 
 Himself organized a visible Church on earth. 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 133 
 
 This divinely organized Church had, furthermore, 
 a two-fold function to perform : first, a pastoral func- 
 tion ; to build up, namely. Its own members in the 
 truth and in godliness of life ; and, secondly, a mis- 
 sionary function ; to spread, namely, into all the 
 world, and to gather into Its bosom and into oneness 
 with Itself all peoples. And the promise is given to 
 this Divine Catholic organism, that It should not die, 
 that Its Soul should not depart from It, " Lo, I am 
 with you always even unto the end of the world." 
 
 Nothing is more certain than that this entire 
 Organic Body, with the light with which It was en- 
 dowed, with Its truth-dispensing officers and grace- 
 dispensing Sacraments, was arranged on earth by a 
 loving God for the benefit of an ignorant and sinful 
 race. Nothing is more certain than that, prior to its 
 existence, men were in darkness touching some of the 
 most important and saving truths and ways of eternal 
 life ; and that light as to these matters did spread 
 forth among men from this Organic Body as a centre, 
 and from It alone, until Polytheism and its rites fell 
 all over Europe, and Olympus was depopulated. 
 Hence, as this Body was to be a Divine Teacher and 
 Dispenser of grace, an Administrator of Christ and of 
 His truths and of His gifts unto men, it is evident 
 
134 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 that It could not have been a mere ephemeral crea- 
 tion. God did not organize It on earth for some men 
 or for a few generations only ; but for all men in all 
 time; "Go ye: baptise all nations." Indeed Christ 
 promised to b^^ with It till the end. A priori^ It 
 possessed, as an organic Body, a continuous and 
 sacred life ; a continuous life and succession in Its 
 Ministry, in Its Sacraments, in Its Faith, and in Its 
 Traditions. It must therefore, as an organic undying 
 Bod}^, with Its rulers and teachers, Its ordinances, 
 rites, worship and light-giving powers, have passed on 
 through the centuries, and It must be in existence to- 
 day. 
 
 To kill It, is the essential act of murder, of which 
 all other murders are mere types ; for, to kill It, is no 
 less than the murder of God on earth, the repetition 
 of the tragedy on Calvary. To rob It of Its powers, is 
 the essential theft, of which all other thefts are types. 
 To set up a sect as a rival to It, that that sect may 
 bear children unto Christ, is the essential whoredom 
 and adultery, of which all other adulteries are but 
 types. And when the essential adultery has been 
 committed by a great people, it is comparatively easy 
 for them to look less sternly than they should on all 
 other adulteries, and to demand of their State Legis- 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 135 
 
 latures laws of easy divorce. Wilfully to misrepresent 
 and slander It, is the essential false-witness, of which 
 all other lying is a type. For, the four laws of the 
 Second Table, in which man's duty to man is summed 
 up, Thou shalt not hurt thy neighbor in his person, in 
 his property, in his good name, or in his chastity, have 
 their origin philosophically and theologically not in the 
 arbitrary will of God, or in the well-being of man, but 
 in the archetypal structure and well-being of God 
 Himself. All injury to man is sin, because it is a type 
 of an awful and corresponding outrage upon God. 
 Protestantism therefore is a sin, because it is a fearful 
 attack on the well-being of God on earth. 
 
 But to return ; if this Catholic Church, organized 
 by God 1800 years ago, is in existence to day, as I am 
 one of those human beings, sinful and ignorant by 
 nature, for whom Christ came and for whom He 
 organized His Church, as I need light and Sacra- 
 ments and guidance from divinely appointed superiors 
 as much as any one ever did in ancient Palestine, or 
 Corinth, or Ephesus, or Rome, or Antioch, I may not 
 therefore, pick and choose my ecclesiastical connec- 
 tions to-day among societies that any men have since 
 organized. As God Himself organized a Church for 
 me 1800 years ago, and promised to be with It till the 
 
136 Catholicity^ Protestantism atid Romanism. 
 
 end of time, I am left with no choice whatever in the 
 i 
 matter. If He had organized no Church Which was 
 
 to exist continuously, and with Which He was to be 
 till the end of the world, but had left men to organize, 
 sixteen hundred years afterwards, as many different 
 " churches " as they chose, I then might select from 
 among them any one that pleased my fallibility ; or I 
 might even set up a new one for myself; for I would 
 have as much right to organize a new church as an) 
 one else. But who am I ? I am not a Creator. I 
 cannot make either a new Church, or a new Sacrament, 
 any more than I can create a new particle of matter. 
 
 But, I hear you say, what are we to do in case 
 God's CathoHc Church should, on account of the 
 human infirmity that is in It, so decline as to need a 
 reformation in some respects ? Ought we not to 
 abandon Its Ministry and Sacraments, and go out 
 from It, as did Luther ? But this were to give up faith 
 in God. First, never should we cut ourselves off 
 from the life-giving and life-sustaining Sacraments 
 Such infirmities in the Church as you speak of can- 
 not poison the grace that God gives through His 
 Sacraments, any more than impurities in the air can 
 alter the sweet tones of a lute as they pass to my ear j 
 for the Church is perfect as well as imperfect. And, 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 137 
 
 secondly, if the Church ever needs a reformation, to 
 abandon It were to fly from our post as one of Its 
 forces of cure, and to forget Christ's promise to be 
 with It. Surely that promise is sanction that It will 
 throw off Its disease by the internal action of Him, 
 Who is within It as Its strong health-giving constitu- 
 tion. 
 
 Reformation ? Why this world is the realm of an 
 imperfect state of things at the best. Perfection in all 
 things is not to be hoped for even in the Church. 
 How then was such inevitable imperfection and 
 liability to err and to need reform to be managed ? 
 God came and organized it all into His Divine Catho- 
 lic Church. I am sure He knew best how to deal with 
 and cure the diseases of His Church, and that I have 
 no need to kill His Church on account of Its falling ill. 
 If I feel that I cannot do very much towards curing 
 Its diseases, I can at least do something ; I can do 
 more within It than I can if I were without Its pale. 
 And, at any rate, I must not forget that God remains 
 in His Church as Its principle of recovery. Surely I 
 should stay with Him, and cooperate with Him. If It 
 does not in every century keep on the exact mathemat- 
 ical straight line of perfection in all things, I am sure 
 that any other plan than God's for dealing with the im- 
 
T38 Catholicity^ Frotestafitism ami Romanism. 
 
 perfection would, in the long run, only leave matters 
 infinitely worse off for time and eternity. A fool is 
 he who thinks he can mend or do better than God's 
 work. I stand aghast before the result that would 
 have happened, had it been Protestantism instead of 
 Catholicity that the Goths and Vandals overwhelmed 
 and threw into the trough of the sea. Europe would 
 have foundered and gone down. 
 
 Since God, then, has organized a Church on earth 
 for the world, I have, I say, no liberty whatever in the 
 matter ; I must belong to that Church. If that 
 Church has Sacraments I must be baptized with Its 
 Baptism and must feed at Its Altars, and at no others. 
 I cannot countenance any others, even by my pres- 
 ence. For I should be countenancing by my presence 
 and connivance the essential robbery, the essential 
 murder, the essential slander and the essential adul- 
 tery themselves. If that Catholic Church has rulers 
 and teachers to guide its members and to dispense the 
 Faith, of which It was made the divine receptacle, I 
 must receive that Faith from them. With filial trust I 
 must come to that Church, strive to do my duty ac- 
 cording to Its directions, and with perfect assurance, 
 leave all the rest to God. As to Its Faith, It cannot 
 fail ; but if It fall ill in mere doctrine or manners, I 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 139 
 
 must stand by It and do my part towards effecting Its 
 cure. 
 
 Having reached this point, namely, Catholicity, 
 you will remember that we paused, before proceeding 
 to any subsequent questions, to examine the general 
 characteristics of the Catholicity into which we thus 
 found ourselves forced. 
 
 In our second Conference we found that this 
 Catholicity was a Life and an Organizer ; while Prot- 
 estantism was a Disorganizer and a Death. We 
 found, secondly, that the Omniscient God in His Body 
 on Earth utters through It to us and to the world the 
 Nicene Creed as the Infallible Truth, and that He 
 sets forth certain other fundamentals of truth. Now 
 faith, which comes in after all this exercise of our 
 reason and private judgment, is not an acquiescence 
 in our own opinions, but an humble reception of what 
 is thus spoken by God. We believe the Creed, that 
 is to say, not because we think what is said in it is 
 reasonable j not because it suits our fancy ; not be- 
 cause we have studied its truths out for ourselves ; 
 but only because God Himself speaks it daily to man 
 kind. But having accepted, without arguing, this in- 
 fallible statement of supernatural truth and the way 
 of salvation, we are surely permitted afterwards to 
 
140 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 examine and admire the Gift we have received. Nay- 
 it were an indignity both to the Gift and to the Giver 
 if we did not examine it with our grace-enlightened 
 reason. Here, then, is another function of reason in 
 the Church. We, therefore, then reverently analyzed 
 the Creed ; and glanced at the havoc which Protes- 
 tantism had wrought in it by tearing it into separate 
 pieces. 
 
 In the following Conference, we found, thirdly, 
 that the Catholic Church was both Divine and human \ 
 and displayed, therefore, not only perfections but im- 
 perfections ; that outside the Creed there was a re- 
 gion in the Church where mental action was allowed 
 to play ; that, owing to certain human imperfections, 
 a reformation of the VVestern part of the Church be- 
 came necessary in the sixteenth century ; that such 
 Reformation took place in England ; but that on the 
 Continent it went beyond all bounds, and assumed, 
 instead, the form of a Destruction of Catholicity. We 
 found that medieval abuses were, as causes, inade- 
 quate to account for that fell and mad destruction. 
 And we traced the real cause of Protestantism to that 
 basilisk in the fallen human heart, which is ever ready 
 to resist the principle of submission to Df'vine Au- 
 thority in matters of faith, and which thirteen hundred 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 141 
 
 years of war and turmoil at last availed to rouse intc 
 terrible action. 
 
 We found, fourthly, that while fragments of truth 
 were dispersed among the religions and philosophies 
 of the ancient world, Catholicity came in the fulness 
 of time, gathered these fragments together, and com- 
 pleted the rounded sphere of truth for the world \ 
 but that, sixteen hundred years subsequently. Prot- 
 estantism smote that sphere of truth into fragments 
 again, to lose them in infidelity. 
 
 We found, fifthly, that while Romanism was or- 
 ganic unity without diversity, and Protestantism was 
 diversity without organic unity, Catholicity was the 
 highest form of unity, namely, organic unity in variety. 
 
 And we closed by glancing at the frightful solifi- 
 dianism of Luther and his fellow-heretics, and the 
 consequent wreck of even common morality in Prot- 
 estant lands during the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. 
 
 All this time we have been resting back, I repeat, 
 at the answer to our Second Great Question, and ex- 
 amining the general characteristics of the Catholicity 
 into which we had been led. We have now reached 
 a time when we must look up and go on. But, in the 
 Catholic pathway before us, the road divides again, 
 
142 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 and we are face to face with our Third and last Great 
 Question. 
 
 For as I move forward to unite myself with the 
 Catholic Body, I am suddenly confronted with two 
 Bodies, each visible, each claiming to be Catholic, 
 each claiming to have had a continuous organic life 
 from the Apostles, each claiming the continuous 
 Catholic Ministry, Faith and Sacraments. They are, 
 indeed, alike in some respects ; they differ in others. 
 What am I to do ? There is nothing for me to do but 
 to pause before them, listen to their claims and decide 
 between them. 
 
 In what do they agree ? In accepting the Six 
 Great General Councils of the first seven hundred 
 and eighty years of the life of Catholicity ; in holding 
 the Nicene Creed ; in having Bishops, Priests and 
 Deacons ; in the necessity of the Apostolical Succes- 
 sion ; in the Sacraments and Sacramental System ; in 
 Baptismal Regeneration, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and 
 the Real Presence ; in prayers for the dead ; and in a 
 Ritual form of worship. Concerning these points, 
 then, we have nothing to do now. I shall hereafter, 
 merely however for brevity's sake, include all this, 
 about which there is no question, under the name of 
 The Nicene Creed. 
 
Catholicity and Roma?iisvi. 143 
 
 But over and above these, Roman Catholicism ha* 
 erected certain additional dogmas, which it declares 
 to be necessary to salvation. These, Anglican 
 Catholicity declares to be either false, or not neces- 
 sary to salvation. 
 
 The first of these points of difference which I shall 
 take up is this, namely ; the two bodies, Roman and 
 Anglican, differ as to what constitutes the unity of the 
 Church. Both hold that the Church is one ; but 
 Rome sets up the exclusive theory ; She claims that 
 She alone is that Catholic church ; in other words 
 that the church is one like a single individual ; and 
 that whosoever is not in agreement and communion 
 with the Bishop of Rome is not in the Catholic 
 Church at all. Formerly She did not claim this. 
 To-day, since the late Vatican decree, She claims it. 
 Anglican Catholicity, on the other hand, declares this 
 to be a novel and modern idea, an alteration of the 
 ancient idea. Anglican Catholicity holds up the in- 
 clusive theory. Its conception of the Catholic Church 
 includes every Communion which, accepting the Ni- 
 cene Creed and the Six General Councils, possesses 
 also an Apostolic Ministry, and therefore the Sacra- 
 ments, and therefore the Catholic Sacramental life ; 
 in other words that the visible Catholic Church is one 
 
144 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 like a family, rather than one like a single individual 
 and that the Bishop of Rome, by excommunicating 
 and anathematizing from time to time all who do not 
 agree with him in every additional dogma, which 
 Rome from time to time has defined, has been placing 
 himself out of communion with more and more of the 
 Catholic Church, and has brought trouble and fear- 
 ful discord into the Catholic Body ; that Satan, de- 
 siring to have him, is indeed " sifting him like wheat ;" 
 that he is indeed denying the Lord thrice, with 
 anathemas, and curses ; that he is indeed impetuous 
 and full of zeal, full of the things of this world, calling 
 down upon himself the Lord's solemn prophecy, 
 " Get thee behind me, Satan ; thou art an offence unto 
 me ; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, 
 but those that be of men ;" that he has altered the old 
 Apostolic theory of the unity of the Church ; and that 
 by the side of that old theory, the Catholic Church, 
 as defined by Rome, shrinks into something like a 
 mere sect and the prolific mother of sects. 
 
 Catholic Christendom, then, presents itself in two 
 vast and separate divisions ; namely, first. Catholics 
 not in communion with the see of Rome, and, secondly, 
 Catholics in communion with that see. The former 
 division comprises within itself the Greek Catholics, 
 
Catholicity and Romatiis7n. 145 
 
 the Armenian and Georgian Churches, the Anglicai 
 Catholics and the Alt-Catholics — in all, something over 
 one hundred millions of souls. The latter division 
 comprises the Roman Catholics alone ; in all, about a 
 hundred and seventy millions of souls. So that while 
 Protestants number seventy millions, the Catholics 
 number two hundred and seventy millions. The 
 former division of Catholics, comprising the Greeks 
 and the Anglicans with others, we may designate 
 under the generic title of " Catholics " or *' Old- Cath- 
 olics ; " the latter division under the generic title of 
 " New-Catholics," or Roman Catholics. The Old 
 Catholic Communions agree in asserting the paramount 
 importance of maintaining the old Apostolic constitu- 
 tion which the Catholic Church presented in the first 
 five centuries, and in maintairiing that Roman Cath- 
 olicism is one of the most modern of Religions. 
 
 Let us, then, to this question of what it is that 
 makes the unity of the Catholic Church. Rome 
 claims that unless a person agrees with the views in 
 addition to the Nicene Creed, which have been an- 
 nounced by the Pope in successive centuries subse- 
 quent to the Eighth, he is out of the Catholic Church 
 and not a Catholic at all. Bollinger, Reinkens and 
 thousands of others, Alt-Catholics, could not give intel- 
 7 
 
146 Catholicity i Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 lectual assent to the dogma of the Pope's infalUbility . 
 and were, therefore, excommunicated from itself by the 
 Roman part of the Church. But the mistake of Rome 
 is, that she thus rests the unity of the Church on some- 
 thing which flows from man ; namely the harmony of 
 men's wills and the consenting of their minds with the 
 will and mind of the Pope ; and that she no longer rests 
 the unity on something that flows from God. No : a 
 mere consenting together of minds cannot create a su- 
 pernatural and divine organic unity. For however two 
 men may agree together in certain conclusions and 
 become friends^ this cannot create them brothers and 
 of one flesh. The unity of the Church is something 
 that flows not from man or anything man can do, but 
 it is a gift from God. As God alone could make the 
 natural race of man organically one in Adam, so He 
 alone can make the supernatural Church organically 
 one in Christ. Its organic unity is derived from the 
 New Adam, Christ, in a certain way. We are grafted, 
 namely, into Christ by God in Baptism, and this unity 
 is then continued and completed by Christ's Body and 
 Blood in the Eucharist, Which not only incorporate 
 Him into us, and us into Him, but us into each other 
 as a one Communion — a one Body. We are one, not 
 because we agree in intellectual or historical con- 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 147 
 
 elusions ; but because we are all thus made one with 
 Christ He it is, that is the foundation and cause of 
 our unity. This organic unity descends from the 
 Head to the Body, uniting the Body to the Head and 
 the parts of the Body to each other. Thus our true 
 supernatural union with one another is not a mere 
 agreement of minds, but an organic union made by 
 God, as He unites us all to the one Christ and to each 
 other by the Catholic life-giving and curing Sacraments. 
 
 If mere discord of men's minds could of itself 
 break this organic Churchly unity, then a mere con- 
 cord of men's wills and minds could of itself create 
 such a unity. But this would make man able to cre- 
 ate a Church, to create organic unity, by something 
 going out from himself And, therefore, a mere 
 human society, a temperance society, a political party, 
 agglomerating together, could become of itself as 
 organically one supernaturally, as the race is organi- 
 cally one naturally. Why, this Roman Catholic theory 
 of unity is the very theory of Protestantism itself ; 
 and therefore the Pope is the greatest and most mag- 
 nificent Protestant of them all. And we are justified 
 in saying that the Catholic Church, as defined by 
 Rome, shrinks into something like a mere sect. 
 
 No, the Catholic Church is one like d family, not 
 
148 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 one like a single individual. The three or four Sisters 
 may unhappily fall out among themselves ; they may 
 not speak to each other ; they may not eat at the 
 same table with each other ; but all this wrangling 
 among the Sisters can not go down to the foundation 
 of the unity of the Family, and break that ; they are 
 Sisters still, (God made them so,) though they do not 
 speak to each other. The boughs and branches of 
 the one organic Catholic tree may be tossed by the 
 winds of mutual discussion and flap against each 
 other, but the tree remains one tree, because all hold 
 by the Catholic Sacraments to Christ. 
 
 Catholic Sacraments, I say. There may be beau- 
 tiful ordinances, but there are no Catholic Sacraments 
 without the Apostolic Ministr)\ The Anglican Apos- 
 tolic succession of Orders prior to 16 17, cannot be 
 impeached by Rome ; though heretofore, that is to 
 say before the Pope was declared infallible, it was 
 absolutely vital to her position to impeach them if 
 possible ; by foul means, if she could not by fair. 
 But even if there had been forty thousand irregulari- 
 ties in that succession prior to 161 7, at that date, at 
 any rate, Mark A. De Dominis, Roman Catholic 
 Archbishop of Spalato, went to England, and, joining 
 with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 149 
 
 of Londjn and Ely, consecrated George Monteigne 
 and Nicholas Felton to be Bishops ; and there is not 
 to-day a single Anglican Bishop, Priest or Deacon in 
 all the world, that cannot trace his Orders directly to 
 Monteigne and Felton, from them to Mark A. De 
 Dominis, and so directly into the Roman succession 
 itself. So that if Rome's Orders and Sacraments are 
 valid, ours are equally so. The two stand or fall to- 
 gether. 
 
 Permit me to quote here a somewhat lengthy, but 
 pertinent passage from Ffoulkes's late letter to Arch- 
 bishop Manning. 
 
 " My Lord," he says, " you have preceded me, yourself, 
 in expatiating on the workings of the Holy Spirit in the 
 Church of England with your accustomed eloquence, and 
 have not hesitated to attribute to Its members many 
 graces in virtue of the Sacrament of Baptism, which you 
 allow they administer, on the whole, validly ; but there you 
 stop. I feel morally constrained to go further still. If I 
 had to die for it, I could not possibly subscribe to the idea 
 that the Sacraments to which I am admitted week after 
 week in the Roman Communion — Confession and the 
 Holy Eucharist, for instance — confer any graces, any priv- 
 ileges, essentially different from what I used to derive from 
 those same Sacraments, frequented with the same disposi- 
 tions, in the Church of England. On the contrary, I go so 
 far as to say, that comparing one with another strictly, 
 some of the most edifying communions that I can remem- 
 ber in all my life, were made in the Church of England, 
 and they were administered to me by some that have since 
 submitted to be re-ordained in the Church of Rome; a 
 
150 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 ceremony, therefore, which, except as qualifying them to 
 undertake duty there, I must consider superfluous. As- 
 suredly, so far as the registers of my own spiritual life carry 
 me, I have not been able to discover any greater preserva- 
 tives from sin, any greater incentives to holiness, in any 
 that I have received since ; though in saying this, I am far 
 from intending any derogation to the latter. I frequent 
 them regularly ; I prize them exceedingly ; I have no fault 
 to find with their administration or their administrators in 
 general. All that I was ever taught to expect from them 
 they do for me, due allowance being made for my own 
 short-comings. Only, I cannot possibly subscribe to the 
 notion of my having been a stranger to their beneficial 
 effects till I joined the Roman Communion. And I deny 
 that it was my faith alone that made them what they were 
 to me before then, unless it is through my faith alone that 
 they are what they are to me now. Holding, myself, that 
 there are realities attaching to the Sacraments of an objec- 
 tive character, I am persuaded, and have been more and 
 more confirmed in this conviction as I have grown older, 
 that the Sacraments administered in the Church of Eng- 
 land are realities, objective realities, to the same extent as 
 any that I could now receive at your hands ; so that you 
 yourself, therefore, consecrated the Eucharist as truly, 
 when you were Vicar of Leamington, as you have ever 
 done since. This may or may not be your own belief. 
 But you shall be one of my foremost witnesses to its credi- 
 bility, for I am far from basing it on the experiences of my 
 own soul. 
 
 " My Lord, I have always been accustomed to look upon 
 the Sacraments as so many means of grace, and to estimate 
 their value not by the statements of theologians, but by 
 their effects on myself, my neighbors and mankind at 
 large. And the vast difference between the moral tone 
 of society in the Christian and the pagan worlds, I attribute 
 not merely to the superiority of the rule of life prescribed in 
 the Gospels, but to the inherent grace of the Sacraments 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 151 
 
 enabling- and assisting us to keep it to the extent we do 
 Taking this principle for my guide, I have been engaged 
 constantly, since I joined the Roman Communion, in insti- 
 tuting comparisons between members of the Church of 
 England and members of the Church of Rome generally, 
 and between our former and our present selves in particu- 
 lar ; or between Christianity in England and on the Conti- 
 nent ; and the result in each case has been to confirm me 
 in the belief, which I have already expressed, that the 
 notion of the Sacraments exercising any greater influence 
 upon the heart and life in the Church of Rome than in the 
 Church of England, admitting the dispositions of those who 
 frequent them to be the same in both cases, is preposterous. 
 * * * * What I have seen of Roman Catholics myselt, 
 since joining their church, all points to the same conclu- 
 sion. Till then I knew them only by report; which, 
 founded on prejudice, was far from being in their favor ; 
 and I was horrified to find how shamefully it had mis- 
 represented them. I found them — I mean the educated 
 classes — all that in general estimate, members of a Chris- 
 tian church should be ; God-serving, charitable, conscien- 
 tious, refined, intelligent ; and I could discern nothing 
 idolatrous or superstitious in their worship, hot anything 
 at variance with first principles in their daily life. At home 
 or abroad I was equally surprised to find them so different 
 from what my traditional informants had described them ; 
 with so much to admire where I had supposed there was 
 so much to reprobate. But afterwards, when my first 
 emotions consequent on this discovery had subsided, when 
 I came to ask myself the question, are these then the only 
 true Christians that you have ever known in your life ; and 
 till you conversed with them, had you never conversed with 
 a true Christian before ? I can scarely describe the recoil 
 it occasioned in me ! Why my own father and mother 
 would have compared with the best of them in all the 
 virtues ordinarily possessed by Christians living in thff 
 world and discharging their duties conscientiously towards 
 
152 Catholicity^ Protestantism a?id Romanism. 
 
 God and their neighbors, in, through, and for Christ. * * ♦ 
 Then I have had relatives and friends, in numbers, mem 
 bers of the Church of England, whose homes I will under- 
 take to say are, to all intents and purposes, as thoroughly 
 Christian as any to be found elsewhere ; and it would be 
 sheer affectation or hypocrisy in me, were I to pretend the 
 contrary ; or else to claim for my own friends and relatives 
 any peculiar excellence distinguishing them from average 
 specimens of the Anglican body. For a calm, unpresum- 
 ing, uniform standard of practical Christianity, I have seen 
 nothing as yet amongst ourselves in any country superior 
 to that of the English parsonage and its surroundings. 
 Go where I will, I am always thrown back upon one of 
 these as the most perfect ideal of a Christian family ; a 
 combination amongst its members of the highest intelli- 
 gence with the most unsullied purity and earnest faith I 
 ever witnessed on earth. 
 
 " If it be said that faith and integrity of purpose make 
 members of the Church of England what they are without 
 the Sacraments in mature life, by what argument, I should 
 like to know, can it be proved that it is not to their faith 
 and integrity of purpose solely that members of the Roman 
 Catholic Church are indebted likewise for all the progress 
 they make ? The only test of the efficaciousness of the 
 Sacraments appreciable by common sense lies in their in- 
 fluence upon conduct. If, therefore, it were capable of 
 proof, as distinct from assertion, which it is not, both that 
 all the Sacraments administered in the Church of England 
 save one, were shams, and all administered in the Church 
 of Rome were without exception realities, how comes it 
 that we are not incomparably more exalted characters our- 
 selves than we were formerly, or that Roman Catholic 
 countries on the Continent are not incomparably more 
 penetrated to the core with Christianity than England } " 
 
 This gift of Sacramental unity to Catholicity is 
 
Catholicity afid Roma?iism. 153 
 
 divine. And so long as the Apostolic Ministry and 
 Sacraments continue, man cannot destroy the unity 
 that God makes through them, any more than man 
 can destroy a particle of matter. Men may, indeed, 
 do acts towards each other that are inconsistent with 
 it \ but that will be fallible man's inconsistency with 
 what God has done, not man's destruction of what 
 God has done. For let us advance a step, if you 
 please. 
 
 This divine gift of unity requires of us, of course, 
 a corresponding duty; namely, mutual love and 
 unison of wills among those who are organically one. 
 And the natural expression of this unison of wills and 
 mutual love is intercommunion between all parts of 
 the one Catholic Church. But if, as is unhappily the 
 case, intercommunion is temporarily suspended be- 
 tween the parts of the Church, so that the hundred 
 and seventy millions do not communicate with the 
 hundred millions, the underlying unity coming from 
 the action of God, that binds them together into one 
 Catholic Church, is neither forfeited nor broken. 
 
 The hundred millions of Old Catholics, Greeks, 
 
 Russo-Greeks, Georgians, Armenians, Alt-Catholics 
 
 and Anglicans, hold that Rome's exclusive claim to 
 
 be the whole Church, is not only a most pregnant 
 
 7* 
 
154 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 error, fraught with untold evils, but also an exhibition 
 of the most stupendous arrogance and pride. There 
 is positively no warrant for it either in Scripture or 
 in history. The sacramental theory has warrant in 
 both. 
 
 It has warrant in Scripture; for saith St. Pau 
 touching the Sacrament of Baptism, " For as the 
 body is one and hath many members, and all the 
 members of that one body being many, are one body ; 
 so also is Christ. For by one spirit we are all baptized 
 into one body.'' And saith St. Paul again, touching 
 the Eucharist, " The bread which we break, is it not 
 the Communion of the Body of Christ ? For we being 
 many are one bread and one body ^ for we are all partak- 
 ers of that one bread." In both these passages the 
 cause of the unity is declared to be the Sacraments, 
 " For we are all baptized into one body." " We are 
 one bread and one body. For we are all partakers 
 of that one bread." Again to the Galatians, " For as 
 many of you as have been baptized into Christ have 
 put on Christ, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." 
 But where in Scripture is there a passage declaring 
 that the organic unity of the Church is created in any 
 other, and antagonistic way ? The Scripture indeed, 
 hav'ng set up the Sacramental unity of the Catholic 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 155 
 
 Church, could not declare also an antagonistic theory 
 of unity without stultifying Itself. 
 
 This sacramental theory has warrant too in history 
 as well as in Scripture. For the exclusive theory of 
 Rome was resisted from the time it made its first faint 
 appearance in the Catholic Church until to-da}'. In 
 the early centuries the whole Eastern part of the 
 Catholic Church would not listen to it an instant. As 
 it grew in strength and insolence during the darkest 
 time of the Middle Ages, the whole Eastern or Greek 
 part of the Catholic Church, at that time by far the 
 largest, most enlightened and numerous part, with 
 the Patriarch of Constantinople at its head, rose and 
 excommunicated the Bishop of Rome and all his ad- 
 herents. Thus four out of the five great Patriarchates 
 of the world cut off the one Western or Roman 
 Patriarchate. The Roman theory then, left to itself, 
 easily gained additional strength and self-assertion in 
 the West, until in the sixteenth century the Catholic 
 part of the church in England could endure it no 
 longer. On it went increasing, until in the nineteenth 
 century the German, French, and Swiss Alt-Catholics 
 could bear the strain not another day. So the Roman 
 part of the Church cut itself off first from the whole 
 Eastern part of the church, then from the Anglican; 
 
156 Catholicity, Protestantism a7id Romanism. 
 
 and then from the Alt-Catholic part. And the Vati 
 can, forsooth, with its Protestant theory of unity, sits 
 oblivious, with a kind of self-conscious innocence, 
 among these turmoils of the centuries which it hath 
 introduced into the Catholic Church. So a man 
 brings powder into a fair and stately mansion, blows 
 it up, and then sits down in one miserable torn room 
 and goes off into a revery on the loveliness of a whole 
 and unharmed mansion. Protestantism, whether out- 
 side of Rome, or sitting crowned with the tiara on the 
 Papal throne itself, is, indeed, not a life and an or- 
 ganizer but a disorganizer and a death. 
 
 The Pope of Rome, although he does not by any 
 means reach back into the earlier centuries of the life 
 of the Catholic Church, is yet an individual of some 
 considerable length. And it certainly is not an edify- 
 ing spectacle to find him forgetting to-day what he 
 said yesterday about this very matter of Sacramental 
 unity. To-day, since the Vatican Decree of Infalli- 
 bility, it is Rome alone that is the Catholic Church \ 
 but yesterday, that is to say, in the thirteenth century, 
 Pope Gregory Xth, in summoning the Council of 
 Florence, at which an attempt was made to heal the 
 difficulty between the Greek or Eastern and the Latin 
 or Western parts of the Church, uses this language 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 157 
 
 concerning the Catholic Church, namely : " Because 
 of our extreme bitterness in beholding the rent of the 
 Catholic Church foreshadowed in the net of Peter, the 
 fisherman, that brake for the multitude of fishes it en- 
 closed J we do not say divided as regards Its Faith * * 
 but notoriously and lamentably divided as regards Its 
 faithful m€mbers" To-day, it is Rome alone that is 
 the Catholic Church ; but yesterday, that is to say, in 
 the fifteenth century, Pope Eugenius IVth said to his 
 envoys, " It is for the union of the Eastern and West- 
 ern Church, so long and so ardently desired by us, 
 ihat you are sent ; " or, as he told the Greek Catho- 
 Jics, when he despaired of such restoration of inter- 
 communion, "In what shall we be benefited if we 
 fail to unite the Church of God.'' Ah, instead of 
 claiming, then, that Rome alone is the Catholic 
 Church, he asserts that the Catholic Church of God 
 included other Communions besides Rome, the four 
 other Patriarchates besides his own ; and that, instead 
 of its being true that whosoever was not in commu- 
 nion with him was out of the Catholic Church, he 
 admits that he himself was not in communion with 
 the whole Catholic Church. In the fifteenth century, 
 at any rate, he included in the Catholic Church of 
 God, as Anglicans do to-day, the Old Catholics of 
 
158 Catholicity y Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 that time, who stood stiffly against him for the ancient 
 constitution of that Church. 
 
 Indeed Ffoulkes, himself at the time a Roman Cath- 
 olic, writing before the decree of Infallibility, says as 
 follows : viz., " The formal teaching of the Popes, ever 
 since the rupture (/. e. between the Greek Catholics and 
 the Roman Catholics,) has been that the church is di- 
 vided as regards her members; and that there are 
 Churches forming part of the Catholic Church which 
 are, and have been for ages, out of communion with the 
 R'^man See * * * "J- They most unquestionably have 
 conceded that what we call the Roman Catholic 
 Church has not constituted the whole Church ; and 
 that they themselves have not spoken at the head of 
 the whole Church since the rupture between the Greek 
 and Roman parts of Catholicity." " Furthermore," 
 continues this Roman Catholic writer, " as one of the 
 most warmly debated points in modern times has been 
 the power of the Popes and their true relation to the 
 Church, who can fail to be struck with the absence of 
 any formal assertion on their part that the terms 
 * Catholic ' and ' Roman Catholic ' are strictly convert 
 ible ; with the fact that they have never striven to 
 appropriate the term * Catholic,' pure and simple, to 
 their own Communion, but have commonly called it 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 159 
 
 themselves, and been content that it should be called 
 by others, the Roman Catholic Church as being its 
 strict and adequate title." In accordance with this, 
 what says the Creed of Pius, according to which every 
 pervert to Rome has to pronounce his profession of 
 faith ? " I, N — N — , with a firm faith, believe and 
 profess all and every one of those things which are 
 contained in that creed, which the Holy Roman Cath- 
 olic Church maketh use of." The Missal, too, is 
 called not the Catholic, but the Roman Missal. Mr. 
 Ffoulkes continues: *' Where, indeed, is the part of 
 Christendom seriously purporting to call itself Thi 
 Catholic Church in these days? Roman Catholic, 
 Anglo-Catholic, Orthodox Eastern, all in their degree 
 seem influenced by some hidden spell to abstain from 
 arrogating to themselves or attributing to each other 
 the Epithet " Catholic " without qualification, as it is 
 applied to the Church in the Creed." 
 
 However, gentlemen, this was written by a Roman 
 Catholic prior to 1870. But since it was written, the 
 Pope has been declared infallible \ and that has 
 changed matters with Rome very much. The decree 
 of Papal Infallibility rids her of a load of troubles she 
 formerly had. In order to relieve herself of the fearful 
 charge, and fact too, of being not only an openly 
 
i6o Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 schismatical body in England, but also heretical as 
 violating provisions of the First Six General Councils, 
 it has heretofore, I repeat, been of vital importance to 
 her to impeach, if not by fair then by foul means, the 
 validity of Anglican orders. The position of the Greek 
 Catholic Church, whose faith and orders it had not 
 been vital to her to impugn, was nevertheless another 
 ugly and unanswerable fact against her. But no mat- 
 ter for all this now. Since the Vatican decree, and ac 
 cording to that decree, Rome solely is the whole 
 Church ; and every thing else, however Catholic it may 
 have been before, is to her a mere sect. For since 
 that decree no unimpeachability on the head of ortho- 
 doxy, of valid orders, of jurisdiction, or of practical 
 working, any longer makes the least difference to her. 
 She, with her now infallible Pope, claiming to be the 
 only Christian Church, can enter upon the jurisdiction 
 of any non-papal Bishop, whether Anglican or Greek, 
 and set up her Episcopal Thrones as the only Thrones 
 having Christian authority. The Pope with one plunge 
 of his spurs up to their rowels has sent the Roman 
 steed, at least in its own estimation, bounding clear 
 out of all ugly facts of the past and present, in which 
 it had been tumbling entangled. Rome is in the serio- 
 comic attitude of one who, finding that History over- 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, i6l 
 
 rams her claims, leaps away from History. However, 
 the past is nevertheless secure ; and History is a sad 
 tell-tale, and an invincible advocate. And as Rome 
 thus bounds away from it all, the hundred millions 
 gaze at her act with sorrow, not unmingled with quiet, 
 courteous, but triumphant mirth. The Patriarch of 
 Rome had reached a point, under the developments 
 of hostile discussion, where he was compelled to break 
 either with Romanism or with History. 
 
 Ah, what a dream of the distraught it is, for Rome 
 to imagine for an instant that she can turn aside 
 God's Hand from its work, that she can shut off the 
 action of His own appointed Sacraments as they go 
 forth to bind men into organic unity with His Christ 
 and with each other j that she can smite that unity as 
 with a painted wooden sword, and, by her Protestant 
 theory, that the mere concord of men's intellects can 
 make a one organic Church, or their mere discord 
 break It, sunder what God Himself hath united. If 
 Protestantism is the sin of essential adultery, Roman- 
 ism is the essential sin of divorce. 
 
 But this argument of Catholicity's touching the 
 Sacramental unity of the Church is not yet quite fully 
 developed. For were it taken without any qualifica- 
 tion whatever, it would be incomplete and prove too 
 
1 62 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 much. There is something else to be said as to dis- 
 cord of mind in the Church, or all in the Church were 
 left in utter confusion. 
 
 Most decidedly, a heretic, one who presumes to 
 deny anything that God Himself speaks in the Creed, 
 forfeits the Sacraments. And most decidedly, on 
 that forfeiture, Christ i. e., God, Who makes the 
 Sacramental unity of the Church, hath the power 
 and the right to break what He hath made, by excom- 
 municating the heretic. 
 
 But the outward visible part, or Body of Christ, 
 through which He acts, is the Catholic Church ; it is 
 not the Pope alone that is Christ's Body Mystical. 
 
 Now for Christy thus through the Catholic Church, 
 His Body, to cut off a heretic from Its unity, because 
 that heretic will not submit to what God has said, is 
 one thing ; but for the Bishop of Rome^ who surely is 
 not Jesus Christ, acting clearly at his own instance, 
 to attempt to cut a man off because that man will not 
 submit to his views, uttered on his own responsibility 
 from time to time, and, in the language of the Infalli- 
 bility Decree, ** not because of the consent of the rest," 
 even of the Roman part " of the Church,'* is quite 
 another, and a very different thing. 
 
 Were the Pope the Vicar of Christ, were the whole 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 163 
 
 Catholic Church summed up in the Pope, were he, as 
 he stands in the Vatican, the incarnation, the visible 
 presence of God, the Body of God on Earth, then his 
 excommunication would, of course, be Christ's action. 
 But Catholicity hath denied and resisted these Papal 
 claims from their very first appearance. We shall prove 
 by and by that these claims are baseless. No, it is the 
 Church that is the incarnation of Christ on Earth, and 
 not the Pope. And as it was Christ and not the Pope 
 that made the Sacramental unity of the Church, so it 
 is Christ alone in His Church, and not the Pope, that 
 has power to break an individual or a body of individ- 
 uals away from it. 
 
 The whole Church, that is to say Christ, hath ex- 
 communicated Protestantism. But the Roman com- 
 munion has not been excommunicated by the whole 
 Church, but only by the Greek /d^r/ of the Church. It 
 is therefore not excommunicated from Catholicity at 
 all. And the Greek Church has not been excommu- 
 nicated by the whole church, but only by the Roman 
 part of the Church ; the Greek Church is therefore not 
 excommunicated from Catholicity at all. And so of 
 the Anglican and Alt-Catholic Communions. Herein 
 then is seen the difference between the divisions of the 
 Catholic Church and the utter separation of all Prot- 
 
164 Catholicity^ P?'otestantism and Romanism, 
 
 estant sects from the Catholic Church. The latter are 
 schismatic bodies ; the different parts of the Catholic 
 Church are not in schism, but are suffering under the 
 evils of a disruption of Catholic concord. 
 
 But, you will say, suppose now, that when Christ in 
 his Catholic Church has cut off a heretic, that heretic 
 carries away with him the Apostolic Orders and Sacra- 
 ments ; what then ? Ah, gentlemen, let history answer. 
 When Christ has cut off. He has invariably brought 
 to naught a really heretical sect, notwithstanding its 
 Sacraments. History's answer is, It is hopeless thus 
 to attempt to defeat God by carrying away the Sacra- 
 ments. Where are the Arians, the Pelagians, the 
 Apollinarians, the Macedonians, the Nestorians, the 
 Eutychians, and innumerable bodies that went off with 
 the orders, some of those bodies of vast size too ? God 
 speedily ended them ; and their very names are 
 strange to our ears. 
 
 But compare such rapid death and oblivion of 
 what God hath cut off, with the unharmed and con- 
 tinuous life and vigor through the ages of what the 
 Pope alone has tried to cut off, if you would have a 
 commentary upon a real excommunication from the 
 Catholic Church, in contrast with an excommunica- 
 tion which is a mere sham and travesty. Behold the 
 
Catholicity and Romanistn. 165 
 
 vast Greek Catholic Church with its thousand years of 
 mighty life, and its enormous growth and vigor since 
 the separation between the East and West ; behold, 
 too, the Anglican Catholic Church. A sect, from the 
 time it is cut off from the Catholic Church, never re- 
 covers j it withers ; its career is always downwards to 
 death. But the Anglican Church shows that it has 
 the Catholic life. For even after having been over- 
 whelmed with Protestants in pulpit, Episcopal Throne, 
 Theological Seminary, and pew, she is nevertheless 
 recovering ; for she is rooted in the Catholic Tree ; 
 and against no part of the Catholic Church can the 
 gates of Hell prevail. 
 
FIFTH CONFERENCK. 
 
 Constitution of the Church, in Its Priestly, Sacri- 
 ficial, Prophetic, and Regal Functions, according 
 TO Catholicity. The Church's Government Episco- 
 pal, NOT Papal. Gallicanism , a Logical Mistake. 
 Hierarchy within the Episcopate. Papal Supremacy 
 not sustained by Scripture. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 A second fundamental issue between Catholicity 
 and Romanism is this, namely : Catholicity claims 
 that Romanism is the slow but stubborn development 
 of an absolute monarchy in the Latin part of the 
 Church, unknown to early days, and the prolific 
 mother of many other deviations from Catholicity. 
 The efforts of Rome to alter the government of the 
 Church from Episcopal to Papal, have been resisted 
 by the rest of the Church from the first. The entire 
 contest between Catholicity and Romanism has not 
 really changed since it began. But since the Vatican 
 decree of 1870, it has been practically narrowed to 
 the above single issue. For, if the Papal Supremacy 
 be right, the entire Catholic Church must, of course; 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 167 
 
 accept it ; and, with it, all the rest of Romanism. 
 The Papal Supremacy is, therefore, the fortress of 
 Rome's position. If that stands, she stands ; if that 
 falls, the war is over. 
 
 Wher the Bishop of Rome sent letters to the 
 Patriarch of Constantinople, inviting him to attend 
 the late Vatican Council in 1870, in declining the in- 
 vitation for himself and his brother Bishops, and de- 
 clining to open, or even to lift from the table where 
 the papal delegates had placed it, the elegant case in 
 which the invitation was enclosed, the venerable 
 Patriarch expressed in the following words the fixed 
 attitude of all parts of the Catholic Church not in 
 communion with the Papal see, viz : 
 
 *' Since it is manifest that there was a Church in 
 existence ten centuries ago. Which held the same doc- 
 trines in the east as in the west, in the Old as in the 
 New Rome, let us each recur to that ; and see which 
 of us has added aught, which has diminished aught 
 therefrom. And let all that may have been added be 
 struck off, if any there be, and whatever it be ; and 
 let all that has been diminished therefrom be re- 
 added, if any there be, and whatever it be. And then 
 we shall all, unawares, find ourselves united in the 
 same symbol of Catholic Orthodoxy." 
 
1 68 Catholicity^ Protestantistn and Romanism. 
 
 In a similar strain, and with almost identical 
 language, did the Patriarch of Alexandria also reply 
 to the Roman messengers that conveyed a like in- 
 vitation to him and to his brother Bishops. He 
 declined communion with the see of Rome, and with 
 all churches adhering to that see ; and he declined 
 even meeting in council with them, till the Pope 
 should recede from his usurpations. All was cour- 
 teous and diplomatic, for each eastern Patriarch re- 
 ceived formally, and in full Canonicals, the messen- 
 gers of the Patriarch of Rome, but all was politely 
 firm. 
 
 In the investigation of this vital issue between 
 Catholicity and Romanism, let me first present to you 
 the ancient constitution of the Church according to 
 Catholicity; after which we will view the radically 
 different autocracy which Rome has succeeded in 
 imposing on her adherents, and which she insists that 
 the rest of the Catholic Church shall accept. We 
 begin, then, with the Catholic theory. 
 
 Jesus Christ is four-fold ; He is Priest, Sacrifice, 
 Prophet, and King. First, then, according to Catho- 
 licity, there is but one Priest, Jesus Christ. He alone 
 can offer a Sacrifice ; He alone can forgive sins. 
 
 Now one purpose for which He is here within the 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 169 
 
 visible Catholic Cliurch is to act as Priest. But if, as 
 Priest He had remained invisible, His Priestly Func- 
 tion would not have adapted itself to the conditions 
 of time and space, nor to the wants of those who are 
 in the Church of time and space. To make Himself 
 accessible to us as the sole Priest, He must break out 
 into Priestly visibility. He takes to Himself there- 
 fore, a special visible Priestly Body within the Church. 
 Now if the Catholic Church consisted of but one 
 small parish, He need only have taken to Himself 
 a single earthly Priest for an outward visible Body, 
 through which His Priestly Function could act. But 
 as the earth is extensive. His Priestly Function, on 
 striking its medium and becoming visible, breaks up 
 into many earthly Priests, for the manifold distribu- 
 tion and practical application of itself all round the 
 globe. Thus it is that the One Priest is enabled audi- 
 bly to pronounce the words of pardon and of blessing, 
 of oblation and of consecration, every where simul- 
 taneously. Nevertheless, all these earthly Priests 
 form, after all, only one organic Body ; a single Body 
 that has a manifold presence in the Church ; a single 
 Body the Soul of which is the Priestly Function of 
 Jesus Christ. For each separate earthly Priest is but 
 a reiteration, on account of the conditions of space, of 
 
1 7© Catholicity^ Protestantism atid Romanism, 
 
 every other Priest, as "one only of innumerable 
 shadows cast by the same object." Being reiterations 
 of each other, Catholic Priests are all equal. Then, 
 in this one Body of the earthly Priesthood, in order 
 to avoid differences in action, and the conflicts, which 
 the actual multiplicity of Priests on earth would 
 occasion, certain ecclesiastical regulations have from 
 the first been observed, restraining each Priest to a 
 local district. In short, in like manner as Christ 
 stands in the world, God incarnate in the Great Body 
 of the Church, so He stands within the Church itself, 
 a Priest, yea rather the Priest incarnate and visible in 
 the great one Sacerdotal Body, an incarnation within 
 an incarnation, a visible body within a visible body. 
 
 Every earthly Priest, therefore, holds his power to 
 exercise Priestly functions not from his Bishop, but 
 directly from God. He preaches, offers the Sacrifice, 
 baptises, and pardons, in virtue of the power which 
 the Holy Ghost has given to him. The Bishop is, 
 indeed, the superior and the pastor of the Priest, but 
 the Priest is not a simple vicar of the Bishop. To 
 claim that he is, is to take a first step towards Roman 
 ism. Men, though they may be channels through which 
 power comes, are never the source whence it comes. 
 It is Christ in His Church that is this source. And 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 171 
 
 Christ, through His instrument the Bishop, gives the 
 Sacerdotal power directly to the Priest at Ordination. 
 Rome, on the other hand, claims that the plenitude 
 of all power is in the Pope; that the Bishops are 
 merely vicars of the Pope, and the Priests merely 
 vicars of the Bishops. 
 
 Secondly. As there is but one Priest, so there is 
 but one Sacrifice, Jesus Christ. As He is a *' Priest 
 forever," the Apostle tells us " it is of necessity " that 
 He should " have somewhat to offer " forever. Being, 
 then, the one Priest in Heaven and on earth. He pleads 
 His one Sacrifice simultaneously in Heaven and on 
 earth before the Father. On the Heavenly Altar 
 He ever stands, " The Lamb as It had been slain." 
 This great and perpetual Sacrificial transaction of the 
 " Priest forever," on striking the medium of space 
 and time, adapts itself to the conditions of space and 
 time. Like His Priesthood it. too, breaks out into 
 visibility in the visible Church. 
 
 Now if the Church consisted of but one small 
 parish, there would be needed but one visible Altar 
 and one visible Eucharistic Sacrifice for the realiza- 
 tion to us of the one great perpetual Sacrificial trans- 
 action of Jesus Christ. But, as before, the earth is 
 extensive. When, therefore, Christ's act, as He 
 
172 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 perpetually displays His glorious wounds before God 
 the Father, strikes the medium of space and time, it 
 breaks out into the many Altars of space and the re- 
 peated Eucharists of time, in order to meet, by mani- 
 fold distribution, the wants of that part of the one 
 Church which is subject to the conditions of extended 
 space and of continuous time. 
 
 I do not know how it is with you, gentlemen, but 
 to my faith the distinctions that are drawn between 
 Christ's own Body in Heaven and Christ's Sacra- 
 mental Body on earth, as though they were in some 
 mysterious way two separate existences, the one im- 
 movable in an astronomic Heaven and the other 
 movable and coming through space to the earth, are 
 incomprehensible jargon. They are born of the Con- 
 tinental Reformation ; they are a logical denial of the 
 unity of the Church Militant and Triumphant ; they 
 suppose Eternity to be simply a very long Time, in- 
 stead of something essentially different from Time; 
 and they suppose Heaven to be a very far and very 
 fair portion of space, instead of something super- 
 natural, and essentially different from space. Church 
 Militant and Triumphant, instead of occupying two 
 separate portions of space quite distant from each 
 other, is a One Body, existing, however, under two 
 
CathoHcity and Romanism, 173 
 
 conditions. It stands, as a whole, in the immedi- 
 ate Presence of God the Father ; It is, as such un- 
 divided Body, standing in the Presence of God 
 the Father, at once within space and not within 
 space J It exists equally in Time with its conditions 
 and in Eternity with its different conditions ; It is at 
 the same time visible and invisible. Its Priest and 
 and Its Sacrifice exist, therefore, under the same two 
 conditions; within space, namely, and not within 
 space, in Time and also in Eternity. Its Sacrifice is 
 therefore, at once invisible because it exists within 
 the Heavenly conditions, and visible because it 
 exists within the earthly conditions, these differing 
 conditions not dividing the one Sacrifice. So that, 
 after all, at all the Altars, all over the earth, and all 
 through tinie, it is not many separate Eucharists, 
 many separate Sacrifices. No, it is all one only 
 Food ; one only everflowing Blood ; one perpetual 
 Eucharist, one single perpetual Sacrifice, Jesus Christ. 
 Thus all the combined earthly Altars, though many, 
 are after all one only Altar standing at once in Heav- 
 en and on earth ; and moreover, as such Altar, they 
 all form simply the one visible part of the Heavenly 
 Altar, as inseparable from It as a body is from its 
 soul. So that when we look at our earthly Altar, we 
 
174 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romamsm, 
 
 are merely looking at an outward and visible part of 
 the great alone Altar of the great alone Priest, where- 
 on He stands, both visible and invisible, " The Lamb 
 as it had been slain." If I may be permitted a figure 
 to make the idea perhaps clearer ; though our earthly 
 Altars are many, yet they stand, so to speak, all 
 round an unbroken circumference, the common center 
 of which is the Heavenly Altar where The Lamb is. 
 So that when we each kneel before and gaze at our 
 earthly Altar, in whatever church, we are all adoring 
 with the angels and looking in directly, and as 
 through a circumference of lenses, each upon the 
 same Heavenly Altar at the common centre of the 
 whole circle, where stands our Sacrifice and our God, 
 Who, for our sake in space and time, comes out into 
 Sacrificial visibility all round the circumference. 
 Thus the God-man, whom we behold and adore at our 
 several earthly Altars, is the God-man Who is on the 
 Heavenly Altar ; and in adoring Him at our earthly 
 Altars we are adoring Him on the Heavenly Altar ; for 
 we of the Church Militant are as much in the Presence 
 of God the Father, as are the angels of Heaven. 
 
 Permit me to say here, parenthetically, even 
 though it be extraneous to the current of our present 
 thought, a word or two touching a difficulty that may 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 175 
 
 have presented tself to your minds. Catholicity, you 
 will say, declares that the Sacrifice presented before 
 the Father at Its Altars is the Body of Christ ; and 
 yet It also declares that the Church is the Body of 
 Christ; and is there not here an inconsistency ? But 
 the mental hesitancy, into which these two state- 
 ments throw the non-catholic mind, clears itself 
 away at once, when we consider the absolute unity 
 of Christ, and the unity of His action. For, He 
 is the One Priest offering Himself as the One 
 Sacrifice. If we are to join Him in pleading that 
 Sacrifice, we must become a part of Him ; other- 
 wise it would not be Himself offering Himself, 
 His Body offering His Body. Thus He is the 
 Church as Offerer, and He is at the same time the 
 Eucharist as the Thing offered. The apparent incon- 
 sistency grows inevitably out of the marvelous fact 
 that Christ is both Priest and Victim. Thus, to deny 
 that the Catholic Church is the Body of Christ, must 
 end logically in the Unitarian denial that Christ is 
 both Priest and Victim. 
 
 Thirdly. Our Lord is also Prophet, that is to say 
 Teacher. For, as a Prophet is one who states the 
 underlying truths and laws in accordance with which 
 events happen, he is primarily a teacher, and only 
 
17^3 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 subordinately a foreteller. When this Teaching 
 Function of our Lord strikes the medium of space and 
 time, it likewise comes out into visibility within the 
 Church, breaking into many visible earthly preachers 
 for the manifold distribution and practical application 
 of itself to all parts of the earthly Church. So that 
 the combined Catholic pulpits are the one outward 
 Body of the one Teacher, Christ. 
 
 Fourthly. But Christ is not only Priest, Sacrifice 
 and Prophet. He is also King, or Ruler. If, as 
 Ruler in the Church, He remained a mere impalpa- 
 ble influence, the invisibility of this Regal power 
 would not only be inconsistent with the visibility of 
 the Church Itself, and of His other functions in It, 
 but it would leave all order to the incertitude of 
 men's differing but honest impressions as to what 
 ought to be done, as each would think he was guided 
 in some mystical, transcendental way aright. Christ 
 would no more have adapted Himself as such Ruler 
 to the conditions of time and space or to the needs 
 of those in the Church of time and space, than He 
 would if He had remained invisible as a Priest, or as 
 a Sacrifice, or as a Teacher. No, all is harmonious. 
 His Church Catholic is a complete and consistent 
 system. His Ruling Prerogative, therefore, on strik 
 
Catholicity and Ro7nanism, 177 
 
 ing the medium of time and space, comes out also 
 into visibility. 
 
 If the Church were only one small diocese, His 
 Ruling Function would need for its outward earthly 
 body through which to act, one earthly Bishop only. 
 But, again, the earth is extensive. Christ's Ruling 
 Prerogative, therefore, on striking its medium, adapts 
 itself to the conditions of space, by breaking into 
 many Bishops, for the manifold distribution and ap- 
 plication of itself within the Church all round the 
 world. 
 
 Now just here is the root idea of the Episcopal 
 government of the Catholic Church as opposed to the 
 Papal autocratic government. For, as there is in the 
 Church but one Priest visible and invisible, Jesus 
 Christ, so there is in the Church but one King or 
 Bishop visible and invisible. All the earthly Bishops 
 together form the one visible organic Kingly Body, 
 of which the inward and inseparable living Soul is 
 the Ruling Function of Christ. For each separate 
 earthly Bishop is but a reiteration, on account of the 
 conditions of space, of every other Bishop, as one of 
 " innumerable shadows cast by the same " Kingly 
 object j and, being reiterations of each other, they 
 are all equal. Every Bishop, therefore, holds his 
 8* 
 
178 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 power to exercise episcopal functions, not from the 
 Pope, but directly from Christ. 
 
 It is in the Combined Episcopate, then, all over 
 the world, that we have the One Bishop, Christ, 
 standing everywhere visible to us as King ; just as in 
 the combined Priesthood we have the one Priest, 
 Christ, standing everywhere visible as Priest. It is 
 in the Combined Episcopate, then, that we have the 
 Vicar of Christ on earth, and not in any single one 
 of the Bishops. For the single Bishop of Rome to 
 set himself up, regardless of all the rest, as the alone 
 Vicar of Christ, is a tremendous deviation from the 
 Apostolic constitution of the Church. It is to de- 
 stroy that Regal Body on earth in which the great 
 Ruler, Christ, stands visible as Ruler everywhere 
 throughout the Church. It is treason and Regicide. 
 It puts a usurper on the throne in place of Jesus 
 Christ's own royal Body. It is an attempt to change 
 most radically the government of the whole Church 
 from Episcopal to Papal. 
 
 You will see at a glance, for truth is always con- 
 sistent with itself, that the Great General Councils of 
 all the Bishops, which for centuries and centuries con- 
 vene(i as the undoubted ultimate courts of appeal, 
 were inconsistent with the modern theory that ultimate 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 179 
 
 appeals rest in the Pope. You will see that those Gen- 
 eral Councils followed harmoniously, and naturally, 
 and truthfully, from the original government of the 
 Catholic Church by the Combined Episcopate. 
 
 Indeed Gregory Great, twelve centuries ago, far 
 from putting himself above the Combined Episcopate, 
 said that he honored Ecumenical Councils equally 
 with the four Gospels. And Leo III, in the eighth 
 century, assured the Frankish Bishops when they 
 came to him, that, far from setting himself above the 
 Fathers of the Council of 381, who made additions to 
 the Nicene Creed, he did not venture to put himself 
 on a par with them ; and, therefore, would not pre- 
 sume to make the addition to the creed which those 
 Frankish Bishops suggested. Consider, too, these 
 words of the oath which the Popes pronounced on the 
 day of their inauguration for centuries ; " I promise to 
 honor and to venerate faithfully the Holy General 
 Councils, to teach that which they have taught, to 
 observe that which they have decreed, and to condemn 
 with heart and mouth that which they have con- 
 demned." St. Augustine says that a plenary Council 
 always remains as final arbiter to annul any sentence 
 of any, even the greatest Bishop. Pope Sylvester II. 
 says, '* If the Pope listens not to the Church, he ought 
 
i8o Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 to be treated as a heathen man and a publican." 
 Pope Leo, in addressing the fathers of the Fourth 
 General Council, a. d. 451, uses the following lan- 
 guage, viz: "As the very Christian Emperor has 
 wished an Episcopal Council to the end that error may 
 be abolished by a more authorized judgment^ I have sent 
 my brother Julian, Bishop, Renatus, Priest, and my 
 brother Hilary, Deacon, who will represent me at the 
 Council, and, by a sentence common with you, will 
 establish that which will be pleasing to the Lord." 
 Surely here St. Leo rests the final authority in an 
 Ecumenical Council. Again, the Robber Council of 
 Ephesus had been held, sustaining Eutyches. There- 
 upon the Pope urged upon the Emperor the sum- 
 moning of a new Council that should be truly Ecu- 
 menical. Theodocius, deceived, and believing that the 
 canonical rules had been observed at the Robber 
 Council, did not wish to consent to a new Council \ 
 " Because," said he, *' after the solemn decision of the 
 Council, it is not possible to resort to a new judg- 
 ment." Surely the demand of St. Leo and the refusal 
 of the Emperor prove that both of them rested the 
 final authority in a truly General Council. The Ilfth 
 Council in 553, uses, moreover the following language : 
 "There is no other means (except by a General 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. i8i 
 
 Council) of knowing the truth in the Faith. Each has 
 need of the aid of his brother, following the Scripture, 
 ' Where two or three are met together,' " etc. This 
 Council judged and condemned Pope Vigilius as a 
 heretic. The sixth General Council, in 680, anathe- 
 matized Pope Honorius for being a heretic. In 768 
 Pope Constantine II was deposed by a Council. At 
 the Eighth Council, in 869, after the letters of Pope 
 Nicholas were read, the legates asked of the Council, 
 at the end of its fifth session, " What does the Coun- 
 cil say of the things it has just heard ? Is this letter 
 canonical or not t " The Council replied, " It is 
 conformable to the canons, it is regular." This, too, 
 is evidence that the Pope deferred to the Council. 
 
 Here, then, in the long course of nine centuries, 
 we behold the supremacy of Councils. The law of 
 the Church is the decision of the Combined Episco- 
 pate. In the first eight Councils each Bishop writes 
 the phrase " Definiens subscripsi." It is not till we 
 come to the Roman Latcran Councils that the phrase, 
 *' Sacro approbante concilio," makes its appearance. 
 
 But, furthermore, the very struggles of the Popes 
 in later centuries to rise superior to the dicta of even 
 a Roman Council, is a standing and unanswerable 
 argument that this claim of Papal Supremacy is novel 
 
1 82 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 When, in the ninth century, the whole Latin Church 
 was excommunicated for its errors by the rest of the 
 Catholic Church, still the idea of the supreme power 
 of the Combined Episcopate in General Council as- 
 sembled so lingered even in this Latin part, that Pope 
 Gregory Xllth himself appealed to a General Council, 
 as " that, by which and in which the acts of a Pope 
 are accustomed to be judged." The Latin Council 
 of Constance as late as 1414, having summoned John 
 XXIII, deposed him, and afterwards Benedict XIII, 
 also, from the Papacy. Vienna judged Boniface 
 VIII. At its Fifth session the Council of Constance 
 passed the following decree, viz : " The sacred synod 
 of Constance, making a General Council, legitimately 
 assembled to the glory of Almighty God for the ex- 
 tirpation of schism and for the union, and the refor- 
 mation of the Church in Its Head and in Its mem- 
 bers, wishing to execute more easily, more surely, 
 more abundantly, and more freely this union and this 
 reformation, orders, defines, discerns and decrees as 
 follows : This Council, legitimately assembled in the 
 Holy Ghost, making a General Council, and repre 
 senting the Catholic Church, holds immediately from 
 Jesus Christ a power, which every person of what- 
 ever condition and dignity he may be, even papal, is 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 183 
 
 obliged to obey in that which concerns the Faith, the 
 extirpation of the present schism and the reformation 
 of the Church in Its Head and in Its members. Who- 
 ever, of whatever condition or dignity he may be, 
 even papal, shall refuse obstinately to obey the 
 statutes, ordinances and precepts, that this Holy 
 Council, or any other legitimate Council assembled, 
 has made, or shall make, upon the aforesaid matters, 
 or upon any thing which regards them, if he does not 
 repent, shall be punished as he deserves ; and there 
 shall be employed against him, if it be necessary, 
 other lawful means." The Council of Basle also de- 
 clared that, as the Church had through Councils fre- 
 quently deposed Popes when convicted of errors in 
 faith, while no Pope had ever pretended to condemn 
 the Church, the superiority of a Council over a Pope 
 was clear. In short the struggle, even in the Latin 
 part of the Church after the rupture between the East 
 and the West, between its own Councils and its Pope 
 as to which was supreme, continued with shifting suc- 
 cesses until at last it is only in modern days that the 
 Galilean School has gone down, and Papal Supremacy 
 over a Council has finally succeeded in setting itself 
 up. Who shall claim, then, that the Papal Supremacy 
 is not a modern fiction ? In the Council of Florence 
 
1 84 Catholicity y Frotestatitism and Romanism. 
 
 in 1438, Bessarion, an eminent Greek, perhaps the 
 most learned and illustrious of all the Greeks present, 
 said, " We know the rights and privileges of the 
 Roman Church ; but we know, also, that these rights 
 have limits. Whatever may be the power of the 
 Roman Church, it is less than that of the General 
 Council and of the Universal Church." 
 
 Indeed, gentlemen, show me in the past thousand 
 years of Catholicity where the rising waves of Papal 
 ambition have beaten, and I will show you where the 
 rock-bound continent of the true Vicar of Christ has 
 always stood in resistance ; nay, where the very Rock 
 Himself, Jesus Christ, in His true visible Kingly 
 Body, the Combined Episcopate, has always stood 
 unmoved, dashing back those Papal billows. 
 
 Let me say here, incidentally, before I come to 
 the main argument about the Rock, that it is, indeed, 
 absurd on the face of it, absurd a priori^ absurd at its 
 very first mention, that Christ should have promised 
 to found His Church on. a mere man, instead of on 
 the God-Man. It is Protestantism, this founding 
 churches on men ; on Calvin, or Peter, or Luther, or 
 Wesley. And, therefore, again, the Pope is simply a 
 superb Protestant clothed in canonicals. Indeed St 
 Paul, in his celebrated rebuke to the Corinthian^ 
 
Catholicity and Romanisin. 1S5 
 
 where he says, " Now this I say, that every one of 
 you saith I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of 
 Peter, and I of Christ," makes such very choice of 
 Peter as the one peculiar note and test of Catholic 
 fellowship and of covenant with God, a mark of 
 schism, rather than of Catholicity. 
 
 If Anglican Catholics were alone in denying the 
 Papal Supremacy, and all the rest of the Catholic 
 Church were, and had always been against us, we 
 might seem to be setting little stress on the great 
 blessings of Catholic concord and of uninterrupted 
 intercommunion. But let Anglican Catholicity be 
 blotted from the map, what nevertheless is to be 
 done with the great East, with four out of the five 
 great Patriarchates of Catholicity.? "Are the un- 
 changed and unchangeable Churches of Asia, of 
 Greece, and of Russia to be taken also out of the 
 history of the world and of the Church?" They 
 have denied from the first, and still do deny, the 
 Papal Supremacy. "When the whole of the East, 
 holding equally with ourselves the great principle of 
 unity, resists, nevertheless, a dogma, which another 
 great portion of the Church enforces as the only con- 
 dition of communion with Herself, then we are sure 
 the breach rests not with that portion which denies, 
 
1 86 Catholicity^ Frotestantis7n and Ro?nanism, 
 
 but with that which asserts so great and unjustifiable 
 a claim "* as the Papal Autocracy. 
 
 We have found the true Vicar of Christ not in a 
 single Bishop, but in all the Bishops combined. Now 
 the Romanist charges us with imagining that the 
 Church has no earthly Head. The " Catholic 
 Review " of last week, in an article on the First of 
 these Conferences, repeats this charge. Indeed it is 
 one of the stock fallacies with which Romanists easily 
 confound the ill-instructed Churchman. The charge 
 is not true. The fallacy is this. Because we do not 
 accept the Papal Supremacy, we therefore believe the 
 Catholic Church to be a Headless Church so far as 
 this earth is concerned. This will do for an unwary 
 Protestant, to induce him to pass unwittingly by the 
 very question at issue and into the Roman conclu- 
 sion ; but it will not do for a Catholic. The Roman- 
 ist can always handle a Protestant with great ease \ 
 and the reason why the Romanist is so bitter against 
 what are called Ritualists, is because he cannot move 
 them an inch \ that is to say, if the so-called Ritualist 
 is a true Catholic, and not an Evangelical who is tern- 
 Dorarily dancing through a little mere Ritualism on 
 his steady way from latitudinarianism to the other ex 
 ♦ The Rev. W. J. E. Bennett. 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 187 
 
 treme of Rome. If Catholics are all going to Rome, 
 as is charged by the ignorant, then it is most mar 
 velous that the very points which Catholics hold are 
 the very points which have caused Dullinger and the 
 Alt-Catholics violently to tear themselves away from 
 Rome, in which they were born and reared, which 
 they have loved, and in which they lived, some 
 of them to ripe and grave old age. Such men as 
 Pusey, Liddon, Carter, and the Catholic school gen- 
 erally, refuse to be judged by the case of a few 
 giddy-headed persons, who, waking up to the misery 
 of Protestantism, stagger, dazzled and blinded, away 
 from Low-Churchmanship, caper through a little mere 
 Ritualism, and then tumble over into Rome, enthusi- 
 astically sure, superciliously confident, tumultuously 
 certain that they have gotten at the bottom of this 
 prodigious and complicated question that for over a 
 thousand years has divided the Church. 
 
 Of course, gentlemen, the Church has a Head. 
 That is not the question at all. But the question is, 
 in what that Head consists ; whether in the Combined 
 Episcopate, or in one only of its Bishops. It is an 
 undeniable fact, and it settles the question, at any 
 rate, between Catholicity and Romanism, beyond all 
 peradventure, that, in the era of the first six great 
 
1 88 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 General Councils, it was the Combined Episcopate 
 alone, and not the Bishop of Rome, that was the ulti- 
 mate authority and Great Vicar of Christ in questions 
 of faith and of discipline ; it is an undeniable histor- 
 ical fact, that nothing doubtful was for centuries 
 settled in the Church, no matter what the Bishop of 
 Rome might say, till the Combined Episcopate spoke 
 in Ecumenical Council. 
 
 But let me complete the idea of the Apostolic 
 Constitution of the Catholic Church. You will re- 
 member that I stated, while I was speaking of the 
 body of the Priesthood, that, in order to avoid those 
 conflicts which the multiplicity of actual human Priests 
 would otherwise occasion, certain ecclesiastical regu- 
 lations have, not perhaps from the very first, but from 
 a very early date, been observed, restraining Priests 
 to local districts. 
 
 Now carry that same idea over Into the Episco- 
 pate. You will perceive that, if there were no analo- 
 gous ecclesiastical regulations for the Episcopate, 
 there could not fail to arise confusions, and collisions 
 in action among the earthly Bishops, owing to their 
 actual multiplicity. And so there have been, not fronx 
 the very first, but from quite early days, ecclesiastical 
 regulations restraining Bishops to local districts. 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 189 
 
 Nor is this all. There has been a hierarchy within 
 the Episcopate from very early days ; consisting of 
 Bishops, Arch-Bishops, Patriarchs and a Primate as 
 Head of the whole. There is not and never has been 
 the slightest issue between Rome and us about such 
 a hierarchy ; and, moreover, the great Anglican Bishops 
 and controversial writers have, with consenting voice, 
 admitted the Primacy of Rome. In fact the Church 
 must have primacies. Every province must have its 
 head ; it is the Arch-Bishop, or, as we call him in 
 America, the Senior Bishop. Every Patriarchate or 
 vast Communion like the Anglican must have its 
 head ; it is the Patriarch, or, as with us, the Arch- 
 Bishop of Canterbury. And, were intercommunion 
 restored between all parts of the Church, the whole 
 Combined Episcopate must have its chief Primate; 
 and, according to the decrees of the General Councils, 
 that chief Primate would of course be the Bishop of 
 Rome. But the trouble between Catholicity and 
 Romanism arises outside of this, and is two-fold. 
 
 For, first, the Bishop of Rome has not been satis- 
 fied to rest in his ancient Primacy within the Episco- 
 pate, but has striven, instead, to usurp the autocracy 
 over the Episcopate. Instead of being first among 
 equals, he claims, that is to say, to hold the same 
 
190 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism* 
 
 relative attitude to all Bishops, that any Bishop holds 
 to his Priests. This is virtually an effort to create a 
 fourth order in the Ministry. He claims the ap- 
 pointment of all Bishops ; that every cause of moment 
 shall go up to himself ; that he shall have the right to 
 suspend, condemn or acquit at his own will j instead of 
 receiving law and faith from the Church, he claims to 
 give the law and the truth to the Church. In short, 
 it is a demand that the legislative, executive and 
 judicial powers in the Church be centered in himself, 
 and that he be responsible to no one. For, the 
 Vatican decree declares that the Pope holds not 
 merely the chief part, but the " entire fulness of the 
 supreme power.'* Now this is what Catholicity 
 resists. 
 
 Let us take an illustration. We need, for instance 
 a President of the United States. But let any Presi- 
 dent draw the sword, overthrow the constitution, and 
 usurp the powers of an absolute Oriental Autocrat, let 
 him presume to appoint for each State its Governor, 
 to supervise or repeal its state, county and municipal 
 codes, to reverse, if be please, all decrees of the courts 
 state or federal, and to declare his own irresponsible 
 will to be law for all, and the American citizen or 
 State that would not resist to the end such usurpation, 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 191 
 
 would be traitor to the Federal Constitution, and 
 unworthy the name of American. In the State, better 
 civil war than such submission ; in the Church, better 
 non-intercommunion than a similar submission. No, 
 no ; the Catholic must stand loyal to the original 
 constitution of the Catholic Church, if he would be 
 loyal to that Church. He cannot be loyal at once to 
 the Pope and to the Church; for the Primacy of 
 Rome is one thing ; but the Papal Supremacy is a 
 vastly different thing. 
 
 Rome cries to the Greeks and Anglicans, " If you 
 are not Protestants, (and it seems you claim not to 
 be,) yet you are not Catholics. For the Catholic is 
 one who obeys the Pope ; and he who obeys him not 
 is heretic, excommunicated, and, if not a Protestant, he 
 must be an unclassified man." But thus replies one 
 who is a Catholic indeed : " The true Catholic is he 
 who obeys primarily the Church, inasmuch as She 
 exercises the authority which Jesus Christ has con- 
 ferred upon Her. As to the Pope, because he is 
 the Patriarch of the West, and the first of the other 
 Patriarchs, the true Catholic can obey him on one 
 only condition, that he shall, in his turn, obey as a 
 good Catholic all the laws of the Church. If the 
 Pope transgress these laws, if he violate the constitu- 
 
192 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romafiism. 
 
 tion established by Christ, if he derogate the Councils 
 of the Church, if he attribute to himself in the name 
 of God a power which he holds neither from God nor 
 from the Church, then he separates himself from the 
 Church. He is no more Chief Primate, but solely 
 chief Disturber. In this case the true Catholic is he 
 who resists him ; who appeals to the authority to 
 which the true Primate ought himself to be submis- 
 sive, viz: the authority of the Church united in a 
 Council really ecumenical."* 
 
 Innocent IVth taught, indeed, that one ought not 
 to obey an order of the Pope containing a heresy, or 
 threatening to shake the whole organization of the 
 Church ; and that, a Pope being able to fail, it is 
 necessary to say, *' I believe that which the Church 
 believes, and not that which the Pope believes." 
 Pius IXth, however, differed with Innocent IVth. 
 
 No, the see of Rome, though holding the Primacy, 
 can rightly have no such jurisdictional power as would 
 divide or limit the full power of the Combined Epis- 
 copate, which must, according to ancient constitution, 
 remain the supreme earthly Head of the Church. 
 And herein, by the way, consisted the fatal error of 
 the Gallicans. Finding, namely, that, for purposes of 
 * Michaud. 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 193 
 
 administrative order, the Church had in the early 
 centuries developed Archbishops, Exarchs and Patri 
 archs, each with jurisdictional power within the Epis- 
 copate, the Gallicans went so far as to admit that 
 the chief Primate should himself also have analogous 
 jurisdictional power over the whole Episcopate and 
 over the whole Church. 
 
 But they failed to see that at this very point the 
 fundamental Apostolic Constitution of the Church 
 was attacked. We must go up in the last resort 
 through the jurisdictional powers of Bishops, Arch- 
 bishops and Patriarchs to the Kingship of Christ as 
 represented on earth, first by the Board of Apostles 
 to whom He gave all power, and then by the Com- 
 bined Episcopate as the successors of the Apostles. 
 And we fall into a dissolution of the order of the 
 Apostolic Church, if we go still further up, and over 
 the corpse indeed of the Combined Episcopate, to the 
 Bishop of Rome as the final authority in the Church. 
 This false view of the Primacy has been the logical 
 destruction of Gallicanism. There is indeed no real 
 holding ground between the Papal and the Catholic 
 or Episcopal theories; and Gallicanism, which at- 
 tempted to stand between the two, was stricken ab 
 initio with a mortal disease. Its complete overthrow 
 9 
 
194 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 was only a question of time. After having fatally 
 admitted that the Pope could veto the acts of a Gen- 
 eral Council, the Galileans, though historically correct 
 in resisting the further claims of the Pope to supreme 
 autocracy, were logically incorrect. The Jesuits on 
 the other hand, though historically incorrect, were 
 logically correct. The question was, to what shall we 
 go up in the hierarchy as final authority ? The Jes- 
 uits say, to the Pope ; the Catholics say to the Epis- 
 copate j but the Gallicans, going as I have said be- 
 yond the Catholics, strove to pause at a point below 
 the Jesuits. "Not to the Pope alone," said they, 
 "nor yet to a Council ; but to the Pope and a Coun- 
 cil." But, alas, though they took a milder view of the 
 Pope than did the Jesuits, they were after all suffi- 
 ciently Papists ; they were to all intents and purposes 
 Romanists and not Catholics ; and Romanism is a 
 logical torrent, which will either overwhelm and 
 destroy those who are in it, or will sweep them to its 
 extreme logical conclusions. The Galilean theory 
 was not only weak logically, but impracticable also. 
 Normally it would leave the Church in an inextrica- 
 ble difficulty. For we must have a final deciding 
 court in the Church. Now we can have this either in 
 a Pope or in a General Council. But if this court is 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 195 
 
 to be found in a co-ordination of the Pope and a 
 Council, then, should these two differ from each other, 
 the question on which they differ would be left unde- 
 termined, and the Church plunged into confusion. 
 No, the Church can have but one earthly Head. 
 Either the Jesuits or the Catholics are right. It were 
 a monstrosity if It were double-headed. However, 
 Gallicanism is now dead, and probably forever. The 
 Gallicans should have reinforced the Anglicans in the 
 sixteenth century. They have met with their inevita- 
 ble punishment. 
 
 But, as has been said, the trouble between Catho- 
 licity and Romanism is two-fold. Secondly, thtn, 
 Rome not only claims Supremacy over instead of 
 honorary primacy within the Episcopate, but that 
 the Pope is thus supreme '" by divine right;" mean- 
 ing by this phrase, "by Christ's personal appoint- 
 ment." Catholicity denies this. Catholicity admits 
 freely that St. Peter, on account of age and zeal and 
 what we call character, was a man of prominence 
 among the Apostles ; freely admits that he had, if you 
 please to call it so, a primacy of honor. This, al- 
 though not distinctly stated in Scripture, is, neverthe- 
 less, possible perhaps to be inferred from Scripture. 
 Indeed there never were twelve men yet, that among 
 
196 CaihoUiity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 them, some were not stronger characters than others, 
 and one the strongest of all. But this is a very differ- 
 ent thing from a Primacy of honor in the Church \ 
 and a more vastly different thing still from a Primacy 
 of Functions and powers over the Episcopate through 
 all time. Catholicity asserts that even Rome's Pri- 
 macy of honor in the Church was not of divine ap- 
 pointment or right at all. But that the great and true 
 Vicar of Christ, namely, the Combined Episcopate, 
 after all the Apostles were dead, gave the Primacy of 
 honor to Rome ; that it furthermore arranged the 
 hierarchies within Itself, and often rearranged them 
 according to circumstances and to the needs of the 
 Church ; creating Patriarchs, and altering the order 
 of precedence among them from time to time. In- 
 deed this is a wise and indispensable condition, con- 
 sidering the length and the exigencies of the centuries 
 of all time. Rome's Primacy was, therefore, entirely 
 of ecclesiastical regulation, and not of divine appoint- 
 ment at all. The ultimate power always continued to 
 lie, and always must lie, in the whole Body of Bishops. 
 Jesus Christ established a single ministry, and this 
 ministry in three Orders, Bishops, Priests and Dea- 
 cons. And this is the only hierarchy that exists of 
 Divine right. And if it is of Divine right, theie if 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 197 
 
 nothing that can be superior in the Church to the 
 Episcopate. The Chief Primate comes from the 
 Bishops \ the Bishops do not derive their origin from 
 the Pope. The Pope can be Primate, he can be first 
 among the Bishops, without being the source of the 
 Episcopate and Autocrat over all the Bishops. We 
 will see the proof of all this anon, both in Scripture 
 and in history. 
 
 Meanwhile I lay down here a fundamental propo- 
 sition. It is this, namely : if God is a moral Governor, 
 and if each man is a responsible being, then it is sim- 
 ply a logical impossibility for the Popes to have re- 
 ceived from God the Supremacy, i.e. any such power 
 to coerce men as is claimed, for instance, in the Bull 
 of Paul IV, in the Bull Unam Sanctam^ and in the 
 Syllabus. For, first, since the Jewish Dispensation 
 closed, and since the cases of Ananias, Sapphira and 
 Elymas, which were exceptional miracles, God refuses 
 to exercise any coercive authority that shall interfere 
 with man's liberty, with his right to live, to think, and 
 to speak. Mr. Baring-Gould develops this idea most 
 admirably in his " Origin and Development of Chris- 
 tianity," and it is to him that I am indebted for it. 
 Now as God refuses to exercise such authority Him- 
 self, He cannot have transmitted such compulsory 
 
198 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism » 
 
 authority to any power on earth, whether in State or 
 Church. The divine right of Kings is, therefore, quite 
 as much a fiction as the divine right of the Pope to 
 coerce either heretics or Emperors and their sub' 
 jects. God exercises moral authority only. He can 
 have transmitted, therefore, directly from Himself, only 
 such moral authority to His Church and to His State 
 as He personally exercises Himself. Any additional 
 authority, either in State or Church, to enforce what 
 is right, must have been conferred not from above 
 downwards, but from below upwards to the govern- 
 ment of Church or State by the common consent of 
 the governed, whether in Church or State, and for the 
 purpose of securing and enforcing order among 
 themselves. God only confers from above downwards 
 moral authority ; man has the right to confer from 
 below upward coercive or effective authority. The 
 moment, then, the Papal Supremacy is held up as a 
 divine right, it becomes a normal source of confusion 
 and bloodshed ; for it issues inevitably in a con- 
 flict between the governed, who assert their in- 
 herent rights, and the usurper of coercive powers 
 claimed to be from above, and, therefore, never 
 asked of nor granted by the free consent of the 
 governed. 
 
CathoJicity and Romanism. 199 
 
 To complete the idea, then, of the constitution of 
 Lhe Catholic Church. The divine governing grade 
 of Bishops, when correlated together, could not work 
 practically without arranging Primacies within Itself; 
 and could not be prepared to meet the exigencies of 
 all time, without power to rearrange those Primacies 
 at will. Such Primacies are elements of order and 
 sources of strength. But for him who received from 
 the Episcopate the Head Primacy, without, however, 
 any jurisdictional power that would be inconsistent 
 with the full power of the Combined Episcopate, to 
 assume Autocracy over the Episcopate itself was to 
 distort and transform the office that had been be- 
 stowed upon him. It was to play the ingrate towards 
 those by whose will he existed as "first among 
 equals." It was to trample the Combined Episco- 
 pate under foot. And he stands supreme to-day in a 
 part of the Church against the consent of four out of 
 five of the great Patriarchates of early days and of six 
 out of the seven of modern days ; against the decrees 
 of great Roman Councils themselves ; and, as we have ^ 
 
 seen in a previous Conference, against the protest of 
 even living and able Roman Bishops. His ambition 
 has done nothing from the first but disturb the order 
 of the Church, weaken Its Body, and introduce sus- 
 
200 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 pension of inter communion and of co-action among 
 Its members. It led to the sundering of the Easterns 
 from the Westerns in the middle ages j of the Angli- 
 cans from the Latins at the Reformation ; and to the 
 separation of the Latin part into Old and New Catho- 
 lics in our own days. Catholicity claims that all that 
 was necessary to the end of organization, order and 
 unity was a general Primate, " a First among equals." 
 Rome claimed that a supreme Pontiff was essential to 
 effect unity. Here is the distinct issue. But was 
 there ever anything more self-convicted of error, than 
 Rome's claim of Supremacy as a necessary condition 
 for unity ? For, ever since She set it up, Time has 
 hissed at it, while Christendom has been going to 
 pieces under it. There is in physics, I believe, a 
 substance, which, when you attempt to compress it 
 beyond certain limits, explodes. 
 
 The uninstructed or erroneously instructed church- 
 man knows nothing about Rome's Primacy in early 
 days j he simply hates the Pope ; and that is all he 
 knows about it. And so Rome, if she can get his ear, 
 is very apt to astonish him by proving to him the 
 Pope's early Primacy. He then does not know where 
 he stands, and is just in condition to be an easy cap- 
 tive to the Papal claim of Supremacy. But the ancient 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 201 
 
 Primacy, instead of proving Rome's Supremacy of to- 
 day is one of the strongest proofs against it. 
 
 Now Rome claims, I repeat, that the Pope as suc- 
 cessor of St. Peter is supreme by Christ's personal 
 appointment in Palestine. Let us look at this. There 
 is a preliminary trouble to start with. For even if 
 Christ gave St. Peter the Supremacy, Rome has first 
 to prove that St. Peter, who was Bishop of Antioch, 
 was ever in Rome ; which is a doubtful point. It is 
 very remarkable, at any rate, that the courteous St. 
 Paul, in writing to the Romans, should make no allu- 
 sion to St. Peter, if the latter was Bishop there, but 
 should overrule him by instructing the Romans him- 
 self Secondly; if St. Peter* was in Rome, the 
 Romanists have to prove that he ever transferred his 
 see from Antioch to Rome ; which is another doubt- 
 ful point. And, thirdly ; that if he did, Christ meant 
 him to transmit his personal authority to his succes- 
 sors. Christ certainly said nothing about that. At 
 any rate, it is strange on the face of it, that the com- 
 paratively obscure Linus or Cletus, Bishops of Rome, 
 should have been, in any sense, superior to St. John 
 the Divine, the last living Apostle. However, waive 
 all this. Did Christ personally give St. Peter the 
 Supremacy ? Rome says, yes ; Catholicity says, nay. 
 
202 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 Now one of the three texts on which Rome bases 
 her claim is the text, '' Feed my sheep and my lambs." 
 A thought or two on this. What was it "i It was a 
 reinstatement of the fallen St. Peter. St. Cyril of 
 Alexandria says, " By the words of our Lord, * Feed my 
 sheep,' a renewal as it were of the Apostolate, already 
 conferred on him, is understood to take place.'* 
 
 Recall for a moment the incidents that happened 
 just prior to our Lord's death. When, at two o'clock 
 on the morning of Good Friday, Christ was arrested, 
 all the Disciples forsook him. St. Peter particularly 
 had said, but a few hours previously, with his usual 
 warmth, " Though all men should be offended because 
 of Thee, yet will I never be offended j though I should 
 die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee." He had 
 assured Christ of his love beyond that of the others. 
 All the disciples, indeed, forsook him ; but there was 
 something peculiarly flagrant and heinous about St. 
 Peter's case. Christ was led to the High Priest's 
 house. St. Peter returned to watch afar off. While 
 he was warming himself in the palace beneath, one of 
 the maids of the High Priest, looking at him, said, 
 "And thou also wast with Jesus." But he denied, 
 saying, '* I know not, neither understand what thou 
 sayest." And he went out into the porch, and the 
 
ProtestanHsm and Romanism. 203 
 
 cock crew And another maid saw him, and began to 
 say "This is one of them." And he denied again. 
 And a little after, they that stood by said again, 
 *' Surely thou art one of them, for thou art a Galilean, 
 and thy speech agreeth thereto." But he began to 
 curse and swear, saying, '' I know not this Man of 
 Whom ye speak." The other disciples merely forsook 
 Him. Peter not only forsook, but also denied Him 
 thrice, and with oaths, after having declared, too, that 
 he loved Him more than all the rest. He, beyond all 
 others had fallen, and forfeited his apostleship. 
 
 Now come the remarks of Christ, being about to 
 install the Apostles just before He ascended. He 
 turns to St. Peter ; *' Simon, soil of Jonas," ('* Simon ;" 
 He no longer addresses him by his Apostolic name, 
 Peter ; He goes back to his old name ;) " Simon, son 
 of Jonas, Lovest thou Me more than these my other 
 disciples } " There are two Greek words meaning to 
 love ; ^^Aiw, signifying to love with the warm personal 
 love of human affection, and ayaTraw, signifying to love 
 in the higher, reverential, constant and unvarying 
 sense. Christ looks upon Peter now and says, using 
 the strongest word for love, " Dost thou indeed love 
 Me in the highest sense, and love Me, too, more than 
 all the rest of my disciples ? " We can well see Peter 
 
20d Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 hanging his head, and, in view of the recent past, ven 
 turing to use not the strongest word but the milder, 
 0do, and responding simply, "Yea, Lord, Thou 
 knowest that I love Thee with the personal love of 
 human affection." Christ, still bending His mild eye 
 upon him, says " Feed my lambs." And then, after 
 a pause, " Simon, son of Jonas, if thou dost not love 
 Me more than the rest, lovest thou Me in the higher, 
 reverential, constant and unvarying sense ? " Christ 
 still insists on the strong word for love, although He 
 drops all allusion to Simon's loving Him more than the 
 others loved Him. St. Peter, scarcely looking up, still 
 using the other word, ^iAci, responds, " Yea, Lord, Thou 
 knowest that I love Thee." Jesus saith unto him, 
 "Tend my sheep." And, a third time, after a pause, 
 with the same mild eyes fixed upon him, with the 
 same forgiving look, Jesus says, no longer insisting 
 even upon the a>a7rdcj. but coming down to Simon's 
 word, " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me with 
 warm human affection only ? " " Lord," was Simon's 
 reply, " Thou knowest all things ; Thou knowest that 
 I love Thee." *' Feed my sheeplings." 
 
 O, what a mild and beautiful rebuke for those 
 three cruel denials. How kind, how considerate was 
 our gentle Saviour in furnishing this opportunity for 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 205 
 
 Peter, chastened by the past, to reinstate himself 
 upon a true basis, and in presence of the rest of the 
 Apostles. Judas had lost his Apostleship entirely. 
 St. Peter had forfeited his three times over, and under 
 most aggravating circumstances. Judas had fallen, 
 and there was danger of Peter also being regarded by 
 the other Apostles as unworthy of even equality with 
 them. But as he had thrice denied the Lord, our 
 Lord thus three times calls him to confess his love for 
 Him before all the Apostles. He thus reinstates 
 him ; and then commissions all together. 
 
 Rome claims that, in this passage, Christ used the 
 different Greek words, viz., /?o<T/cf, to feed, with regard 
 to the lambs, and Koi/mve, tend, guide, or perform all 
 the duties of a shepherd, with regard to the sheep. 
 And she claims that the lambs mean the laity, and the 
 sheep the clergy, including the Bishops ; Feed the 
 former, Rule the latter. But, first, it is gratuitous to 
 claim that the lambs and sheep mean anything more 
 than children and adults. Secondly, It is unfortu- 
 nate for the supposition that the sheep here means all 
 the Apostles, whom Peter was to rule, that, in the only 
 place in the New Testament where the Apostles are 
 spoken of as sheep at all, St. Peter is included among 
 them ; " I send you forth as sheep in the midst of 
 
2o6 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 wolves." And it is furthermore unfortunate for 
 Rome, that even if Troif/ave means tend or rule, the 
 passage confers no special privilege on St. Peter ; for 
 we have the same word used in the case of even ordi- 
 nary Priests or elders, far below the Apostles in power 
 and dignity ; viz., the Priests of Miletus are command- 
 ed by St. Paul to " rule " the Church of God ; and 
 St. Peter, using the same word, exhorts the elders " to 
 tend " the flock of God, taking the oversight thereof; 
 the flock ; that is to say, the lambs and the sheep. 
 Indeed, some of the early writers have been careful 
 to point out that the privilege thus accorded to St. 
 Peter, was by no means peculiar to him. " Christ 
 Himself," says St. Basil, "gave to all succeeding 
 pastors and teachers a like authority." And St. Au 
 gustine says, " In that it was said to St. Peter, it was 
 said to all, * Feed my sheep.' " 
 
 The Second text on which Rome bases her claim 
 IS the famous passage, " Thou art Peter, and upon 
 this Rock I will build my Church." Let us see 
 whether the passage will bear out the claim. What 
 were the circumstances in which this remark was 
 made ? The Blessed Lord had come ; He had 
 chosen His Apostles ; He had presented Himself to 
 the people by teaching and by miracles. As man, He 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 307 
 
 was anxious to know whether He was understood. 
 He asks His twelve friends, " Whom do men say that 
 I am." They answered " Some say this, some that." 
 Ah ; but how was it with His chosen few? Did they 
 realize His mission, and Who He really was ? **' But 
 whom say ye that I am ? " St. Peter, with his usual 
 impetuosity, spoke first ; " Thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of the Living God." Now this was precisely 
 what Christ was anxious to elicit from them. This 
 was what He longed to have the people also know 
 and feel. But, first, His twelve must thoroughly 
 realize it. This great fact, that He was the Messias, 
 was clearly the uppermost, the lowermost, the absorb- 
 ing topic in His mind at the time He was speaking. 
 Is it natural for Him instantly to drop that, and state 
 another thought ; or is it natural for Him to carry that 
 same idea along? Peter was the only one of the 
 twelve, so far, that seemed to be thoroughly convinced. 
 He turns quickly to Peter, therefore, and replies, as it 
 were, " Yes ; you have spoken rightly ; I am the 
 Christ — the God-man ; and upon this eternal Rock 
 I will build my Church." 
 
 But besides this naturalness in the flow of the 
 thought of the moment, the Blessed Lord positively 
 did not say at all in this passage that He would build 
 
2o8 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 His Church on Peter. The very passage itself says 
 that He would build it on something other than St. 
 Peter. This fact does not appear under our English 
 translation ; but it appears unmistakably in the origi- 
 nal Greek. For the word translated Peter does not 
 mean a Rock at all. Just as there are two words in 
 English, namely, stone, meaning a pebble, and rock, 
 meaning a great ledge, so there are two corresponding 
 words in Greek. The masculine word b irhpoq^ or Peter, 
 means a stone. The feminine word, v Tthpa, means 
 something else ; it means a great rock. Now if the 
 Lord had meant to say He would build His Church 
 on Peter, He would have said so ; He would have 
 said " Thou art Peter, o petros, a stone, and upon this 
 petros, this stone, this Peter, I will build my Church " 
 No, but He changed the word to the feminine, petra \ 
 " Thou art o petros, a stone, and, not upon this stone, 
 but upon this Petra, this Rock, which thou hast just 
 announced, this Christ the Son of the Living God, 
 will I build my Church." 
 
 The only reply of the Romanists to this unanswer- 
 ible argument, is one that Bellarmine's ingenuity 
 suggested, namely ; that our Lord spoke in Syriac 
 and not in Greek j and that, in Syriac, He did not 
 change the word from stone to rock, but used the 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 209 
 
 same word in both clauses, saying, " Thou art Cepha, 
 and upon this Cepha I will build my Church." But 
 there are only five difficulties about this reply. 
 
 First. It is guess-work on the part of Bellarmine. 
 For it is not known now whether our Lord spoke at 
 the time in Greek or in Syriac. 
 
 Secondly. Even if Bellarmine's unproved assertion 
 were true, we should still be " compelled to accept St. 
 Matthew's variation of the two words, as divinely in- 
 spired for the express purpose of marking the differ- 
 ence " between the stone, Peter, and the Rock,Christ. 
 
 Thirdly. The Roman Catholic, at any rate, can- 
 not raise this plea at all. He is shut out from it, 
 because he is bound by the decrees of Trent to accept 
 the Latin Vulgate Bible as holy and canonical ; and 
 that Version uses two different words, Petrus and 
 Petram \ making the same distinction between pebble 
 and Rock that is found in the Greek. 
 
 Fourthly. It so happens (although Bellarmine did 
 not chance to know it,) that both the Hebrew and the 
 Syriac word when it means rock is feminine ; which 
 Cephas, as a masculine noun denoting a man's name, 
 certainly is not. 
 
 And lastly. It also happens that, in the Syriac 
 version of the Bible itself, Bellarmine's unproved stato- 
 
2IO Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 ment about Cephas is not sustained. For the same 
 difference is found in the Syriac that the Greek pre- 
 sents ; for the feminine pronoun is actually united to 
 the second Cepha, and not to the first. 
 
 So that Bellarmine's rejoinder breaks down all 
 round and utterly. 
 
 Indeed the Apostles are often called, in Scripture, 
 stones, but never a Rock ; while Christ Himself is 
 often called a Rock. Besides, " if the Infinite and 
 Almighty God was the Rock of the Elder Israel, while 
 St. Peter, a mere man, was the rock of Christendom, 
 then the Gospel has sunk unspeakably and immeas- 
 urably below the Law ; which is contrary to all 
 analogy of faith." 
 
 ** Of all the Fathers who interpret this passage," 
 say the able Roman Catholic divines who wrote 
 Janus, " not one single one applies the words to the 
 Roman Bishops as St. Peter's successors. How 
 many fathers have busied themselves with the text, 
 yet not one of them whose commentaries we have, 
 Origen, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustine, Cyril, The- 
 odoret, and those whose interpretations are collected 
 in catenas, has dropped the faintest hint that the 
 Primacy of Rome is the consequence of this remark 
 of Christ's. Not one of them has explained the Rock^ 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 211 
 
 or foundation on which Christ would build His 
 Church, as being any office given to St. Peter to be 
 transmitted to his successors ; but they understood by 
 it either Christ Himself, or St. Peter's confession of 
 faith in Christ ; often both together. Or else they 
 thought Peter was the foundation equally with the 
 other Apostles, the twelve being together the founda- 
 tion stones of the Church. " 
 
 The Lord is evidently speaking of no subordinate, 
 but of the chief part of the Church's basis. And when 
 we come down to plain simple facts, stripped of all 
 subtleties, if the Church is built on the foundation of 
 the Apostles and Prophets, surely it is no less than 
 Jesus Christ Himself that is the Chief corner-stone, 
 and not St. Peter. 
 
 It is very strange, too, if the Lord had by this 
 passage given the Supremacy to St. Peter, that the 
 disciples should not have known it ; but should be 
 found, shortly after, discussing as to who was to have 
 precedence in Christ's Kingdom ; and that our Lord, 
 instead of reminding them that He had already ap- 
 pointed Peter as their head, should reply in terms in- 
 consistent with that ; and that, a little later, He should 
 again put them all on a level ; " Ye shall sit upor 
 twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" 
 
212 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 When the Lord, after His resurrection, said to 
 St. Peter, " Follow thou Me," and Peter turned and 
 asked, " Lord, and what shall this man do ? " " It is 
 obvious that, if St. Peter had received jurisdiction over 
 St. John, his question would have been perfectly 
 legitimate and reasonable, and would have merited a 
 reply as being his concern, because affecting one for 
 whom he had been made responsible. But the an- 
 swer he received," ''What is that to thee?" denotes 
 the restriction of St. Peter's commission to his own 
 share of Apostolic work, with no right of control over 
 St. John. 
 
 Besides, both St. Luke and St. Mark, who was 
 St. Peter's amanuensis, omit this text entirely. Hence 
 it is clear that, in their minds, the important part of 
 the conversation was the declaration of our Lord's 
 Person and Office, and not any definition about St. 
 Peter. And it is evident that St. Peter, in supervis- 
 ing St. Mark's gospel, did not himself consider it 
 necessary to communicate this text, on which Rome 
 relies for the Supremacy, to those for whom his Gos- 
 pel was written ; " and, therefore, it is clear that he 
 did not himself attach the meaning to it which Rome 
 claims it has. For, had he done so, he was bound^ 
 for the highest reasons, to make his peculiar commis- 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 213 
 
 sion known ; precisely as an ambassador is required 
 to produce his credentials at his entry upon his office. 
 Nor can such a breach of duty as silence on his part 
 be excused under such circumstances by attributing 
 it to St. Peter's humility ; because the truest humility 
 is implicit obedience to God's commands, whether 
 tending to exalt or abase him to whom the command 
 is given.'* 
 
 If St. Peter had succeeded in any special sense 
 to Christ's authority over the Church as His Vicar, 
 and " if, in consequence, the Apostolic College bore 
 any such relation to him as, for instance, the College 
 of Cardinals does to the Pope — and the Roman theory 
 requires no less — then, certainly, St. Peter would, after 
 the Ascension have filled up the vacant place of 
 Judas on his own authority." But he does nothing 
 of the kind. He merely suggests that the place be 
 filled j but it is the whole College that nominates, and 
 the vacancy is filled by their ballots. 
 
 Moreover, when the College of Apostles heard that 
 Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent 
 Peter and John to administer Confirmation. Now 
 " it is a maxim, admitting of no exception in human 
 affairs, that the sender is greater than the sent. And, 
 therefore, the Apostolic Board at Jerusalem was, in 
 
214 Catholicity^ Protestantisiti a?id Romanism, 
 
 its totality, greater than St. Peter." How would a 
 similar transaction seem to us to-day? How would 
 such an announcement as this sound, says a late 
 writer in the " Church Quarterly," to whom I am in- 
 debted for some of the above quotations, viz : *' The 
 College of Cardinals at Rome, having heard that a 
 dispute as to liturgical questions had arisen at Lyons, 
 sent the Pope and Cardinal Simeoni to settle it ? " 
 Why such a thing is inconceivable. And yet the 
 Board of Apostles sent Peter and John. 
 
 Furthermore, if Christ had given the Supremacy 
 to St. Peter, surely St. Peter would have presided at 
 the first General Council at Jerusalem, and announced 
 its decision. But, on the other hand, it was St. James 
 that took this precedency. 
 
 Besides, how does it happen that the only inspired 
 letters of instruction to Bishops should have been 
 penned by St. Paul and not by St. Peter ? How hap- 
 pens it that, as soon as St. Paul appears in the Acts 
 of the Apostles, he completely overshadows St. Peter, 
 and St. Peter almost disappears from mention ? How 
 happens it, on the theory that St. Peter was Ruler and 
 sole Doctor of the Church, that St. Paul's writings are 
 not only fourteen times in excess of St. Peter's in 
 mere bulk, but have been incomparably "the most 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 215 
 
 powerful factoi in moulding the life and tenets of the 
 Church?" 
 
 If the plenitude of teaching and ruling was vested 
 in St. Peter, how happens it that the chief store-house 
 of doctrine and disciplinary instructions is in St. 
 Paul's, St. James's, St. John's writings ; anywhere, 
 in fact, instead of St. Peter's ? *' It is impossible to 
 reconcile these broad facts with the position claimed 
 for the Popes as chief rulers and teachers of the 
 Church in virtue of their heirship to St. Peter." 
 
 Then again, St. Paul makes a remarkable state- 
 ment in this passage, viz. : " When they saw that the 
 Gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, 
 as the Gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter, (for 
 He that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostle- 
 ship of the circumcision, the Same was mighty in me 
 towards the Gentiles,)" etc. Here, "instead of the 
 Church Universal being, so to speak, St. Peter's 
 diocese, he was, after making the first gentile con- 
 verts, divinely restricted to the Jewish converts ; and 
 had no jurisdiction whatever over the gentiles. How 
 is this consistent with any divine appointment of 
 St. Peter to universal jurisdiction ?" 
 
 St. Paul, too, claims that ''the care of all the 
 churches " came upon him daily. Not a word of the 
 
2i6 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 kind from St. Peter. Tenfold more are the texts 
 that would seem to elevate St. Paul, than the three 
 only which diligent search has found to do duty foi 
 St. Peter. St. Chrysostom, indeed, styles the Apostle 
 of the Gentiles, " The Apostle of the world," " The 
 planter of the Church," " The foundation of the faith," 
 " The pillar and ground of the truth." If he had said 
 this of St. Peter, our ears would have been dinned 
 with the cry of this quotation. 
 
 How does it happen that St. Paul and St. James 
 resisted St. Peter to the face ; in a case, too, where 
 it eventuated that St. Peter was wrong 'i And how 
 happens it that not in one single instance did St. 
 Peter either exercise, or claim to exercise, Supremacy 
 or even Primacy ? 
 
 St. Augustine says in his Retractions, ** I said, in a 
 certain place, of the Apostle Peter, that on him, as on 
 a Rock, the Church is founded. But I am aware that 
 afterwards I very frequently expounded the words as 
 said of our Lord. Peter being so named from the Rock, 
 Petra, and thus representing the Church Which is built 
 upon the Rock. For it was not said to him, * Thou art 
 the Rock, the Petr<?,' but ' Thou art Petr<7j.' The Rock, 
 the Petra, was Christ, Whom Simon confessing, as the 
 whole Church confesses Him, was called Petros." * 
 ♦ Retractions, i. xxi., a.d. 428. 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 217 
 
 The Third text which Rome alleges in support of 
 the Pope's claims is^ ** I will give unto thee (Peter) the 
 Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven." But this text fails 
 as a support quite as utterly as that about the Rock. 
 For our Lord indeed promised that He would give 
 Peter the Keys. But, shortly after. He made the 
 self-same /r^;«/j-^, in the same words, to all the other 
 Apostles. And when, after His Resurrection, He ful- 
 filled these promises touching binding and loosing, 
 He gave the Keys to all the Apostles equally ; of 
 course, fulfilling His promise both to St Peter and to 
 the rest. So that the power of the Keys is by no 
 means St. Peter's exclusive right, but was given to 
 the Combined Episcopate as the great Vicar of 
 Christ. In reference to this passage, Origen asks 
 incredulously, " What ! are the Keys given by the Lord 
 to Peter only ? " St. Ambrose distinctly teaches that 
 " What is said to Peter, is said to the Apostles (as a 
 body)." St. Augustine writes, " These Keys were re- 
 ceived not by one man, but by the unity of the Church. 
 Did Peter receive the Keys, and not Paul ? Peter, and 
 not John and James and the rest of the Apostles ? " * 
 
 These three, then, are the passages on which Rome 
 bases her claim that Peter is supreme by divine ap- 
 pointment and right. 
 
 * S. Augustine Sermons, ccxcv. 2, SS. Peter and Paul. 
 10 
 
2i8 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 We have only examined Scripture. We have not 
 touched the equally strong historical argument at all. 
 
 What more miserable attitude for a vast pyramid 
 can be conceived, than for it to be standing balanced 
 on its apex. The vast pyramid of the Papal Suprem- 
 acy stands upside down and rests on these three Scrip- 
 ture texts. They are the guarantee of its poise and 
 its security. But, if I mistake not, you have seen 
 that its apex is not granite, but melting ice. 
 
SIXTH CONFERENCE. 
 
 The Papal Autocracy not Sustained by History. Con- 
 clusion. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 We have found Rome's claim to possess the Pri- 
 macy bv Divine right, to be quite unwarranted by 
 Scripture. We have seen that Scripture, on the other 
 hand, is clear in stating that Christ founded the 
 Church on Himself as Its corner-stone, and not on 
 St. Peter ; and gave the keys to the whole College of 
 Apostles instead of to St. Peter alone. We have 
 found that St. Peter never exercised, or even claimed 
 a Primacy ; which, as a humble man, obedient to 
 God, he was bound to do, had Christ given it to him ; 
 that, though he seemed to be prominent among the 
 Apostles at first, as being the man of strongest char- 
 acter among them, and probably the oldest, yet that 
 he is completely overshadowed by St. Paul, as soon 
 as the latter appears on the scene ; and, furthermore, 
 that St. Peter's personal jurisdiction, far from being 
 in the end universal, was actually restricted to the 
 
220 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 Jewish converts, while St. Paul, as Apostle of the 
 Gentiles, had all the rest of the churches committed 
 to him by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 If, then, the Bishop of Rome is found in after 
 time, as is the fact, with a universal Primacy of 
 Honor, such Primacy must have had an ecclesiastical 
 origin subsequent to the times of the Apostles. Leav- 
 ing Scripture and St. Peter, then, let us come to his- 
 tory. Here also Catholicity rests her position with 
 the utmost confidence. 
 
 We search in vain in the writings of the immedi- 
 ate successors of the Apostles, namely, of the Apos- 
 tolic Fathers, Sts. Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius and 
 Barnabas, for any evidences of a Primacy of any kind 
 in Rome. We search in vain for such evidence 
 through that document of the second century known 
 as the Apostolic Canons. Catholicity asserts, then, 
 that sometime subsequently to the Apostles and the 
 Apostolic Fathers, Our Lord, acting through His 
 Great Vicar the Combined Episcopate, granted a 
 Primacy of Honor to the Bishops of Rome ; and this 
 not because they were successors of St. Peter, but 
 solely because Rome was the capital city of the world 
 The Bishop of Rome at that time, therefore, united in 
 himself several ecclesiastical dignities. He was 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 221 
 
 Bishop of his diocese, Archbishop also of his Prov 
 ince, Patriarch of the Patriarchate consisting of 
 Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and Italy below the forty- 
 fourth parallel of latitude, and, lastly, so far as the 
 whole Church was concerned, universal Primate of 
 Honor. Catholicity asserts that the Great Vicar of 
 Christ, the Combined Episcopate, did not at that 
 time abdicate, and has never since abdicated its 
 supreme power in General Council, that it has never 
 destroyed itself by giving to the Bishop of Rome a 
 legislative, judicial and executive Primacy over other 
 Patriarchates than his own, still less the Autocracy 
 over the whole church. 
 
 Catholicity claims that, by slow degrees, and by 
 the pursuit of a consistent policy of aggression, the 
 Bishops of Rome, starting on this slender foundation 
 of a Primacy of Honor, acquired, through their power, 
 wealth and influence as Prelates of the capital city of 
 the world, function after function in the West, until at 
 last the modern Supremacy is the result. In short, 
 just as in the State, monarchies slowly emerged out 
 of the powerful aristocracies of feudal times, so in the 
 Church the Papal monarchy slowly reared itself in the 
 west over Episcopal power \ and as in the State 
 the raonarchs gradually became absolute, until we 
 
222 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 have such Kings as Louis XlVth of France, so in the 
 Church the Papacy also became absolute until we 
 have such Pontiffs as Gregory the Seventh ; and as in 
 the State this absolutism was succeeded by the be- 
 heading of Charles First, the Revolution of 1688, the 
 French and American Revolutions, and by anarchy 
 generally, so in the Church the Papal absolutism was 
 followed by the religious revolts and anarchies of the 
 sixteenth and subsequent centuries. 
 
 But surely, gentlemen, to-day we have harbinger 
 of better times. Your very call for these conferences 
 is one of the minor but unmistakable notes of the 
 dawn. Surely the constitutional governments which 
 are now succeeding the anarchies in state, are, in 
 God's Providence, preparing men's minds to hate in 
 Religion both the many-headed individualism and 
 chronic anarchy of Protestantism, and the one-headed 
 absolutism of Rome, and to restore that wise consti- 
 tutionalism in Church also, which God eighteen hun- 
 dred years ago provided for Catholicity, but which the 
 ambition of Rome invaded. This divine Constitu- 
 tionalism in Church is the safeguard of the Bishop, 
 the Priest, the Deacon and the laymen. 
 
 A quickened action of blood in the arm undei 
 exercise is a healthy process. But an increase of 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 223 
 
 blood there amounting to an inflammation is disease \ 
 which, unless it is checked, will in the end kill the 
 whole body. Now the difference between the healthy 
 action of the blood and the earliest beginnings of in- 
 flammation is faint. And so the difference between 
 Rome's early Primacy of Honor on the one hand, and, 
 on the other, her later Primacy of functions and her 
 subsequent Autocracy was at first very faint. The 
 divergence between them was like the divergence be- 
 tween two straight lines, which start from the same 
 point with barely a shade's difference in their several 
 directions ; but follow them along for sixteen hundred 
 miles, and they come out vastly far apart. Rome 
 prefers the diseased limb ; Protestantism would slay 
 the whole body ; Catholicity would restore the limb 
 to health. 
 
 The slight divergence which took place in the 
 fourth and fifth centuries, between ambitious Rome's 
 Primacy of Honor and what has since become her 
 modern Autocracy, was yielded to at the time by many 
 a Bishop, who, had he known what it would long sub- 
 sequently eventuate in, would have been as firm in 
 resistance to it, as the Eastern Church was from the 
 first, and as Catholicity has been ever since. We to- 
 day, however, cannot blame those ancient Bishops 
 
2 24 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 very much, when we consider that it took England a 
 thousand years to shake off the absolute monarchy 
 that was emerging and establishing itself in the 
 western part of the Church. 
 
 Rome's argument with an ill-instructed Church- 
 man to-day is wily. I do not say the Romanist is 
 wily ; I speak only of his argument. A sincere man 
 may use a wily argument. So much the more there- 
 fore should that ill-instructed Churchman be on his 
 guard. Unfortunately, too, Rome's argument is re- 
 inforced by that Churchman's ignorance, or positively 
 false education. Besides, it is proverbial, that a false- 
 hood that is all a falsehood is an easy thing to dis- 
 pose of, but a falsehood that is partly a truth is always 
 the worst kind of a lie, being a complicated thing to 
 expose. The uninstructed or falsely instructed and 
 prejudiced Churchman, if Rome can once get his ear, 
 is, first, astonished at finding that, as a positive fact, 
 the Bishop of Rome was after all universal Primate in 
 the Early Church. He had never dreamed of such a 
 thing. He now does not know what to think. The 
 armor of his mere prejudice (proved brittle and worth- 
 less,) falls from around him and leaves him helpless 
 He grows indignant at his old teachers as blind guides. 
 He loses all confidence in them. With a growing 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 225 
 
 Confidence in his new Roman friend he flies to him 
 for further information. The latter, perfectly cool, 
 recognizes, with more or less of secret joy, the advan- 
 tage he has gained, and cultivates it. He makes 
 further statements with great calmness and with great 
 confidence. The awakened seeker draws, as he goes 
 on, no distinction between a Primacy of Honor, a 
 Primacy of functions and an Autocracy, for he knows 
 no distinction. He does not trace in History the im- 
 perceptible passage of the first into the second and 
 of the second into the third. Rome mingles, mean- 
 time, the different historical proofs, easily found along 
 the centuries, of Supremacy, of Primatial functions, and 
 of Honor, and lays them indiscriminately before him. 
 Proofs for the later Supremacy reinforce proofs for the 
 earlier Primacy of functions ; proofs for the earliest 
 mere Primacy of Honor react upon and reinforce the 
 other two. The consistent centuries really seem to 
 him to speak one favorable voice touching the present 
 Papal claim. And then, with this preparation, the poor 
 startled man's mind, grown more and more helpless 
 from want of minute historical information, is just 
 ready to be run back with the utmost ease into Scrip- 
 ture and on to Rome's confidently stated and plausible, 
 "Thou art Peter," and to find itself at last defini- 
 10* 
 
226 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 tively shipwrecked on the Rock. Rome's false 
 theory, like many things that are of mere human 
 contrivance, has the advantage of being easily under- 
 stood and grasped by an undisciplined mind ; Catho- 
 licity's true theory, like most Divine things, has the 
 disadvantage of being complicated and not readily 
 grasped. A system like Rome's, in which one man's 
 will is the law for all others, is a simple system in its 
 workings, and easy to comprehend ; a system like 
 Protestantism's, where each man's will is a law for 
 himself, is also easy to comprehend ; but a constitu- 
 tional form of government, with its balances, its intri- 
 cacies, its checks and counterchecks and its resultant 
 happiness to man, requires time and care for its com- 
 prehension by one to whom it is all novel. 
 
 Thus it has happened that Protestant and Low- 
 church ignorance and prejudice have been, and are 
 Rome's most powerful friends and allies. From the 
 opening of the nineteenth century Low-churchman- 
 ship has been the underlying, prolific and sole cause 
 of perversions to Rome. The gymnastic pirouetting 
 of eventual perverts through a little ritualism before- 
 hand does not alter the broad fact. Your speaker 
 has a list of the clerical perversions to Rome that 
 have occurred in the American Church since 1820 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 227 
 
 There are one or two cases where the early education 
 of those who perverted could not be traced, and is 
 not known. But with the exception of, perhaps, one 
 other case, in every instance the clergymen who have 
 perverted were reared in Low- church or in Latitudi- 
 narian views. The one or two recent American per- 
 versions, that have occurred within the last ten years, 
 were no exceptions to this general rule. 
 
 Let us look now at history. As the Christian 
 Church came up and took definite shape, let us watch 
 and ascertain what that shape was. First of all, the 
 Apostles derived their authority from the Blessed 
 Lord. " All power," said He, " is given unto Me in 
 heaven and earth ; go^<? therefore." In the commis- 
 sion thus given there is no reference, you will per- 
 ceive, either to any local restrictions, or to any dis- 
 tinction between the Apostles, as if one had received 
 any power of greater extent than the others; "Go 
 ye.'^ Thus Christ constituted the Kingdom of God, 
 which extended throughout the earth, into one great 
 Apostolic Diocese ; over which, not one Apostle, but 
 the whole body of the Apostles had spiritual authority 
 given them. So far, then, the government of the 
 Christian Church is Episcopal and not Papal. Al 
 this very root of matters the ultimate power is clearly 
 
228 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 vested in the Combined Episcopate as the Vicar of 
 Christ. 
 
 Now though this divine commission was given by 
 our Lord to the whole Board of the Apostolate, it 
 does not appear that He intended the Twelve to keep 
 all together as they exercised their ministry. What- 
 ever subdivisions, therefore, of the Apostolic Diocese, 
 that is to say of the whole Kingdom of God on earth, 
 might be expedient, as one Apostle went to one 
 region, and another to another, the arrangement of 
 their several fields of labor was left to the Apostles 
 themselves, and was not ordained by the Lord before 
 the disappearance of His Natural Body. St. Paul, 
 indeed, uses such language as implies that it was 
 customary for each Apostle to abstain from " building 
 on another's foundation." "As the number of the 
 original Apostles was gradually diminished by death, 
 the jurisdiction of the remainder would naturally ex- 
 pand ; until, at last, St. John was left for many years 
 the sole living one of the original Apostles \ when all 
 strictly Apostolic power would, of course, be centered 
 in him for the rest of his life." It seems to have 
 been during his sole Apostolate that that local Epis- 
 copal system of the Church, which had been begun 
 before, as instance the cases of Sts. Timothy in 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 229 
 
 Ephesus, Titus in Crete, and Mark in Alexandria, 
 was finally arranged, so as to become the permanent 
 system all over the Church. " And it is doubtless in 
 this sense that Tertullian says, ' The order of Bish- 
 ops, if traced back to its origin, will rest upon John.' " 
 It is very remarkable he does not say upon St. Peter. 
 That was a subsequent invention. Thus the orderly 
 rules, by which a definite field of labor, a diocese, 
 should be mapped out for each Bishop, grew up 
 during the Apostolic period, and so the temporary 
 Apostolic system of jurisdiction was extended into the 
 permanent Diocesan. 
 
 In shaping the Church geographically the Apos- 
 tles were not obliged on principle to conform to the 
 territorial divisions or provinces of the Roman Empire. 
 But practically they seem to have done so. For they 
 often passed through the principal cities of one pro- 
 vince and founded the Church, before entering an- 
 other ; and afterwards they treated the faithful of that 
 province as forming one community. " For instance 
 St. Paul writes to the church at Corinth and to all the 
 faithful of Achaia. He thus unites in his thoughts 
 all the Christians of Achaia, and, at the head of the 
 churches of that province, he places that of Corinth, 
 which was its political capital. He addresses in the 
 
2^0 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 same manner another of his letters to the Churches of 
 the Galatians ; again uniting in his mind all the com- 
 munities of that civil province." * 
 
 The result of this action was, first, the grouping 
 of the Churches of each Province together; and, 
 secondly, the pre-eminence over his colleagues, or 
 the Archi-episcopal rank, of the Bishop of the capital 
 city of the Province. Besides this, the provincial 
 capital was often the first city in a province in which 
 the Church was founded, and from which the Gospel 
 spread to the other subordinate cities. This, there- 
 fore, also threw its Bishop into the rank of the 
 Metropolitan of the whole Province, and centered in 
 him the power of taking order for the appointment 
 and consecration of the suffragan Bishops of his Pro- 
 vince. In fact St. Titus was evidently left by St. 
 Paul as Archbishop of Crete, and St. Timothy as 
 Archbishop of Ephesus. 
 
 It is quite material to observe, that customs which 
 thus grew up of themselves, so to speak, and were 
 found to be convenient, that the Provincial primacies, 
 for instance, which were thus established, together 
 with the powers centering in the Archbishops, became 
 precedents in newly-worked districts ; and that subse- 
 * Hefelc. 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 231 
 
 quently these habits of order and organization, into 
 which the Church practically and naturally fell, were 
 confirmed formally from time to time by the Com- 
 bined Episcopate in General Councils assembled. 
 The Provincial system, then, thus begun by the Apos- 
 tles, with its Archbishops and suffragan Bishops, be- 
 came, first by the authority of the acts of the Apostles 
 themselves, and secondly by the authority of the 
 decrees of the Combined Episcopate, the fixed gov- 
 ernmental policy of the Catholic Church. Thus when 
 we pass away from the Apostolic days, we find that the 
 cities of each Province formed the Dioceses of the 
 Bishops, while the Bishop of the capital city was 
 Archbishop of the Province. As the ultimate power 
 of erecting Primacies lay in the Combined Episcopate, 
 the power of destroying any one, or of altering the 
 eminence among them lay there also. Indeed the 
 Councils of Chalcedon and the Trullane ordained, 
 that '' If by royal authority any city be, or should here- 
 after be, re-established, the order of the churches 
 shall be according to the civil form." 
 
 Such being the state of things, then, in this Sec- 
 ond or Provincial Period of the Church, it is very 
 clear that one result would naturally follow, namely : 
 the mind of the Church would very early have 
 
232 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 planted within it what we may call " The leading- 
 city idea." Under the influence of this idea there 
 was very early conceded by all, and without opposi- 
 tion, a general Primacy of Honor and of respect to 
 the Bishop of that city which was the great capital 
 city of the world. This was not at first conceded to 
 the Bishop of Rome formally, nor by decree, but by 
 habit of mind. And it was the more readily con- 
 ceded, since it involved no right of interference on his 
 part with Dioceses or Provinces beyond his own Pro- 
 vincial, or subsequently Patriarchal, jurisdiction. 
 Afterwards this generally conceded fact received the 
 seal of confirmation by the Collective Episcopate in 
 the Second General Council. 
 
 But when the Bishop of Rome began to arrogate 
 to himself, on this slender foundation, powers of inter- 
 ference in the East, in England, and in Africa, he was 
 instantly resisted ; and, as he. continued, without au- 
 thorization from General Council, to claim greater and 
 wider powers, the whole Church rocked at last as on 
 an earthquake, and broke into the two Communions, 
 Greek and Latin ; the Greek at the time being the 
 larger of the two. This is standing evidence of the 
 uncatholic nature of the claim of Papal supremacy. 
 But I am anticipating. 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 233 
 
 All through this Second, or Provincial Period, the 
 Provincial Councils of the Church and the Apostolic 
 Canons do not speak of any offices higher than those 
 of Bishops and Archbishops. But now comes a 
 change in the geographical constitution of the Em- 
 pire j a corresponding change, therefore, followed in 
 the constitution of the Church. The civil provinces 
 of the Empire were clustered together into groups, 
 and a leading city was erected for each group. Let 
 me take an illustration, which, though not exactly 
 parallel, will serve our purpose. Suppose, for in- 
 stance, we should cluster the New England States 
 together into one political group ; and erect over the 
 separate State governors an Arch-governor for the 
 whole group ; and the Middle States into another 
 group ; and the Southern into another, and so on. 
 This will give you to understand the new organization 
 of the Roman Empire at the period we are now con- 
 sidering. By the time the Nicene Council meets, in 
 the year 325, we find that the Church is accommo- 
 dating Herself to this new state of things; and the 
 Combined Episcopate, in that Council assembled, 
 recognizes and confirms the order which it finds. 
 The Bishop of the leading city of each group of prov- 
 inces was subsequently called Patriarch or Exarch. 
 
234 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 This name of Patriarch does not, indeed, appear yet 
 in conciliar canons j but nevertheless the Patriarchal 
 powers which had already centered, for instance, in 
 the Bishops of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, are 
 recognized by the Fathers of the Nicene Council, and 
 confirmed in their possessors by the Combined Epis- 
 copate. Not one word, however, not one hint is 
 dropped that the Bishop of Rome has any jurisdic- 
 tional powers over the whole Church. The solitary 
 reference to his powers made by the Fathers of Nice 
 is in their sixth canon. But this canon only speaks 
 of his Patriarchal powers. It ordains that, as the 
 Bishop of Rome possesses authority over his Patri- 
 archate, (consisting, as has been said above, of the 
 provinces of Central and Southern Italy with the ad- 
 jacent islands,) so the Bishop of Alexandria should 
 have like powers over the provinces of Egypt, Libya 
 and Pentapolis ; and it confers similar Patriarchal 
 powers on the Bishop of Antioch. According to 
 these powers, appeals could now go up in each Patri- 
 archate beyond the Archbishops of Provinces and to 
 the Patriarch of the group of Provinces ; and the 
 latter could, furthermore, take order for the selec- 
 tion and consecration of the Archbishops beneath 
 him, as the Archbishops could still take order 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 235 
 
 for the consecration, each of his own suffragan 
 Bishops. 
 
 Then in the Second General Council, which met 
 in the year 381, we have this Patriarchal Period more 
 distinctly emphasised ; for we have powers similar to 
 those held by Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, recog- 
 nized by the Combined Episcopate as having rightly 
 come to reside also in the great Bishops of Ephesus, 
 Cesarea, and Constantinople ; and those powers are 
 formally confirmed to them. 
 
 But still in the decrees of this Council we search 
 in vain for the recognition or confirmation by the 
 Episcopate of any general powers, executive, legisla- 
 tive or judicial, over the whole Church as residing in 
 the Bishop of Rome. We simply find that his 
 Primacy of Honor, and nothing more, is acknowl- 
 edged, and, for the first time, confirmed. This was 
 in the year 381. 
 
 The reference which the Council makes to the 
 matter is in its third canon. The Bishop of Constanti- 
 nople had previously stood sixth in rank among the six 
 great Bishops. Owing to the fact, however, that the 
 capital of the Empire had recently been changed 
 from Rome to Constantinople, the Council now alters 
 his rank from the sixth up to the second place. The 
 
236 Catholicity, Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 canon reads ; *' The Bishop of Constantinople shall 
 have the Primacy of Honor after the Bishop of Rome, 
 because that now Constantinople is new Rome." 
 The Primacy of Honor : not a word about universal 
 Supremacy. If we count the Apostolic times as the 
 First Period of the Church, and the Provincial as the 
 Second Period, we have reached here the Third or 
 Patriarchal Period. The Dioceses are grouped into 
 Provinces, with an Archbishop over each. The 
 Provinces are grouped, except those in the far west 
 of Europe, England among them, and except a few in 
 the East, which are still left autocephalous, into 
 Patriarchates with a Patriarch over each. The Head 
 of the whole Church, the vicar of Christ, is the Col- 
 lective Episcopate, speaking and acting in General 
 Council. Finally within the Episcopate, but not over 
 it, are two leading Primacies of Honor ; first, the 
 Bishop of Old Rome, and next to him the Bishop of 
 New Rome. 
 
 By the time the Fourth General Council met, that 
 namely of Chalcedon, a century and a half subse- 
 quently, we have not only the office but also the name 
 itself of Patriarch or Exarch mentioned in the Con- 
 ciliar decrees. Still no erecting of the Bishop of 
 Rome into the position of Autocrat ; but only a firmer 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 237 
 
 recognition still of the self-same post of honor, with- 
 out any addition, which the Episcopate in its pre- 
 vious Councils had confirmed. For the XXVIIIth 
 canon of this Fourth General Council, which is the 
 only one having a bearing on the subject, reads : 
 *' We, following in all things the decisions " of the 
 second General Council, "do also determine and 
 decree the same things respecting the privileges of the 
 most holy city of Constantinople, New Rome. For 
 the Fathers properly gave the Primacy" (and by 
 reference to the Second Council we find that Primacy 
 was distinctly stated in Canon III to be a Primacy 
 of Honor) — " the Fathers properly gave the Primacy 
 to the throne of the Elder Rome, because that was 
 the imperial city. And, being moved with the same 
 intention, they gave equal privileges to the most holy 
 Throne of New Rome ; judging, with reason, that 
 the city which was honored with the sovereignty and 
 senate, and which enjoyed equal privileges with the 
 Elder royal Rome, should also be magnified like her 
 in ecclesiastical matters, being the second after her." 
 Thus the Combined Episcopate in 451 confirmed 
 and explained what it had previously done in the 
 year 381. 
 
 Indeed whatever may be said touching Chalcedon's 
 
238 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 famous twenty-eighth canon, Catholicity needs only 
 this canon in combination with the third of the Sec- 
 ond General Council, and nothing more, to prove 
 beyond dispute her position, that the Combined Epis- 
 copate was, according to the Apostolic Constitution 
 of the Church, the Great Vicar of Christ, in which all 
 ultimate power rested ; that it created Primacies and 
 Patriarchs within itself; that it changed them, and 
 their order of precedence, at will ; and that it gave 
 even his general Primacy of Honor to the Bishop of 
 Rome. For mark how the canon reads ; " The 
 Fathers^"* — not Christ — ''properly gave the Primacy 
 of Honor to the Throne of the Elder Rome, because " 
 — why ? Because it was Rome's by divine right ? No. 
 Because it was St. Peter's throne? No. Because 
 Christ said, " Thou art Peter," and " Feed my sheep ? " 
 No. But solely, ^^ because that was the imperial city.'* 
 And the Fathers of the second General Council, the 
 Combined Episcopate, gave equal privileges to the 
 Patriarch of Constantinople, because that had be- 
 come the New Rome. What more do we need ? We 
 could close our case just here with confidence. But 
 let us proceed with history. Indeed the order of rank 
 among the Bishops of the leading cities was changed 
 by the Combined Episcopate from time to time ao 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 239 
 
 cording to :ircumstances. At first the chief see was 
 Jerusalem, and some authors give the sequence thus : 
 "Jerusalem, Caesarea, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria." 
 But however this may have been, we come, at any rate, 
 to a time when the order was certainly this, namely : 
 " Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea and Con- 
 stantinople." And then afterwards came a time when 
 the order was changed by the Episcopate into " Rome, 
 Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Caes- 
 area, and Jerusalem." 
 
 To return ; we have reached a time, in the Third or 
 Patriarchal Period, when the Bishops of the few lead- 
 ing cities of the world were getting up upon thrones ; 
 and Rome in the West, and Constantinople in the 
 East on the highest thrones of all. The natural 
 effect of this was to reinforce the arrogance and ambi- 
 tion of Rome. But it also providentially increased 
 the power of Constantinople to resist Rome, in the 
 interest of the ancient Episcopal Constitution of the 
 Church, which Rome was already striving to change, 
 first into a monarchial form of government, and then 
 into an absolute Autocracy. The whole East with 
 Constantinople, together with Africa, steadily resisted 
 these growing claims of Rome. Meantime Mahomet 
 swept through Africa and wiped out the noble 
 
240 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 churches of CartJiage. The collisions increased be- 
 tween Constantinople on the one hand, and Rome on 
 the other. These struggles could not have occurred, 
 had such a thing been understood from the first by 
 the Church as that Supremacy had been centered in 
 Rome originally and by ** divine right." Meantime 
 Rome was growing yearly stronger in the unorganized 
 far west, invading, with little or with ineffectual re- 
 sistance, the outlying Churches of Spain, Gaul and 
 Britain, which had not been clustered into an organic 
 Patriarchate, and which looked with respect, there- 
 fore, and, with the exception of England, with more 
 and more willing submission, to their powerful neigh- 
 bor the Patriarch of Italy. 
 
 But at last, as I * have said, the collision between 
 Rome and the East eventuated in the great rupture of 
 the ninth century. The four Eastern Patriarchates on 
 the one hand, and the one Western Patriarchate of 
 Rome on the other, ceased intercommunion with each 
 other, and we have the Fourth Period of the Church 
 begun, in which the west, the barbarous part, that is 
 to say, is freed by excommunication from the East or 
 more enlightened part, and the East is freed from the 
 overbearing ambition and attempted Papal encroach- 
 ments of the West ; each of the two carrying off intc 
 
Catholicity and Roma7iism. 241 
 
 isolation from the other its part of the Apostolic 
 Ministry, and continuing Its succession and Its con- 
 sequent Sacraments down to to-day. 
 
 During this Fourth Period, the Patriarch of Rome, 
 thus left free and unrestrained, grew more and more 
 supreme and autocratic in the West, until a similar 
 rupture occurred in the Western part of the Church, 
 whereby it separated into the Anglican and Latin 
 Communions ; and the Fifth Period opened ; each 
 Communion, Roman and Anglican, carrying off its 
 part of the Apostolic ministry, and continuing its suc- 
 cession down to to-day. 
 
 Meantime, during this Fifth Period, the Bishop of 
 Rome developed his Supremacy logically into Infalli- 
 bility ; when the strain again became too great, and 
 another rupture took place ; Rome dividing now into 
 New, or Roman Catholics and Alt or old Catholics. 
 This rupture opens the Sixth or present Period of 
 Catholicity. In this period we have the division of 
 the whole Church into two main parts, viz : Catholic 
 and Roman Catholic ; the Greek, Anglican, and Alt- 
 Catholics being substantially one in their firm stand 
 for the ancient Episcopal government of the Catholic 
 Church, in opposition to the modern autocratic Papal 
 government, which is a pure absolute monarchy. 
 11 
 
/42 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 Thus we find that down to the middle of the fifth 
 century, when the Fourth General Council met, the 
 Combined Episcopate still retained to itself, and never 
 abdicated in favor of Rome, the ultimate power and 
 the Supremacy over the Church. Indeed to have 
 done so would have been to commit the crime of self- 
 murder, which is the last thing we are to expect of it 
 in our historical research. And this is an unanswerable 
 a priori argument that it is quite impossible for Rome 
 ever to have acquired the Supremacy of the whole 
 Catholic Church. She can only have a Supremacy in 
 her own part of the Church, indeed, by the destruction 
 of the rights of her Bishops. And this is just what she 
 has at last succeeded in doing. For let me read to 
 you the noble words of the Archbishop of Halifax, 
 uttered at the recent Vatican Council of 1870. In 
 that Council the entire body of Roman Bishops, hav- 
 ing been for centuries laboring in the trough of the 
 sea, foundered at last and sank finally in the tempest- 
 uous waves of Papal power. And the words of Arch- 
 bishop Conolly are like the wail of shipwrecked mari- 
 ners when all hope is gone. He spoke as follows : 
 
 " Thrice have I asked for proof from Scripture ac- 
 cording to authentic interpretation, from tradition, 
 and from Councils, that the Bishops of the Catholic 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 243 
 
 Church ought to be excluded from the definition of 
 dogmas ; but my request has not been complied with. 
 And now I adjure you, like the blind man on the way 
 to Jericho, to give us sight, that we may believe. 
 Hitherto we have recognized the strongest motive for 
 the credibility of Catholic doctrine in the general con- 
 sent of the Church, notified through the Collective 
 Episcopate. This has been our shield against all ex- 
 ternal assailants ; and by this powerful magnet we 
 have drawn hundreds of thousands into the Church. 
 Is this, our invincible weapon of attack and defence, 
 now to be broken and trampled under foot ; and the 
 thousand-headed Episcopate, with the millions of 
 faithful at its back, to shrink into the voice and wit- 
 ness of a single man.? Let the deputation prove to 
 us that it has really always been the belief of the 
 Church that the Pope is everything and the Bishops 
 nothing. The Council of Jerusalem did not adopt the 
 formula of Peter, but of John who spake before him ; 
 and in the Apostles' Creed we do not say, ' I believe 
 in Peter and his successors,' but, ' I believe in one 
 Catholic Church.' We, Bishops, have no right to 
 renounce for ourselves and our successors the heredi- 
 tary and original rights of the Episcopate; to re- 
 nounce the promise of Christ, ' I am with you to the 
 
z44 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 end of the world.' But now they want to reduce us 
 to nullities; to tear the noblest jewel from our pon- 
 tifical breast-plate ; to deprive us of the highest 
 prerogative of our office ; and to transform the whole 
 Church, and the Bishops with It, into a rabble of 
 blind men, among whom is one alone who sees ; so 
 that they must shut their eyes and believe whatever 
 he tells them." 
 
 Indeed the attitude of the minority, of nearly two 
 hundred out of six hundred Bishops, in that Vatican 
 Council was pitiable. They made brave struggle to 
 retain the remnant of the Episcopal rights which pre- 
 vious Papal usurpations had left them ; but it was a 
 struggle against invincible logic. For, their predeces- 
 sors had sowed the wind, and what could they expect 
 but to reap the whirlwind t For, the Roman Episco- 
 pate, having previously given up the Primacy of 
 Honor and accepted the Papal Supremacy instead, 
 had already erected a power among themselves, 
 before which they were compelled at last to stand 
 helpless, as it easily snatched from their hands the 
 poor remaining fragments of their rights. 
 
 Now as we find no Papal Supremacy authorized 
 down to the year 451, so too we look in vain through 
 the acts of the Fifth and Sixth General Councils foi 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 245 
 
 any abdication on the part of the Collective Episco- 
 pate of the Vicariate of Christ in favor of the Bishop 
 of Rome, And this brings us to the year 680. The 
 collisions were now such between Rome and the 
 whole body of the eastern Bishops, and the final 
 rupture between the two was so impending on this 
 very question of the Papal Supremacy, that it is clear 
 no action was taken then, or has ever since been 
 taken by the Collective Episcopate of the whole 
 Church, to relinquish its position of Vicar, and resign 
 in favor of the single Bishop of Rome. The only 
 action has been the breaking away of the Anglican 
 and Alt-Catholics from the Papal position, and the 
 adding of their forces as reinforcements to the 
 Eastern Catholic position. 
 
 May it not be that, as the See of Rome, with a 
 fatal logical momentum, develops doctrine after 
 doctrine and practice after practice, (for how, foi 
 instance, can she stop short of Pope-olatry ?) national 
 Church after national Church, finding the strain be- 
 coming too severe, will follow the great example of 
 England, break away from Rome, and pass over to 
 the side of the Catholic Communions, until at last 
 little or nothing is left to adore the Pope j and that 
 so God will at once, in His own deliberate way, even- 
 
246 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 tually purge Catholicity of Popery, " restore commu 
 nion between the divided members of the Catholic 
 Church, in the East and in the West," and, thus over- 
 ruling men's errors, cause His Church to stand once 
 more a unit of the highest order, a unit differentiated 
 within itself into variety and complexity? We know 
 not what is in God's purposes. But, to all human 
 ken, it would seem to be as reasonable to anticipate 
 that the Mississippi would pause and return to its 
 source, as that Rome will not go on with gathering 
 momentum till she develops something which neither 
 God nor man can endure. 
 
 Let us now look at the Papal Supremacy from 
 another angle. It certainly belongs to Supremacy to 
 summon General Councils. Did the Pope possess or 
 exercise this power in the early Church ? It belongs, 
 and always has belonged to the Bishop to summon a 
 Diocesan Council ; to the Archbishop to summon a 
 Provincial, and to the Patriarch to summon a Na- 
 tional or Patriarchal Council. If the Pope had analo- 
 gous jurisdictional powers over the whole Church, to 
 those which Archbishops have over their Provinces, 
 surely he would have summoned the General Councils 
 But the first General Councils were not summoned by 
 him. And this is proof positive that he had only a 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 247 
 
 Primacy of Honor ; that he did not stand to the whole 
 Church as an Archbishop does to his Province, and 
 that the Head Primacy within the Episcopate was 
 different in kind from the subordinate jurisdictional 
 Primacies. The Bishop of Rome did not summon 
 the First Council in 325; the Second, in 381, was 
 actually celebrated against his will ; he did not sum- 
 mon the Third in 431 ; nor the Fourth in 451 ; nor 
 the Fifth in 533 ; this also was celebrated against his 
 wishes j nor did he summon the Sixth in 680. There 
 was another Council, sometimes called the Seventh. 
 It met in the latter part of the eighth century. The 
 Popes did not even summon that. Nor were the 
 Popes even consulted about the summoning of these 
 great Councils. In fact there were times when they 
 even desired a General Council but did not succeed 
 in obtaining one ; as Innocent, in the matter of St. 
 Chrysostom, and as Leo learned by experience. Thus 
 the claim to Papal Supremacy breaks down in this 
 direction. It was not until the Pope was free from 
 the whole P^astern part of the Church in the ninth 
 century, that we find him exercising this sovereign 
 power of convoking Councils. 
 
 Again, it surely belongs to Supremacy to preside 
 at General Councils. But, beginning with the Coun 
 
248 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 cil of Jersualem in the year 50, St. James, and not St. 
 Peter, was its President. The Bishop of Rome did 
 not preside at the Nicene Council either in person or 
 by deputy, nor, indeed, did he have any considerable 
 influence or sway there, even though he was Bishop 
 of the capital city of the world. The council of Sar- 
 dica was in design a General Council, but in effect 
 did not prove so. In that synod the Bishop of Rome 
 did not preside. Nay in its epistle the name of 
 Hosius of Corduba is mentioned even before the 
 name of Julius of Rome. Nor did' the Bishop of 
 Rome preside at the Second General Council. He 
 was not present at it either personally or by legates. At 
 the Third, it was St. Cyril of Jerusalem that presided. 
 At the Fourth, it was the Emperor Marcian and his 
 commissaries that presided, though they did not of 
 course vote. At the Fifth, the Patriarch of Constan- 
 tinople presided, and the Patriarch of Rome was not 
 present even by deputy. At the Sixth Council, in 
 680, the emperor Constantine IVth presided. In 
 fact, as we look at history, so little was such a thing 
 as the Papal Supremacy dreamed of, that the presi- 
 dency of these great Councils either fell out accord- 
 ing to the Emperor's wishes, or was settled by the 
 election of the Fathers present, or on a tacit regard 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 249 
 
 to some personal eminence in comparison to others 
 present. 
 
 Again it would belong to Supremacy to give life 
 and validity, by its approval, to the canons and decrees 
 of General Councils. But, beginning with the Council 
 of Jerusalem, Rome should note that it was not St. 
 Peter who gave formal confirmation to and promul- 
 gated its decisions ; but it was St. James. And then 
 as for the other Councils, a recent Roman Catholic 
 writer, and a Bishop at that, proves that General 
 Councils have promulgated their dogmatic acts with- 
 out awaiting the Papal sanction ; and not only pro- 
 mulgated them, but put them into execution. 
 
 The Council of Nice did not await the approval of 
 St. Sylvester to condemn the Arian Bishops. In the 
 Second General Council, Theodosius the Great gave 
 out immediately the constitution relating to the Mace- 
 donian heretics. The same thing took place at Eph- 
 esus and Chalcedon (the Third and Fourth General 
 Councils). Long before the Holy see's ratification of 
 the dogmatic decrees became known, the penalties for 
 its violation had been executed. Clearly then, by an- 
 cient right, the ultimate authority in the Church rests 
 in the Collective Episcopate, and not in the Bishop of 
 Rome ; they, not the Pope, being the Vicar of Christ. 
 11* 
 
250 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romamsm, 
 
 But the Romanist will say to you, why, then, were 
 the canons of Councils sent to the Pope for his con- 
 firmation, if the sanction of the see of Rome was not 
 necessary to their validity ? But the answer is, that it 
 was customary for canons of General Councils to be 
 sent to all the Bishops ; and of course to so eminent 
 a Bishop, also, as was always the Bishop of Rome. 
 Nevertheless, somehow, the canons of the Second 
 General Council were not transmitted to Rome even 
 for its information. As for the Fifth General Council, 
 it actually anathematized Pope Vigilius. Besides, 
 touching this entire subject of the confirmation of the 
 Decrees of General Councils, a very limited knowledge 
 of ecclesiastical history will convince one, that equals 
 confirm the decrees of equals, and often inferiors con- 
 firm the decrees of their superiors. The Faith and 
 the decrees of Nice were confirmed not only by the 
 General Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus and 
 Chalcedon, but also by particular councils, such as 
 those of Sardica and Jerusalem. In the collection of 
 letters written after the Council of Chalcedon to the 
 Emperor by the Bishops, whom he had consulted on 
 the authority of this Council, we find many times this 
 formula, or similar ones, viz : " We consent to the 
 decrees of the Holy Fathers, which we confirm b) 
 
Catholicity iind Romanism. 251 
 
 our Faith and our confession." Decrees of the Bishop 
 of Rome have been also confirmed by particular 
 councils. It is quite impossible to see in any confir- 
 mations of the decrees of any councils, even by the 
 Bishops of Rome, in the first nine centuries, acts of 
 superior authority. All these confirmations were ex- 
 pressions of that reception which was generally ac- 
 corded by all portions of the Church to the acts of 
 all really General Councils. Surely the decretal of 
 Pope Vigilius, by which he adhered to the Fifth Gen- 
 eral Council, was far from being an act of absolute 
 stiperiority. On the other hand it carries with it the 
 seal of deference and of submission. 
 
 Again, the powers of Supremacy are three-fold ; 
 legislative, judicial and administrative. The Bishop 
 of Rome claims to-day the first ; namely, that his will, 
 expressed by precept, decree or proclamation, shall 
 be law. How was it anciently? 
 
 Before the Nicene Council in 325, the Church had 
 no other laws than the divine laws, together with those 
 which each church enacted for itself in Provincial 
 synod, and those which were propagated from one to 
 another by imitation or compliance. Hence several 
 churches varied in points of order and discipline ac- 
 cording to local circumstances. No one Bishop then 
 
252 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 could impose his laws upon another territory than his 
 own. When, once, the Bishop of Rome attempted to 
 induce several churches of Asia-Minor to keep Easter 
 on the same day on which it was kept in the West, 
 he not only met with stout resistance but with sharp 
 rebuke. This whole Easter difficulty, indeed, which 
 was a serious one in early times, was not settled by 
 the Bishops of Rome at all. Not until a General 
 Council legislated on it did the entire Church acqui- 
 esce in one rule. To show the condition of things at 
 that time, let me quote from St. Cyprian. He says, 
 " For none of us makes himself a Bishop of Bishops, 
 or by tyrannical terror compels his colleagues to a 
 necessity of obedience; since every Bishop, accord- 
 ing to the license of his liberty and power, hath his 
 own freedom, and can no more be judged by another, 
 than he himself can judge another." Can we for a 
 moment conceive of a Roman Bishop to-day writing 
 thus ? Would not the Bishop of Rome, if such letter 
 reached him to-day, give very prompt evidence to its 
 writer, that, however it may have been in earlier cen- 
 turies, one Bishop could, in the nineteenth century at 
 any rate, be judged most effectually, and most practi- 
 cally, too, so far as any farther exercise of his Episco 
 pal authority was concerned, by another ? 
 
Catholicity and Romanism, 253 
 
 Secondly ; the Pope claims the right of appellate 
 jurisdiction ; that all causes of weight be referred to 
 him. How was it with this in the fourth century? 
 The fifth canon of Nice provides that causes may be 
 appealed from Dioceses up to the Provincial synods ; 
 but not a word about appeals to the Bishop of Rome. 
 If he had such judicial power from the beginning, as 
 there were so many occasions during those early cen- 
 turies for exercising such power, there would have 
 been extant in history many clear instances of it. But 
 this is not the case. Rome has done the best she 
 could with this argument. Out of a multitude of 
 cases, she has whipped up two or three cases only, 
 and these quite impertinent to the issue. When the 
 Patriarch of Antioch claimed certain rights over the 
 churches of Cyprus, Innocent, the Roman Patriarch, 
 sustained him in his pretentions. But the Council of 
 Ephesus judged otherwise, and prevailed. Where, 
 then, was the Pope's universal and immediate juris- 
 diction in the year 431 ? When, subsequently, the 
 Popes set up this claim of appellate jurisdiction, 
 divers synods, some great, some smaller, protested 
 against, and passed acts contrary to it. So we see 
 resistance to the growing claims of the Pope on every 
 hand. In the middle of the fourth century a Coun- 
 
254 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism, 
 
 cil (not however a General Council) met at a place 
 called Sardica. It passed a decree that, under certain 
 circumstances, Julius, Bishop of Rome, should, as a 
 personal privilege^ appoint judges to hear the cause of 
 a Bishop on the spot, and in the second instance \ 
 with the right to send legates representing himself. 
 This power was not granted to the Bishops of Rome, 
 but to Julius personally. On the strength of this 
 (albeit it was not a decree of any General Council) 
 subsequent Popes attempted to set up their claim 
 of appellate jurisdiction. But it was never recog- 
 nized by the Eastern or by the African Church. 
 Indeed the African Bishops in 419 wrote to Boniface 
 ist. "We are resolved not to admit this arrogant 
 claim." 
 
 In the code of the Fourth General Council, in the 
 middle of the Fifth century, there is no mention what- 
 ever of the see of Rome as an ultimate court of 
 appeal, though its Primacy is implied throughout. 
 " Hence when the subject of its appellate jurisdiction 
 came before the heads of the African Church, among 
 whom was St. Augustine, their deliberate finding, 
 which they reported to the Bishop of Rome, and on 
 which they acted themselves, was as follows; Thai 
 the Nicene decrees plainly committed both the infe- 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 255 
 
 rior clergy and the Bishops themselves to their own 
 Metropolitans ; ' having most wisely and justly pro- 
 vided that all things should be determined in the very 
 places where they arise j * * * especially when every 
 man has liberty, if he be offended with the decision 
 of his judges, to appeal to a Provincial Council, or, if 
 need be,' where ? to the Pope ? No / but ' to a General 
 Council' " 
 
 . Nor did Rome exercise the third right of Su- 
 premacy, namely, general administrative power during 
 those ages. In fact a general and wide spread 
 administration of the affairs of the universe from 
 Rome was a sheer impossibility. For it could not 
 take place without a certain machinery and system, 
 clerical officials and the like. But nothing of this 
 kind was dreamt of in Rome during those centuries. 
 " The Bishops of Rome," says the author of Janus, 
 " could exclude neither individuals nor churches from 
 the communion of the Church Universal. They could 
 withdraw their own Church from communion with 
 particular Bishops or Churches, and they often did 
 so ; but this in no wise affected the relations of those 
 Bishops or Churches with other Bishops or Churches. 
 And, on the other hand, if Rome admitted into its 
 Communion one excommunicated by other Churches 
 
256 Catholicity^ Protestantis7n and Romamsin, 
 
 this did not bring that one into Communion with any 
 other Church." 
 
 In the Third century Firmilian uses the following 
 language to Pope Stephen : " How mighty a sin hast 
 thou heaped to thyself in cutting thyself off from so 
 many flocks ! For do not deceive thyself \ it is thou 
 who hast cut off thine own self; he is the real 
 schismatic, who makes himself an apostate from the 
 communion of the Church's unity." 
 
 There are several points which a Roman Cath- 
 olic will urge on the attention of an ill- instructed 
 Churchman calculated to confound him. I can only 
 find time to instance one now. He will cite cases 
 where the Bishop of Rome went beyond the bounds 
 of his Patriarchate to interfere in the ordination of 
 Bishops. And he will say, Does not this show that 
 the Pope had powers of supremacy co-extensive with 
 the Church ? But be not hasty. For, a more careful 
 knowledge of facts shows, that other leading Bishops 
 did the self-same thing. His argument does not 
 sustain his claim therefore ; for no one ever thought, 
 because of the same action on the part of other great 
 Bishops, to pretend therefore that they ever held 
 universal control. Indeed it not seldom happened, 
 that the Bishop of Rome, and the other great Bishops 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 257 
 
 (who. by the way, were all of them then called 
 " Popes ") were checked on such occasions, and that 
 their emissaries were dismissed with disgrace, for in- 
 terfering with a jurisdiction beyond their bounds. 
 Such was the case with the Bishop of Antioch, when 
 he attempted to interfere in Cyprus. And what is 
 more than all. and decisive of the Pope of Rome's 
 case, the second canon of the Second General 
 Council positively checked and regulated such irregu- 
 larity, by enacting in reference to the matter, that no 
 one of the great Patriarchs go beyond his Patriarch- 
 ate and enter upon churches without his borders '' for 
 the purpose of ordaining, or exercising any other eccle- 
 siastical functions,'' thus bringing confusion into those 
 Churches. The fact is, certain ecclesiastical customs 
 were growing. Power is apt to accumulate at centers. 
 Patriarchs were invading Provinces that did not 
 belong to them. And the object of this canon was to 
 check this special growth \ to recognize it, indeed, as 
 far as it had gone, but to stop it just there, and fix the 
 Church for the future in the condition in which It 
 then was ; the Patriarchs to have no further powers. 
 This left certain Provinces, and among them Cyprus 
 and England, under no PatriarcJi, but autonomic and 
 autocephalous. Now this canon has never been re 
 
^5^ Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 pealed, and is binding to-day on the Bishop of Rome, 
 and on the whole Church. It is standing evidence 
 against the claims of the Roman Patriarch to univer- 
 sal power. It is standing evidence that Rome has 
 altered, at least in the Latin part of the Church, the 
 Constitution of the Catholic Church. Two hundred 
 years afterward, in the year six hundred, Rome en- 
 tered upon the domain of the British Church, which 
 from the first had lain outside her Patriarchate, and 
 had governed itself. And this canon is standing 
 evidence that, from a. d. 596 to a. d. 1539, the 
 Bishop of Rome was an intruder into and a usurper 
 of powers in the English part of the Church, contrary 
 to the will of a General Council. It is, indeed, even 
 a mistake to suppose that the Saxon part of England 
 was very much indebted to St. Augustine for its con- 
 version to Christianity. For, everywhere else except 
 in Kent it was the clergy in the ancient British and 
 Scottish succession that effected that conversion. And 
 the canon is standing evidence that, to-day, the Ro- 
 mish church in England is a schismatical body. 
 
 I need not say to you, gentlemen, that the two 
 topics, which I have had the honor of discussing 
 before you, by no means exhaust the important differ- 
 ences between Catholicity and Romanism. But I an» 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 259 
 
 sure you did not expect of me, in three Conferences, 
 that which others have only been able to compass in 
 volumes. And this is my consolation as I bid you 
 farewell, and reluctantly retire from an unfinished 
 work. Enough, however, I trust, has been said to 
 satisfy you that a surrender to Rome is treason to 
 Catholicity. 
 
 I cannot, however, pass finally from this rostrum, 
 without giving one most important caution concern- 
 ing controversial books on the Roman side. In the 
 first place "Latin translations of Greek Fathers, unless 
 they are carefully compared with the Greek originals, 
 can have little dependence placed on them ; as they 
 frequently bear the unmistakable stamp of Western 
 prejudice." The interpolations into the text of the 
 Fathers, the alterations of that text, and the down- 
 right forgeries of the past are, as a fact, so numer- 
 ous, so extensive, and so vital, that it requires years 
 of careful study on all sides, and long periods of 
 suspended judgment as to alleged proofs, and the 
 sifting of many books antagonistic to each other, be- 
 fore one who is not a profound historian, or a critical 
 Grecian or Latinist, can come to any really intelligent 
 conclusion. There had been many interpolations and 
 forgeries in the interest of the Roman see before the 
 
26o Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 ninth century But in the year eight hundred and 
 forty-five, when criticism and general intelligence in the 
 west were at their lowest ebb, there appeared what 
 is now known as the Isidorian or False Decretals. 
 For two hundred years the enormity and clumsiness 
 of those bold forgeries have been exposed, and uni- 
 versally admitted. Yet those Decretals were received 
 as genuine for seven long centuries. Marvelously 
 enough, although the present Papal power was mainly 
 built up by and through them, it stands to-day as a 
 permanent edifice, long after the miserable frame- 
 work, the girders and beams of the Forged Decretals, 
 on which much of it rested, had fallen from with- 
 in it and been burned up as useless rubbish amid 
 universal jeers. But not only does the structure of the 
 Papal power remain, after that which sustained it has 
 disappeared ; but something else remains. For those 
 Decretals, so thoroughly trusted, in their day, and 
 the interpolations in the writings of the Fathers were 
 used by earnest and sincere men, like St. Anselm, for 
 quotations and proofs in favor of Romanism. Later 
 writers just as sincerely quoted these proofs, not from 
 the originals, but from St. Anselm, Gratian and 
 others. And, as proof-quotations, they became stock- 
 in-trade for still later writers, equally sincere. So 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 261 
 
 that, to-day, the fragments of whole centuries of fraud, 
 mistaken zeal and pious credulousness, mingled with 
 better material, lie marvelously confused in the 
 strata of controversy. This complicates matters in- 
 expressibly. Then again, on the other side, there is 
 a vast amount of Protestant misrepresentation afloat 
 concerning Roman Catholicism, which further com- 
 plicates matters. Now to anyone who knows all these 
 facts, to anyone who has, mayhap, studied the ques- 
 tion between Rome and Catholicity, more or less 
 for twenty-five or thirty years, who has been often 
 puzzled and astonished at false statements on both 
 sides, oftener still disgusted at the confusion, oc- 
 casionally almost ready to give up the question in 
 despair, to such an one, I say, the sight of young men 
 and women, and of the middle-aged, devoting the mere 
 spare time of a few weeks or months to the reading of 
 two or three popular controversial works, that are 
 placed in their hands by Roman Catholic propagan- 
 dists, and then leaping to a conclusion on the whole 
 complicated matter, rushing over to Rome, turning 
 instantly, and, with new born zeal, hurling back hot- 
 shots at the Anglican Mother that bore them, and 
 Whom they never understood or appreciated in 
 Her true Catholicity when they were with Her, is 
 
202 Catholicity^ Protestantism aftd Romanism. 
 
 saddening indeed, not to say pitiable and contempti 
 ble. 
 
 There is another thing I cannot refrain from say- 
 ing. It has been admirably put by the English 
 " Church Review." I have not its language, but I 
 remember its idea. It is this. The theory of the 
 Anglican Church is thoroughly Catholic. But, owing 
 to Continental raids made upon Her prior to and sub- 
 sequently to the times of Cromwell, ihQ practice of Her 
 Priests and people happens temporarily to be left to- 
 day, in too many ways, un-Catholic. Her Catholic 
 theory will inevitably bring the practice of Her Priests 
 and people out right in the end. It is steadily, and 
 as rapidly as we could expect, doing so now. Let us 
 not toss our shoulder and curl our lip impatiently, 
 like so many flippant boarding-school misses, because 
 our un-Catholic practices are so slow in disappearing. 
 On the other hand the theory of Romanism on many 
 fundamental points is thoroughly un-Catholic, and 
 hopelessly so ; while Rome's practice, it is true, still con- 
 tinues in many respects to be Catholic. Now a calm 
 and sensible mind, at any rate, will find far less in- 
 tellectual difficulty in putting up, for a while, with 
 deficient practice in a Body Whose theory is wholly 
 Catholic, than in accepting fundamentally false and 
 
^ Catholicity and Romanism, 263 
 
 uncatholic theories for the sake of some perfection in 
 practice or ritual. 
 
 Although Christ did not give the Primacy to St, 
 Peter, yet of course He knew that St. Peter's succes- 
 sors in Rome would, in after time, receive the Primacy 
 through ecclesiastical regulation, and because Rome 
 was the capital of the world. Looking, therefore, on 
 one occasion upon St. Peter, He solemnly said to 
 him " Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you 
 that he may sift you as wheat ; but I have prayed for 
 thee that thy faith fail not. And when thou art con- 
 verted, strengthen thy brethren." And yet Rome 
 amuses Herself, after this, with the idea that he, who 
 was once Primate, has been all along invulnerable. 
 By this, our Lord's solemn prophecy, Rome, then, was 
 sooner or later to fall into such plight as to need to 
 turn from her errors; "when thou art converted." 
 But meantime, also, while she was in her false position, 
 the brethren, it seems, were to be weak all around. 
 Is it not indeed so to-day ? Rome herself is by no 
 means the happy family she has the shrewdness to 
 appear to the world to be. And is it not true, that 
 all the religious divisions and weaknesses within the 
 whole Catholic Church, and without Its borders too, 
 can be traced back for their source to the ambition 
 
<04 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism. 
 
 and errors of Rome ? Ah, gentlemen, but when 
 Rome is converted, then indeed shall you see, as the 
 Lord said, the brethren strengthened all around, and 
 Christianity marching as one organized and invinci- 
 ble Catholic Body against Scepticism, the world and 
 Satan. 
 
 Again, Rome is apt to take certain remarks to St. 
 Peter, and apply them unwarrantably to herself. Very 
 well, then, why is she so apt to forget others ? She 
 forgets that solemn prophecy, "Thou shalt deny Me 
 thrice;" and that her Peter of the centuries must 
 sooner or later, in an agony, of repentance, " go out" 
 and weep bitterly. Hath Rome denied Christ once ? 
 She hath, at any rate, struck down His Royal, visible 
 Body, the Episcopate, saying, " Away with you ; " 
 and substituted her Pope as Ruler of the Church in 
 Its stead. Hath she denied Christ twice ? She 
 hath, at any rate, struck down His Body the Church 
 as the Organ to us of the truth, with curses and anathe- 
 mas, too, saying " Away with you," "-I am the truth." 
 Hath she denied Him thrice ? She hath, at any rate, 
 reared between Him and us a mediatrix, as though 
 He, the loving Brother, That died for us, needs to be 
 appeased before we can steal to Him and lie directlv 
 upon His bosom. 
 
Catholicity and Romanism. 265 
 
 She has forgotten that prophecy in action, too, 
 namely ; St. Paul resisting St. Peter, when he was 
 wrong, to the face. One does not desire to be fanci- 
 ful. But one cannot help thinking of the great feud 
 to-day as a possible fulfilment of that prophecy ; 
 namely, the feud between the mighty Anglican Com- 
 munion said to be founded by St. Paul, and whose 
 greatest temple is the Cathedral of London, and the 
 vast Communion said to be founded by St. Peter, 
 whose greatest temple is the Cathedral of Rome. 
 
 One more word and I have done. The Catholic 
 Church is Christ's Body. And Satan's warfare on the 
 Human part of the God-man did not cease at Calvary. 
 As Satan nailed Him to the Cross, so he follows Him 
 with mighty smitings through the centuries. And 
 Rome's fond idea, that Christ's Body is something 
 that cannot possibly show such ghastly wounds as 
 non-intercommunion between Its parts, or such 
 bruises anywhere as a fundamental local alteration in 
 Its governmental structure, is but a Utopian dream ; 
 it is to forget the swollen back, the bones stretched 
 out of joint, the nails, the thorns and the spear. 
 
 But, meantime, it is a consolation to know, that 
 God is, nevertheless, so overruling the ambition of the 
 See of Rome and its effects in having produced the 
 12 
 
266 Catholicity^ Protestantism and Romanism^ 
 
 Greek, Russo-Greek, Anglican, Alt-Catholic and 
 other Communions, as to diiferentiate His great 
 Catholic Church, and develop It from the imperfect 
 unity of simplicity into the perfect unity of mu*ti- 
 plexity and harmonious variety. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 The Object ane Meaning of the Catholic Movement 
 IN THE Anglican Communion. 
 
 Precuhed at Zion Churchy Newport^ R. Z, at the request 
 of the Rector of that Church. 
 
 Immanuel.— IsA. vii. 14. 
 
 Nearly half a century ago a remarkable fraternity 
 of young men arose in Oxford. Perceiving that the 
 Prayer Book taught the doctrines which were set forth 
 by the Early Church, but that Churchmen generally in 
 1833 did not hold them, these young men issued the 
 " Tracts for the Times," with the design of arousing 
 the minds of Churchmen, and bringing them into 
 agreement with the statements of the Prayer Book and 
 the teachings of the Early Church. Thus was inaugu- 
 rated the great Catholic movement in the Anglican 
 Communion. 
 
 To a non-Churchman, unfamiliar with the career 
 of the English Church from 1620 to 1833, the state- 
 ment that She should teach one thing, and Her 
 members believe another, would seem not only para- 
 
268 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 doxical but incredible. But, without delaying this 
 discourse by entering upon History, let it be remem- 
 bered that when Cromwell assumed the reins of 
 power, he crushed the Church of England ; he drove 
 Her clergy from their livings ; and for years the 
 people of England were indoctrinated by Presbyte- 
 rian, Independent and Baptist preachers. Let it be 
 remembered that when Cromwell passed away there 
 was little change in this respect. For, six thousand 
 out of the eight thousand clergy who, under Charles 
 lid, occupied the Rectories of England and drew the 
 tithes, were simply Puritans who had "conformed." 
 Hating the Church and Her doctrines and Her disci- 
 pline while they were under the Commonwealth, how 
 could they love and teach them under the Restora- 
 tion ? The " conforming " Puritan was a man who 
 used the Prayer Book to some extent, but taught the 
 people doctrines antagonistic to its prayers, and prac- 
 tices in violation of its rubrics. Thus, practically, 
 there were, and for a long time continued to be. 
 anomalously enough, two fountains of teaching in the 
 Church. (The Roman part of the Church was simi- 
 larly afflicted in the eighteenth century.) One of 
 these fountains was the Prayer Book, the other was 
 the pulpit. The Prayer Book, which contains the 
 
The Anglican Comfnunion. 269 
 
 teaching of the Church, did not hold its own, as a 
 teacher, against the pulpit, which poured forth Puri- 
 tanism to the people. It is not strange, in the secu- 
 lar confusion of the day, that it was some time before 
 this state of things could be reversed ; that it should 
 be a slow process for the silent Prayer Book to begin 
 to tell at last in the Church against the persistent 
 voice of the pulpit. The pulpit has a w^ay of sending 
 its teachings and its teachers into the Theological 
 Schools, and thus of perpetuating its notions, and 
 keeping them for a while, even on the Episcopal 
 Bench. The secular confusion of the time paralyzed 
 the arm of that discipline which is the mother of order 
 in the Church. Besides, an individual, here and 
 there, may change his belief quickly, but a nation, 
 once indoctrinated, changes its belief slowly. What- 
 ever the Prayer Book may have taught, the English 
 people, once fairly in the current of Puritanism, 
 floated heavily and with steady momentum down that 
 current through the eighteenth century. Let it be 
 remembered, that, forty years after Cromwell, there 
 were Bishops on the English Church thrones who 
 denied Episcopacy, were opposed to the surplice, sus- 
 tained sectarians, loved even Unitarianism, counseled 
 the abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland, and were op- 
 
270 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 posed to the Thirty-nine Articles. And then consider 
 the state of things in the reigns of the Georges ; and 
 it will no longer seem incredible that the members of 
 a National Church can for a while hold doctrines 
 quite different from those held by the Church to which 
 they nominally belong. But at last the Prayer Book 
 began to turn the tide, and to send those it had in- 
 doctrinated into the pulpit 
 
 The intent of the Catholic movement of to-day is 
 not to Catholicize the Anglican Church ; She has 
 always continued Catholic. But it is to awaken Her 
 members to the Catholic character of their Church. 
 
 The Oxford Divines may not have forecast, at the 
 time they issued the "Tracts," the full grandeur of 
 the Revolution they had inaugurated ; they may not 
 have anticipated the many nooks and departments of 
 inner spiritual life and of outer human need, into 
 which the new movement would eventually roll and 
 break with upheaving effect. But they comprehended, 
 at any rate, its main purport. 
 
 That the Oxford Tracts should rouse violent opposi- 
 tion was of course to be expected. It seemed an easy 
 thing to stamp the new movement down and out of 
 existence. And indeed the heaviest odds were, and 
 have continued to be, against it. But, as that which 
 
The Anglican Communion. 271 
 
 began to be preached by the Holy Apostles in the 
 year 33 (although the power of the Roman Empire 
 was hurled upon it to crush it), exhibited, neverthe- 
 less, a stubborn life and an ever increasing growth, 
 so this, which began to be preached in the year 
 1833, has exhibited the same phenomena of life 
 and growth. Why is this ? Simply because the 
 movement of 1833 is but a resurrection of the move- 
 ment of A. D. 33. In the sixteenth century, the 
 thinking world rejected that adulterated presentment 
 of Christianity known as Romanism ; because it was 
 tyranny. In the nineteenth century the thinking 
 world has rejected that other adulterated present- 
 ment of Christianity known as Protestantism ; because 
 it is utter anarchy. Is it not possible that that an- 
 cient Catholicity, which is neither Roman nor Protest- 
 ant, and which once conquered the world in less than 
 four centuries, should, now that it has roused from its 
 long obscurity, regain that world again which Roman- 
 ism and Protestantism have between them lost ? We 
 see what Romanism and Protestantism have done in a 
 thousand years. Is it unreasonable to ask that the 
 third presentment of Christianity, which was once 
 victorious, be tried again for a century or two ? 
 
 When such an exceptional movement as this Cath 
 
272 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 olic revival takes place, there comes a time at last 
 when its honest and earnest-minded opponents pause 
 in their opposition, and ask " What does it mean ? " 
 Such a time as that is dawning now. Already there 
 are some persons, and their number is yearly increas- 
 ing, who, even though they do not propose to become 
 Catholics, are ready to listen dispassionately to an 
 answer to the question, " What is the object and 
 meaning of this movement ?" You, as Evangelicals, 
 have asked this question through your Rector, and 
 you have at once made one at home among you, who 
 comes, not in the spirit of a propagandist, but to speak 
 to brethren who will kindly listen, even though they 
 may continue to differ with him. 
 
 At the outset one asks himself, Is there not some 
 single statement, that will comprise within its scope 
 the object of the Catholic movement? If there be 
 such statement, it is perhaps this, namely : The main 
 purport of the Catholic movement, is the re-preaching 
 of the doctrine of the Incarnation in its integrity \ and 
 then come, logically, the practical application of that 
 doctrine to public and private worship, its interior ap- 
 plication to the spiritual life of the soul, and its exterior 
 application to the modes in which misery, poverty and 
 sin are to be treated. Of course this practical appli 
 
The Anglican Communion, 273 
 
 cation strikes against old modes and habits and preju- 
 dices with uprooting effect. 
 
 Unswerving fidelity to the true doctrine of the 
 Incarnation accounts for every new energy the move- 
 ment has put forth ; for every unexpected angle at 
 which its intense forces have darted out; for every 
 book of devotion it has printed ; for every altar-candle 
 it has lighted ; for every community of Sisters or 
 Brothers it has organized j for every Early Father it 
 has translated ; for every reversal it has made from 
 Choral Matins and plain Celebration, to plain Matins 
 and Choral Celebration ; for the extemporaneous 
 mode of preaching it has adopted in place of preach- 
 ing from a manuscript ; for every theological book 
 and pamphlet it has written ; for every censer it has 
 swung ; for every mission it has preached to sin- 
 ners, and every quiet and holy retreat it has held 
 for earnest souls ; for every Altar and Church it has 
 restored and glorified; for every confession it has 
 heard ; for every guild for work among the poor it has 
 organized ; for every Early Communion it has cele- 
 brated ; and every laboring man's club and reading- 
 room it has opened ; for every Three Hours Agony 
 Service it has held ; every bannered and vestmented 
 procession it has thrown out on Good Fridays into 
 
274 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 the slums of cities ; every confraternity for combined 
 prayer it has formed ; every point of asceticism it has 
 urged; every public Meditation it has given; every 
 cassock and chasuble it has worn ; every convent 
 and school, the corner stone of which it has laid ; and 
 for every act of voluntary poverty or self-sacrifice of 
 any kind it has undertaken. Undying fidelity to that 
 truth accounts for the turmoils at St. George's in the 
 East ; for Pusey silenced in his pulpit ; for Keble 
 banished to the seclusion of a country village, and 
 going to his grave without ecclesiastical preferment or 
 higher collegiate degree : for Bennett hurried away by 
 friends from the mob; for Purchas cut down in the 
 prime of life and sent to his grave ; for Mahan cross- 
 ing an ocean to defend himself before the Trustees of 
 the General Theological Seminary in the matter of 
 hearing confessions; for Mackonochie suspended and 
 silenced again and again ; for the laboring men going 
 forth from the " Pooh ! pooh ! " of the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury out of Lambeth Palace gates, and organ- 
 izing by thousands in every town of England for the 
 defence of Catholicity ; and last and latest, for Arthur 
 Tooth's utterance to the Bishop of Rochester, " I will 
 not obey your civil court; for I will not render unto 
 Caesar the things that are God's." 
 
TJie Anglican Communion. 275 
 
 The movement has never been understood by its 
 opponents, and they have struggled against it wildly. 
 They have resisted its logical conclusions instead of 
 grappling with its central premise. The issue is be- 
 tween Rationalism and Supernaturalism. 
 
 For three hundred years, the popular Religions of 
 the day had been subtly undermining the true doctrine 
 of the Incarnation, until that doctrine had virtually 
 disappeared from the belief of Churchmen. It fol- 
 lowed from this popular teaching, indirectly, indeed, 
 but surely, that there was, after all, " little reason for 
 the Son of God becoming man, other than that He 
 might have a human body in which to satisfy the re- 
 quirement of the Jewish Law, that without shedding 
 of blood there is no remission."* No sermon was a 
 sermon unless the rays of its thoughts were made to 
 converge at last on the Atonement of Calvary and 
 that alone. We were, indeed, lost without the blessed 
 Atonement ; but fatal error came under its holy gar- 
 ments. 
 
 First, as a corollary of this preaching of the Atone- 
 ment only, subjective faith in the Atoning Blood, — 
 i. e., a tearful interior apprehension by the sinner that 
 Christ died for him personally on the Cross, was urged 
 ♦ The London " Church Review." 
 
276 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 universally, perpetually, and to all practical intents 
 exclusively on the acceptance of man. Without this 
 faith he had nothing ; with it he had all. This could 
 not, and did not fail to obscure, to greater or less de- 
 gree, the necessity of good works. Nightly self-exam- 
 ination as to what, precisely, one's acts and thoughts 
 and words had been each day, sank into logical unim- 
 portance and finally into neglect. The general impres- 
 sion that one was a sinner, took the place of knowledge 
 of one's particular sins ; acknowledgment and confes- 
 sion that one was a sinner, took the place of acknowl- 
 edgment and confession of one's sins. Absolution of 
 one's sins became logically unnecessary ; care over the 
 soul, sick with definite sins, attacked with definite temp- 
 tations, and the nursing and training of the sin-sick 
 soul ceased with the fall of the lesser Sacrament of Ab- 
 solution ; carelessness of watch over acts and words 
 and thoughts, grew to greater or less extent, until at 
 last we have the wide-spread result in fearfiil national 
 statistics. 
 
 Then again, it was man's spirit alone that could 
 exercise this required interior apprehension and this 
 application of the Atonement to one's self. Hence 
 the spirit came to be all in all in the matter of salva- 
 tion, and the body nothing, as either an aid or a hin 
 
The Anglican Communion. 277 
 
 drance, in making one's calling and election sure. It 
 is the old story of an excess of one truth, unmodified 
 and unrestrained by another, resulting in error. A 
 thousand salutary restraints of the body, therefore, 
 disappeared. The eye, the ear, the hand, the tongue 
 were neglected. Fasting fell into desuetude ; for the 
 body had little or nothing to do with that " Spiritual " 
 religion which was summed up in merely apprehend- 
 ing Christ as one's Saviour, and so being saved. St. 
 Paul's " I keep my body under and bring it into sub- 
 jection," " in watchings often, in fastings often," " lest 
 when I have preached to others, I myself should be a 
 castaway," grew to be a dead letter. Christ's *' This 
 kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting," was as 
 though He had never said it. 
 
 Furthermore, what was called " spiritual worship " 
 took the place of the worship of the whole man in 
 body and soul. Forms, liturgies and the Visible 
 Church disappeared ; for matter had been decon- 
 secrated ; churches fell into decay and squalor ; and 
 the worship of Almighty God was made cold and 
 gloomy to the heart of child and man, and contempti- 
 ble in the eyes of the world. Families became pray- 
 erless. Time was, when nobody thought of going to 
 bed at night or rising in the morning without saying 
 
2jS Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 his prayers. Now, not merely thousands but millions 
 in England, America and Germany, go prayerless to 
 bed, and rise in the morning and enter prayerless 
 upon a new day. With decay of worship came, as a 
 matter of course, decay of godliness, with all its atten- 
 dant evils ; the absence of the poor from God's house, 
 the neglect of the poor, their ignorance and practical 
 heathenism. 
 
 Then again, with faith in the Atoning Cross the soli- 
 tary thing needful, a mere natural memory of the past 
 tragedy on Calvary took the place of the supernatural 
 and perpetually recurring Sacrifice of the Altar, in 
 which is presented, in a Consecration Prayer addressed 
 to Almighty God (and not in a mere instruction to 
 roan) a Memorial to God the Father. " Wherefore with 
 these Thy Holy Gifts which we offer unto Thee, we 
 do make here before Thy Divine Majesty^ the Memo- 
 rial Thy Son hath commanded us to make." The five 
 lesser Sacraments fell out entirely from Christianity \ 
 and the whole character of Sunday assemblages 
 changed. Instead of presenting to the world a sol- 
 emn, Sacrificial and Sacramental worship offered to 
 Almighty God, they presented the aspect of a congre- 
 gation seated before a pulpit from which the all-suffi 
 cient Justification by faith in the Atonement was sol 
 
The Anglican Communion. 279 
 
 emnly and impressively urged. As a logical conse- 
 quence, sermons increased in number, and men began 
 to abolish the only service the Lord had especially 
 commanded ; Eucharists sank from daily to weekly, 
 from weekly to monthly, from monthly to quarterly, 
 from quarterly, in some cases to yearly or less seldom, 
 and with the Friends they disappeared entirely. Men 
 love Christ, and will always crowd to Him when He 
 comes ; but with the Real Presence of Christ ban- 
 ished from the Altar, and with the disappearance of 
 the Altar itself, Sunday assemblages grew thinner ex- 
 cept under the electrical power of the popular 
 preacher, always a rare personage. Daily prayer 
 ceased ; and churches were closed six days out of the 
 seven. With the fall of prayers, public and private, 
 and of the Sacrament of the Altar, the Sacrament of 
 Baptism fell also. Time was, when every child was 
 of course baptised. From a holy and tremendous 
 thing, Baptism, though solemnly commanded by God, 
 fell logically in the estimation of the masses into a 
 mere form by no means of great importance. A com- 
 paratively non-church-going community became, to a 
 large extent, not only a prayerless community but also 
 one thoughtless of religious subjects and careless of 
 religious truth. And then followed the consequences : 
 
28o Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 worldliness, the hasting to be rich, extravagance, 
 gambling, defalcations, bribery, divorces, infanticide 
 and foeticide ; Roman Catholics left mainly to popu- 
 late the country with their children, through our great 
 Herodian sin. 
 
 Again, if a man was saved when he could at last 
 by an interior process apprehend the Saviour as dying 
 on the Cross for him personally, what more was 
 needed ? Saved is saved ; full is full. The distinc- 
 tion, therefore, between the precepts for all and the 
 counsels for the few who can bear them, disappeared 
 from the public apprehension. Efforts, therefore, after 
 any higher life by rare souls ceased ; and, as a matter 
 of course, Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, which ars 
 built upon that distinction, became an impertinence, 
 and at last an offence. Hence that ethereal phenome- 
 non in the soul, rare sanctity, as distinguished from 
 eminent moral goodness, disappeared. With the 
 disappearance of the skilled religious, as practical 
 agents, as the right and left arms of the Church, and 
 with that training and life of theirs abolished which 
 makes them skilled, a crude and mercenary, a compara- 
 tively ineffective, expensive and malapert treatment 0/ 
 misery, poverty, illness and ignorance followed. 
 
The Anglican Communion. 281 
 
 II. Bui time forbids that we should go on and 
 trace all the steps of disaster and decay leading out 
 from a false view of the Incarnation. 
 
 Nay, there were other and great reasons for the 
 Son of God becoming man than that He might merely 
 possess a human body in which to be crucified, and 
 then leave a Bible and a pulpit behind Him. And 
 the object of the Catholic movement, from its first 
 phase in 1833 to its last to-day, is to re-preach and to 
 restore, in all its practical applications and conse- 
 quences, the true doctrine of the Incarnation. Having 
 considered the process of decay, let us now consider 
 some of the steps in the process of reconstruction. 
 
 Many excellent people suppose that this great 
 Catholic movement begins and ends in Ritualism. 
 Ritual is not, indeed, utterly unimportant. As the 
 stars and stripes stood, in the late war, as a symbol 
 of the great principles of nationality and union, so that 
 if any one hauled them down he was to be " shot on 
 the spot," so analogously is it with Ritual. But al- 
 though it is of less importance than other things in the 
 movement, permit me first to say a word or two on 
 Ritual, since it is that part of the movement which is 
 most conspicuous to the world, and has led the world to 
 misunderstand and belittle the great movement itsel£ 
 
282 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 It is to be remembered that the true doctrine of 
 the Incarnation involves many things ; more than can 
 now be enumerated. But one of those things is this, 
 namely : the Incarnation, — the Son of God descending 
 and taking to Himself man's nature, with human body 
 and soul subsisting, — means, not only the reconsecra- 
 tion of the soul, but also the reconsecration both of 
 the body and of all matter to the service and glory of 
 God. That on Mount Tabor the Flesh of the Lord 
 was transfigured we readily remember ; but it is an 
 amazing thought that the very earthly garments He 
 wore were also transfigured. As, then, one result of 
 the Incarnation was the reconsecration both of the 
 body and of all matter to the service and glory of 
 God, it was logically inevitable. " that this great 
 Catholic movement should make a place in itself 
 somewhere for external Ritual." And Ritual has 
 been defended by Catholics when it has been at- 
 tacked, it has been more firmly insisted on when ridi- 
 culed, because they cannot permit the capture of any 
 outwork in the unbroken circle of those defences 
 which guard the vital central doctrine of the Incarna- 
 tion. The old yellow and white-wash, which Puritan- 
 ism applied to church walls, is therefore scraped off ; 
 churches are restored ; Altars are set up and glorified 
 
The Anglican Communion. 283 
 
 with lights and embroidery and gold, with spotless 
 linen, the flower, the garnet and the emerald ; vest- 
 ments are worn ; congregations kneel ; and, in gen- 
 eral, the public worship of God is made more glorious 
 and grand by song and procession and adoration ; for 
 in the Incarnation the body of man is reconsecrated 
 as a creature of God to the glory of its Maker. 
 '' Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God /' " Vouch- 
 safe to direct, sanctify and govern " (not only our 
 hearts, but) " our bodies " (also) " in the ways of Thy 
 Laws." 
 
 But there is also involved in the re-preaching of the 
 Incarnation what is of more importance : /. e. the re- 
 appearance and the nurture of that Supernatural and 
 Sacramental phenomenon, the Inner Spiritual Life of 
 the Soul. When this Spiritual life is well developed, 
 we have something higher than mere goodness, and 
 different in quality. We have Sainthood. Sainthood 
 does not pause at eminent morality, but taking it for 
 its starting point goes on to something more ethereal. 
 
 What is this Spiritual life ? It is the union within 
 each man of the Divine Life with the human. That 
 union began in the God-Man, and is imparted to each 
 of us through Baptism. That is to say. Almighty 
 God, having in the Incarnation imparted the Divine 
 
284 Retiaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 Nature to the Human, so that the two should be one 
 in the Person of Christ, extends the process by which 
 the Divine Nature is incarnated, by planting a germ of 
 that Christ-nature in each other human soul at Bap- 
 tism ; so that Christ becomes " one flesh " not only in 
 an abstract sense with mankind, but concretely with 
 each human being, to whom at first He gave His nature 
 in germ, and then afterwards feeds it with His Body 
 and Blood. Thus His Body Natural grows out and 
 becomes His Body Mystical, the Church. This germ, 
 entering into the Soul and becoming one with it, 
 becomes its divine and Supernatural life. Without it 
 the soul possesses only its natural and moral life, and 
 is therefore dead supernaturally. 
 
 Now this spiritual life is, I say, to be imparted after 
 birth to the soul. It is to be superadded to the moral 
 life which we get from Adam. It is given by God in 
 Baptism. Hence there is involved in the re-preaching 
 of the Incarnation a revival also of the Sacrament of 
 Baptism as a tremendous supernatural reality, as an 
 agent through which God works on earth. 
 
 This sacramental, supernatural life is afterwards to 
 be strengthened, nurtured, developed ; otherwise it will 
 remain in its mere germ state, to all practical intents 
 useless. Hence there is involved in the re-preaching 
 
The Anglican Communion. 285 
 
 of the Incarnation the revival of the other Sacra- 
 ments, the five lesser as well as the two greater. For, 
 first, this spiritual life must be strengthened ; hence 
 more care by Catholics in the matter of Confirmation. 
 It must also be fed with appropriate Spiritual food ; 
 hence the Catholic movement calls back the Blessed 
 Sacrament of the Altar from yearly celebrations to 
 monthly, to weekly, to daily. 
 
 But you may ask, How happens it that the Sacra- 
 ment of Absolution is revived, and the rubric in the 
 English Prayer Book concerning confession is obeyed 
 once more, instead of remaining a dead letter ? The 
 answer is as follows : It is the distinguishing feature 
 and consummate blessing of the Incarnation, with its 
 necessary Sacramental System, that it brings God into 
 actual contact with man. This contact occurred first 
 in the God-Man ; and is extended to us through the 
 Sacraments. It is in the Sacraments that we touch 
 God. It is in Baptism that the Divine germ passes 
 into incorporation with the Soul. It is in Communion 
 that real contact between Christ and the Soul takes 
 place, so that each shall not only touch, but dwell in 
 the other. It is in Confirmation that the Holy Ghost 
 is in contact with the Soul. So, too, there is the con 
 tact between God and the Soul in the Sacrament of 
 
286 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 Absolution. Hence confession in that Sacrament is 
 perceived to be the true, direct and immediate con- 
 fession to God, which Christianity and Chrijtianity 
 only vouchsafes ; while confession in the closet, in- 
 stead of being the direct, is after all that indirect and 
 distant mode of confession to God, which the heathen 
 and the infidel could always have used, and which the 
 non-christian can use to-day ; it is not distinctively 
 Christian. It is the way of natural religion. But 
 nay, think we, Christianity vouchsafes some higher 
 and better and more immediate and holier privilege 
 than Natural Religion or heathenism could boast. It 
 is a layman's question ; no one has a right to compel 
 any one to confess j and if a man wishes to confess, 
 no one has a right to deprive him of his right. And 
 the laymen in England and America, in increasing 
 thousands, are rising and demanding their right to 
 confess (as they feel) directly to God in His Sacra- 
 ment of Absolution, in which He vouchsafes contact 
 with man ; and to receive absolution directly from God 
 in that Sacrament through the hands of their Priests. 
 We go to Penance, not in order to confess our sins to 
 a man ; but rather do we go to confess our sins in 
 A Holy Sacrament to God. 
 
 Again, this Sacramental life must be trained 
 
The Attgiican Communion. 287 
 
 Merely preaching to it may instruct, and please, but 
 it does not train, assist, guide and discipline it in the 
 use of its faculties. The little child, the apprentice, 
 needs to be trained and helped, not simply to be 
 talked to. The spiritual life is awkward at first. How- 
 to resist different kinds of temptations, how to accquire 
 the use of its newly-given and germinal faculties, how 
 to overcome different sins and shades and combina- 
 tions of sins, is not known to it by instinct. The 
 Christian life has been called by great Saints a diffi- 
 cult trade to learn ; with labor, in much awkwardness 
 at first, and with persistent care and patience. Now the 
 detection of Spiritual diseases and their combinations, 
 and the adjustment to each disease of its various 
 remedies and combination of remedies, are not known 
 to the soul by instinct ; a thousand mistakes have 
 been made in the past eighteen centuries in these re- 
 spects, and, having been discovered to be mistakes, 
 need not be made again. It is barbarism for each 
 generation, and for each man, ignoring the past, to 
 begin all over again where the previous generation 
 began, in the treatment of his spiritual case. It were 
 like abolishing the medical profession and medical 
 libraries, and each man in his ignorance and unskill- 
 fulness treating himself when sick physically. Hence 
 
288 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 there is further involved in the re-preaching of the In 
 carnation, that revival of the whole science of Ascetic 
 and Moral Theology which the Catholic movement is 
 effecting ; a department of theology which treats of the 
 cure of sin and spiritual disease. 
 
 Hence, too, there follows a restoration of the 
 clergy from their position as mere preachers and so- . 
 cial visitors, to their Apostolic and Catholic position 
 as Priests, as trainers and physicians of the Spiritual 
 life. There follows also a revival of the sharp dis- 
 tinction between clergy and laity, and of the tender 
 relationship of clerical Fatherhood and lay Sonship, 
 with that perfect confidence between confessor and 
 penitent which their mutual silence alone could give ; 
 a silence as deep as that of the interstellar spaces. 
 The Catholic Church is one continuous, visible, or- 
 ganic Body, the invisible Soul of Which is the God- 
 Man, Christ. If Christ is not in and one with the 
 Catholic Church, as a soul is in and one with its 
 body, then the Church is a dead body. But if Christ 
 is literally on earth in His Body Mystical, the Church, 
 to suppose that He cannot speak the word of pardon 
 to the kneeling, repentant, confessing sinner, is tc 
 suppose that Christ is, as to one of the organs of His 
 Body Mystical and Visible, stricken with paralysis. 
 
The Anglica7i Communion. 289 
 
 Involved in all the above is necessarily the revival 
 also of daily self-examination, of counsel and direc- 
 tion^ of the strengthening aid of specific penances, 
 each appropriate to its end in the soul. Thus the 
 Catholic movement centres all its efforts and subor- 
 dinates all its means, external and internal, upon the 
 inner divine life of the soul, to rectify and to build it 
 up in true sanctity, in humility, meekness, charity, 
 patience and purity. All this, too, accounts for the 
 missions which Catholics preach to the careless and 
 the sinner ; and for the retreats they hold for clergy, 
 for merchants, for women, for clerks, for the laboring 
 man ; that the earnest soul may take account of itself 
 and deepen its spiritual life. 
 
 Again, if sins are the sickness and death of the 
 spiritual life, they come through temptation ; and 
 temptations reach the soul through the body. The 
 senses are open doors through which they enter. 
 Hence the re-preaching of the Incarnation involves a 
 restoration again of the restraint of the body, which is 
 another phenomenon of the movement. The eye, the 
 ear, the tongue, the touch, the taste, must be guarded, 
 restrained and trained ; the feet, that they walk not to 
 sin j the hands, that they search not for sin. This 
 involves also the revival of fasting, and indeed of all 
 13 
 
290 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 other points of asceticism which Catholicity urges. 
 Crucify thyself, crucify thyself; "If thou wouldst in- 
 deed see clearly," she cries, "pluck out thine eyes 
 and become blind. If thou wouldst hear well, be 
 deaf. If thou wouldst speak well, be dumb. If thou 
 wouldst walk well, cut off thy feet. If thou wouldst 
 love well, hate thyself. If thou wouldst work well, 
 cut off thy hands. If thou wouldst live well, make 
 thyself die. If thou wouldst gain, learn to lose. If 
 thou wouldst be rich, become poor. If thou wouldst 
 live in pleasure, afflict thyself. If thou wouldst be 
 secure, have perpetual fear. If thou wouldst be hon- 
 ored, despise thyself and honor those who despise 
 thee. If thou wouldst be at rest, work." 
 
 Again, if it follows from and is involved in the 
 doctrine of the Incarnation that the Holy Sacraments 
 are the medicine and the strengthening food of the 
 Spiritual life, it equally follows that prayer is the very 
 breath of its existence. Catholicity, therefore, un- 
 looses the tongue of prayer once more. The Confra- 
 ternity of the Blessed Sacrament and other Confrater- 
 nities are formed for combined prayer ; churches aro 
 re-opened on week-days for Daily Morning and Eve- 
 ning Prayer and for private prayer and meditation. 
 This accounts, too, for the fact that Catholicity ha* 
 
The Anglican Communion. 291 
 
 flooded our church bookstores with hundreds of nevs 
 books of sweetest and most varied devotions ; treasu- 
 ries, litanies, chaplets, crowns, and rosaries of prayer 
 follow each other in quick profusion. This, too, ac- 
 counts for the further phenomenon of the setting up 
 again of the lost arts of mental prayer, of Meditation, 
 and of Contemplation, of Spiritual Communion, of 
 recollection, and of the application of the senses to 
 spiritual objects. For while by nature the senses, and 
 the soul's four faculties of memory, understanding, affec 
 tions, and will, are ever busying themselves on earthly 
 things and themes, and so taking an earthly hue and 
 fabric, Catholicity teaches not only the four faculties 
 but even the senses also to apply themselves to spir- 
 itual objects \ to Christ, His words, works, birth, 
 death, and all His other mysteries ; in order that the 
 soul, the senses, the whole man, indeed, may become, 
 so to speak, steeped and saturated with the things of 
 spirit and of Heaven, and not be left taking the hue 
 and fabric of the things only of earth and of time. 
 Who ever, in the Georgian Era, heard of such things 
 as Scientific Meditation, Spiritual Communion and 
 the application of the senses to spirit? Verily the 
 last half of the nineteenth century is witnessing a reli- 
 gious revolution, destined to add once more to the 
 
292 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 Kalendar of the Saints. With the restoration of fast- 
 ing and prayer follows of course the observance of 
 Fridays, Lent, the Ember days, and indeed of the 
 whole Kalendar. Again are the English and other 
 Saints thought of, and their lives lifted out of forget- 
 ful ness. No longer can it be said, our Mother, the 
 Church, sorrowfully buries Her illustrious children, 
 and we, their brothers, make haste to cast away all 
 tender mementoes of them, and take pride in obliter- 
 ating even their names and memories. 
 
 Again, if the Holy Sacraments are the medicine 
 and food of the spiritual life and prayer the very 
 breath of its existence, it equally follows that practi- 
 cal works, in all the fourteen spiritual and corporal 
 deeds of mercy, are its exercise, absolutely necessary 
 to its vigor and health. I know that this suggests at 
 once those other phenomena of the movement, not 
 only the revival of Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, but 
 also the new-born energy with which the movement 
 has planted its Churches in the purlieus of cities ; 
 organized workingmen's guilds, clubs and reading 
 rooms, convalescent homes, creches^ indeed the hun- 
 dred and one new appliances of practical good which 
 have sprung up under the magic wand of — "mere 
 Ritualism and nonsense." 
 
The Anglican Communion. 293 
 
 But a word, at least, in passing, on the occult 
 current that has led out from the Incarnation into all 
 this practical energy among the poor and suffering and 
 ignorant. The moment the true doctrine of the In- 
 carnation, with its spiritual life and its Sacraments, 
 rises before the mind, that moment there springs up 
 again, by necessity, from its fallen estate the distinc- 
 tion between precepts and counsels, which are the 
 rules of the spiritual life, and which divide it into its 
 two departments, the Religious life, namely, of the 
 Sister and the Brother, and the secular life of the 
 ordinary Christian who lives in the world. And then, 
 with communities of Religious restored to the Church, 
 something else of the greatest value follows and is 
 restored also. For, by an inevitable process, too 
 long to describe now, a spiritual stamina and sus- 
 tained power are accumulated in the Sisters and 
 Brothers, and a corresponding new-born practical 
 skill in the exercise of the works of mercy is acquired 
 by them ; a stamina and skill which do not confine 
 themselves to the Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, but 
 which, partly through the instruction and example of 
 the Regulars and partly by a use of the same new 
 spiritual causes that have given them this skill and 
 stamina, flow down to some extent and spread 
 
294 Renaissance of Catholicity in 
 
 ihrough the secular part of the Church also. So that 
 both Regulars and Seculars (or the Trained and the 
 Untrained), rousing with a new energy and hope, go 
 Ibrth hand in hand to the work among the poor, the 
 gnorant and the afflicted, with that aptitude, faculty, 
 Eustained power, and self-sacrificing spirit, with that 
 tove of God and of man, and with that marvellous 
 effectiveness, which have marked the movement more 
 and more as time advances, and to which the Church 
 had been a stranger for over two centuries. Behold 
 earnest Bishops beginning to be desirous of having 
 Sisters work in their dioceses. Verily there is a 
 change since that time when one of the earliest of our 
 Sisters entered St. Alban's Church, Holborn, covered 
 from bonnet to the skirts of her dress with the spittle 
 of the mob. 
 
 Much more might be said. The Sacrificial aspect 
 of the Blessed Eucharist ; the charity of prayers for 
 the dead which is due from the living, and the Christian 
 fine arts have not been forgotten ; but this discourse 
 already taxes the patience by its length. Nor is the 
 adoration paid by Catholics to Our Blessed Lord 
 present in His Holy Sacrament forgotten. I may 
 visit a person's library for the purpose of procuring a 
 book ; but, though I did not go merely for wishing 
 
The Anglican Communion, 295 
 
 him the compliments of the day, I should nevertheless 
 be deemed guilty of a great discourtesy should I 
 not salute him in the customary manner on entering. 
 And so the Catholic feels, that even though he ap- 
 proaches the Lord for the purpose of receiving the in- 
 estimable bounty of His Body and Blood, to do so 
 without offering incidentally that solemn, adoring 
 salutation which is due from the creature to his God, 
 would be, to say the least, not the highest instinct of 
 tenderness, of recollection, and of humility. John 
 Keble has said that it seems to him as impossible for 
 Faith, as it beholds Christ in the Blessed Eucharist, 
 to keep from adoring Him, as it is for a mother to 
 help loving her child when she contemplates it in its 
 cradle. 
 
 But enough has been hinted and suggested, I trust, 
 to show you, that, of all the phenomena of this great 
 revival, not one is fortuitous, not one is erratic, but 
 all grow logically and have come irresistibly out of 
 the re-preaching of the Early Church doctrine of the 
 Incarnation ; not even excepting the translation into 
 English of the works of the Early Fathers, that every 
 man majr read and see for himself that the Catholic 
 revival is nothing other than the re-birth and re-pre- 
 sentation in its integrity of Early Church and Apos 
 
896 The Anglican Communion, 
 
 tolic Catholic Christianity, which has been in some 
 vital respects fearfully contorted by Rome, and i» 
 others destroyed by Protestantism. 
 
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