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ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH AND STATE, ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH; WITH AIDS TOWARD A RIGHT JUDGMENT ON THE LATE CATHOLIC BILL |
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ON THE THIRD POSSIBLE CHURCH, OR THE CHURCH OF ANTICHRiST
ON THE CHURCH, NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. IF our forefathers were annoyed with the cant of over-boiling zeal, arising out of the belief, that the Pope is Antichrist, and likewise (sexu mutato) the Harlot of Babylon: we are more endangered by the twaddle of humid charity, which (some years ago at least) used to drizzle, a something between mist and small rain, from the higher region of our church atmosphere. It was sanctioned, I mean, both in the pulpit and the senate by sundry dignitaries, whose horror of Jacobinism during the then panic of Property led them to adopt the principles and language of Laud and his faction. And once more the Church of Rome, in contrast with the Protestant Dissenters, became "a right dear, though erring Sister." And the heaviest charge against the Romish Pontificate was, that the Italian politics and Nepotism of a series of Popes had converted so great a good into an intolerable grievance. We were reminded, that GROTIUS and LEIBNITZ had regarded a visible head of the Catholic church as most desirable: that they, and with them more than one Primate of our own church, yearned for a conciliating settlement of the differences between the Romish and Protestant churches; and mainly in order that there might exist really, as well as nominally, a visible head of the church universal, a fixt centre of unity. Of course, the tenet, that the Pope was in any sense the Antichrist predicted by Paul, was decried as fanatical and puritanical cant. Now it is a duty of Christian charity to presume, that the men, who in the present day employ this language, are, or believe themselves to be, Christians: and that they do not privately think that St. Paul, in the two celebrated passages of his First and Second Epistles to the Church of Thessalonica, (1. iv., 13-18; II ii. 1-12), practised a ruse de guerre, and meant only by throwing the fulfilment beyond the life of the present generation, and by a terrific detail of the horrors and calamities that were to precede it, to damp the impatience, and silence the objections, excited by the expectation and the delay of our Lord's personal reappearance. Again: as the persons, of whom we have been speaking, are well educated men, and men of sober minds, we may safely take for granted, that they do not understand by Antichrist any nondescript monster, or suppose it to be the proper name or designation of some one individual man or devil exclusively. The Christians of the second century, sharing in a delusion that prevailed over the whole Roman Empire, believed that Nero would come to life again, and be Antichrist: and I have been informed, that a learned clergyman of our own times, endowed with the gift of prophecy by assiduous study of Daniel, and the Apocalypse, asserts the same thing of Napoleon Bonaparte. But, as before said, it would be calumnious to attribute such pitiable fanaticism to the parties here in question. And to them I venture to affirm, that if by Antichrist be meant -- what alone can rationally be meant -- a power in the Christian church, which in the name of Christ, and at once pretending and usurping his authority, is systematically subversive of the essential and distinguishing characters and purposes of the Christian church: that then, if the papacy, and the Romish Hierarchy as far as it is papal, be not Antichrist, the guilt of schism, in its most aggravated form, lies on the authors of the Reformation. For nothing less than this could have justified so tremendous a rent in the Catholic church, with all its foreseen most calamitous consequences. And so Luther himself thought; and so thought Wickliffe before him. Only in the conviction that Christianity itself was at stake; that the cause was that of Christ in conflict with Antichrist; could, or did even the lion-hearted Luther with unquailed spirit avow to himself: I bring not peace, but a sword into the world. It is my full conviction, a conviction formed after a long and patient study of the subject in detail; and if the author in support of this competence only added that he has read, and with care, the Summa Theologiae of Aquinas, and compared the system with the statements of Arnold and Bossuet, the number of those who in the present much-reading, but not very hard-reading age, would feel themselves entitled to dispute his claim, will not, perhaps, be very formidable -- It is, I repeat, my full conviction, that the rites and doctrines, the agenda et credenda, of the Catholics could we separate them from the adulterating ingredients combined with, and the use made of them, by the sacerdotal Mamelukes of the Romish monarchy, for the support of the Papacy and papal hierarchy, would neither have brought about, nor have sufficed to justify, the convulsive separation under Leo X. Nay, that if they were fairly, and in the light of a sound philosophy, compared with either of the two main divisions of Protestantism, as it now exists in this country, i.e. with the fashionable doctrines and interpretations of the Armenian and Grotian school on the one hand, and with the tenets and language of the modern Calvinists on the other, an enlightened disciple of John and of Paul would be perplexed, which of the three to prefer as the least unlike the profound and sublime system, he had learnt from his great masters. And in this comparison I leave out of view the extreme sects of Protestantism, whether of the Frigid or of the Torrid Zone, Socinian or fanatic. During the summer of last year, I made the tour of Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine as far as Bergen, and among the few notes then taken, I find the following: -- "Every fresh opportunity of examining the Roman Catholic religion on the spot, every new fact that presents itself to my notice, increases my conviction, that its immediate basis, and the true grounds of its continuance, are to be found in the wickedness, ignorance, and wretchedness of the many; and that the producing and continuing cause of this deplorable state is, that it is the interest of the Romish Priesthood, that so it should remain, as the surest, and in fact, only support of the Papal sovereignty and influence against the civil powers, and the reforms wished for by the more enlightened governments, as well as by all the better informed and wealthier class of Catholics generally. And as parts of the same policy, and equally indispensable to the interests of the Triple Crown, are the ignorance, grossness, excessive number and poverty of the lower Ecclesiastics themselves, including the religious orders. N. B. -- When I say the Pope, I understand the papal hierarchy, which is, in truth, the dilated Pope: and in this sense only, and not of the individual Priest or Friar at Rome, can a wise man be supposed to use the word." -- COLOGNE, July 2, 1828. I feel it as no small comfort and confirmation, to know that the same view of the subject is taken, the same conviction entertained, by a large and increasing number in the Catholic communion itself, in Germany, France, Italy, and even in Spain and that no inconsiderable portion of this number consists of men who are not only pious as Christians, but zealous as Catholics; and who would contemplate with as much horror a Reform from their Church, as they look with earnest aspirations and desires toward a Reform in the Church. Proof of this may be found in the learned work, intitled "Disordini morali et politici della Corte di Roma," -- evidently the work of a zealous Catholic, and from the ecclesiastical erudition displayed in the volumes, probably a Catholic priest. Nay, from the angry aversion with which the foul heresies of those sons of perdition, Luther and Calvin, are mentioned, and his very faint and qualified censure of the persecution of the Albigenses and Waldenses, I am obliged to infer, that the writer's attachment to his communion was zealous even to bigotry! The disorders denounced by him are: -- 1. The pretension of the Papacy to temporal power and sovereignty, directly or as the pretended consequence of spiritual dominion: and as furnishing occasion to this, even the retention of the primacy in honour over all other bishops, after Rome had ceased to be the metropolis of Christendom, is noticed as a subject of regret. 2. The boast of papal infallibility. 3. The derivation of the Episcopal Power from the Papal, and the dependence of Bishops on the Pope, rightly named the evil of a false centre. 4. The right of exercising authority in other dioceses, besides that of Rome. 5. The privilege of reserving to himself the greater causes -- le cause maggiori. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Of conferring any and every benefice in the territory of other bishops; of exacting the Annates, or First Fruits; of receiving appeals; with the power of subjecting all churches in all parts, to the ecclesiastical discipline of the church of Rome; and lastly, the dispensing Power of the Pope. 11. The Pope's pretended superiority to an Ecumenical Council. 12. The exclusive power of canonizing Saints. Now, of the twelve abuses here enumerated, it is remarkable that ten, if not eleven, are but expansions of the one grievance -- the Papal Power as the centre, and the Pope as the one visible head and sovereign of the Christian church. The writer next enumerates the personal instruments, &c. of these abuses: viz.-i. The Cardinals. 2. The excessive number of the Priests and other Ecclesiastics. 3. The Regulars, Mendicant Orders, Jesuits, &c. Lastly: the means employed by the Papacy to found and preserve its usurped power, namely: -- 1. The institution of a Chair of Canon Law, in the university of Bologna, the introduction of Gratian's Canons, and the forged decisions, &c. 2. The prohibition of books, wherever published. 3. The Inquisition. 4. The tremendous power of Excommunication. The two last in their temporal inflictions and consequences equaling, or rather greatly exceeding, the utmost extent of the punitive power exercised by the temporal sovereign and the civil magistrate, armed with the sword of the criminal law. It is observable, that the most efficient of all the means adopted by the Roman Pontiffs, viz. -- THE CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY, is omitted by this writer: a sufficient proof that he was neither a Protestant nor a Philosopher, which in the Italian states, and, indeed, in most Catholic Countries, is the name of Courtesy for an infidel. One other remark in justification of the tenet avowed in this chapter, and I shall have said all I deem it necessary to say, on the third form of a Church. That erection of a temporal monarch under the pretence of a spiritual authority, which was not possible in Christendom but by the extinction or entrancement of the spirit of Christianity, and which has therefore been only partially attained by the Papacy -- this was effected in full by Mahomet, to the establishment of the most extensive and complete despotism, that ever warred against civilization and the interests of humanity. And had Mahomet retained the name of Christianity, had he deduced his authority from Christ, as his Principal, and described his own Caliphate and that of his successors as vicarious, there can be no doubt, that to the Mussulmun Theocracy, embodied in the different Mahometan dynasties, would belong the name and attributes of Antichrist. But the Prophet of Arabia started out of Paganism an unbaptized Pagan. He was no traitor in the church, but an enemy from without, who levied war against its outward and formal existence, and is, therefore, not chargeable with apostacy from a faith, he had never acknowledged, or from a church to which he had never appertained. Neither in the Prophet nor in his system, therefore, can we find the predicted Anti-Christ, i.e., a usurped power in the church itself, which, in the name of Christ, and pretending his authority, systematically subverts or counteracts the peculiar aims and purposes of Christ's mission, and which, vesting in a mortal his incommunicable headship, destroys (and exchanges for the contrary) the essential contra-distinguishing marks or characters of his kingdom on earth. But apply it, as Wickliffe, Luther, [1] and indeed all the first Reformers did to the Papacy, and Papal Hierarchy; and we understand at once the grounds of the great apostle's premonition, that this Antichrist could not appear till after the dissolution of the Latin empire, and the extinction of the imperial Power in Rome -- and the cause why the Bishop of Constantinople, with all imaginable good wishes and disposition to do the same, could never raise the Patriarchate of the Greek empire into a Papacy. The bishops of the other Rome became the slaves of the Ottoman, the moment they ceased to be the subjects of the Emperor. We will now proceed to the Second Part, intended as a humble aid to a just appreciation of the measure, which under the auspices of Mr. Peel and the Duke of Wellington is now the Law of the land. This portion of the volume was written while the measure was yet in prospectu; before even the particular clauses of the Bill were made public. It was written to explain and vindicate the author's refusal to sign a Petition against any change in the scheme of Law and Policy established at the Revolution. But as the arguments are in no respect affected by this circumstance, nay, as their constant reference to, and dependence on, one fixed General Principle, which will at once explain both why the author finds the actual Bill so much less objectionable than he had feared, and yet so much less complete and satisfactory than he had wished, will be rendered more striking by the reader's consciousness that the arguments were suggested by no wish or purpose either of attacking or supporting any particular measure: it has not been thought necessary or advisable to alter the form. Nay, if the author be right in his judgment, that the Bill lately passed, if characterized by its own contents and capabilities, really is -- with or without any such intention on the part of its framers -- a STEPPING-STONE, and nothing more: whether to the subversion or to the more perfect establishment of the Constitution in Church and State, must be determined by other causes; the Bill in itself is equally fit for either -- Tros Tyriusve, it offers the same facilities of transit to both, though with a foreclosure to the first comer. -- If this be a right, as it is the author's sincere judgment and belief, there is a propriety in retaining the language of anticipation. Mons adhuc parturit: the "ridiculus Mus" was but an omen. _______________ Notes: 1. And (be it observed) without any reference to the Apocalypse, the canonical character of which Luther at first rejected, and never cordially received. And without the least sympathy with Luther's suspicions on this head, but on the contrary receiving this sublime poem as the undoubted work of the Apostolic age, and admiring in it the most perfect specimen of symbolic poetry, I am as little disposed to cite it on the present occasion -- convinced as I am and hope shortly to convince others, that in the whole series of its magnificent imagery there is not a single symbol, that can be even plausibly interpreted of either the Pope, the Turks, or Napoleon Buonaparte. Of charges not attaching to the moral character, there are few, if any, that I should be more anxious to avoid than that of being an affecter of paradoxes. But the dread of other men's thoughts shall not tempt me to withhold a truth, which the strange errors grounded on the contrary assumption render important. And in the thorough assurance of its truth I make the assertion, that the perspicuity, and (with singularly few exceptions even for us) the uniform intelligibility, and close consecutive meaning, verse by verse, with the simplicity and grandeur of the plan, and the admirable ordonnance of the parts, are among the prominent beauties of the Apocalypse. Nor do I doubt, that the substance and main argument of this sacred oratorio, or drama sui generis (the Prometheus of Eschylus comes the nearest to the kind) were supplied by John the Evangelist: though I incline with Eusebius to find the poet himself in John, an Elder and Contemporary of the Church of Ephesus. P. S. -- It may remove, or at least mitigate the objections to the palliative language, in which I have spoken of the doctrines of the Catholic Church, if I remind the Reader that the Roman Catholic Church dates its true origin from the Council of Trent. Widely differing from my valued and affectionately respected friend, the Rev. Edward Irving, in his interpretations of the Apocalypse and the Book of Daniel, and no less in his estimation of the latter, and while I honour his courage, as a Christian minister, almost as much as I admire his eloquence as a writer, yet protesting against his somewhat too adventurous speculations on the Persons of the Trinity and the Body of our Lord -- I have great delight in extracting (from his "Sermons, Lectures, and Discourses," vol. III. p. 870) and declaring my cordial assent to, the following just observations: viz. -- that after the Reformation had taken firm root, and when God had provided a purer Church, the Council of Trent did corroborate and decree into unalterable laws and constitutions of the Church all those impostures and innovations of the Roman See, which had been in a state of uncertainty, perhaps of permission or even of custom; but which every man had till then been free to testify against, and against which, in fact, there never wanted those in each successive generation who did testify. The Council of Trent ossified all those ulcers and blotchers which had deformed the Church, and stamped the hitherto much doubted and controverted prerogative of the Pope with the highest authority recognized in the Church." Then first was the Catholic converted and particularized into the Romish Church, the Church of the Papacy. No less cordially do I concur with Mr. Irving in his remark in the following page. For I too, "am free to confess and avow moreover, that I believe the soul of the Catholic Church, when Luther arose, was of a stronger mould, fitted to bear forest trees and cedars of God, than the soil of the Protestant Church in the times of Whitfield and Wesley, which (though sown with the same word ---? qu.) hath brought forth only stunted undergrowths, and creeping brushwood." I too, "believe, that the faith of the Protestant Church in Britain had come to a lower ebb, and that it is even now at a lower ebb, than was the faith of the Papal Church when the Spirit of the Lord was able to quicken in it and draw forth of it, such men as Luther, and Melancthon, and Bullenger, Calvin, Bucer, and Latimer, and Ridley, and a score others whom I might name." And now, as the conclusion of this long note, let me be permitted to add a word or two of Edward Irving himself. That he possesses my unqualified esteem as a man, is only saying, that I know him, and am neither blinded by envy nor bigotry. But my name has been brought into connexion with his, on points that regard his public ministry: and he himself has publicly distinguished me as his friend, on public grounds, and in proof of my confidence in his regard, I have not the least apprehension of forfeiting it by a frank declaration of what I think. Well, then! I have no faith in his prophesyings, small sympathy with his fulminations; and in certain peculiarities of his theological system, as distinct from his religious principles, I cannot see my way. But I hold withal, and not the less firmly for these discrepancies in our moods and judgments, that EDWARD IRVING possesses more of the spirit and purposes of the first Reformers, that he has more of the Head and Heart, the Life, the Unction, and the genial power of MARTIN LUTHER, than any man now alive: yea, than any man of this and the last century. I see in EDWARD IRVING a minister of Christ after the order of Paul, and if the points, in which I think him either erroneous, or excessive and out of bounds, have been at any time a subject of serious regret with me, this regret has arisen principally or altogether from the apprehension of their narrowing the sphere of his influence, from the too great probability that they may furnish occasion or pretext for withholding or withdrawing many from those momentous truths, which the age especially needs, and for the enforcement of which he hath been so highly and especially gifted! Finally, my friend's intellect is too instinct with life, too potential to remain stationary: and assuming, as every satisfied believer must be supposed to do, the truth of my own views, I look forward with confident hope to a time, when his soul shall have perfected her victory over the dead letter of the senses and its apparitions in the sensuous understanding; when the Halcyon IDEAS shall have alit on the surging sea of his conceptions,
But to return from the Personal, for which I have little taste at any time, and the contrary when it stands in any connection with myself -- in order to the removal of one main impediment to the spiritual resuscitation of Protestantism, it seems to me indispensable, that in freedom and unfearing faith, with that courage which cannot but flow from the inward and life-like assurance, "that neither death, nor things present nor things to come, nor heighth, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" -- (Rom. VIII. 38, 39) -- the rulers of our Churches and our teachers of theology should meditate and draw the obvious, though perhaps unpalatable, inferences from the following two or three plain truths. -- First, that Christ, "the Spirit of Truth," has promised to be with his Church even to the end. Secondly: that Christianity was described as a Tree to be raised from the Seed, so described by Him who brought the seed from Heaven and first sowed it. Lastly: that in the process of Evolution, there are in every plant growths of transitory use and duration. "The integuments of the seed, having fulfilled their destined office of protection, burst and decay. After the leaves have unfolded, the Colyledons, that had performed their functions, wither and drop off." [i] The husk is a genuine growth of "The Staff of Life:" yet we must separate it from the grain. It is, therefore, the cowardice of faithless superstition, if we stand in greater awe of the palpable interpolations of vermin; if we shrink from the removal of excrescences that contain nothing of nobler parentage than maggots of moth or chafer. Let us cease to confound oak-apples with acorns still less, though gilded by the fashion of the day, let us mistake them for Golden Pippins or Renates. [ii] i. Smith's Introduction to Botany. ii. The fruit from a Pippin grafted on a Pippin, is called a Rennet, i.e., Renate (re natus) or twice-born.
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