Points of controversy

Preface

The little volume whicli we present to the American public, in the form of doctrinal lectures, was written for no other purpose, than, with the assistance of Divine Grace, to convert souls to God. Our missionary experience has taught us, that though by no means necessary, a plain, simple work like the present, may prove useful to a great ninnber of Catholics, Protestants, and Indifferentists in religion, who treat books as they do the fashions, dropping one to adopt another, almost every season. There is no lack of short controversial works in our Catholic Theological literature, and most of those that are before the public, have, doubtless, more intrinsic merit than our lectures. Yet zeal prompts us to add these to the stock, in the hope that they may find a few readers, to whom they may prove of some

PEEFACE.

spiritual service. We shall consider ourselves amply rewarded for our labor, if they become instrumental in leading even one soul to abjure error and embrace tlie truth as it is in Christ Jesus.

Alas ! how many millions of our fellow men, redeemed by the precious blood of the Saviour, are daily lost to the Church and to Heaven, who, if we exerted ourselves a little more in their behalf, might be rescued from darkness and the shadow of eternal death ! How much could be done towards converting our countrymen, if we Catholics joined works of zeal and charity to fervent prayer! If we were untiring in our efforts to spread instruction and useful books, tracts, and pamphlets among them, as an antidote against the many slanderous publications which are put forth in hostility to us. How much sinful ignorance would be removed from among the children of the Church themselves, if, instead of subscribing to and purchasing the trivial and often pernicious romances and periodicals of the day, they were to buy and read a few good books of Catholic

PEEFACE. 5

literature, and make them their delight and study.

Always willing to learn and improve by the wisdom and experience of others, we beg all those who will read these Lectures, to suggest to us, either publicly or privately, whatever additions or corrections they may deem necessary or useful, so that we may insert them in a second edition, or add them to the second volume, which, if this succeeds, we intend soon to publish.

In conclusion, we wish to place our little book under the protection and care of the ever Immaculate Yirgin Mary, Mother of God, and Patroness of the infant Church in the United States of America, and we beg her to bless it, its author, and its readers.

CmjKCH of the Holy Family, Chicago, ni.

Contents

n. The Bible not the Rule of Faith 50

ni. The Church of Christ 109

IV. The Roman Catholic Chuech, the Church

I. Indiffeeence In Eeligion

" Without faith it is impossible to please God." Heb. xi. 6.

LmDELiTT and a general indifference to all religion are the characteristic traits of our age. The great and fierce battles of error against truth, that marked the years immediately following the so-called Reformation, have ceased, and have been succeeded by a false, delusive peace. A fatal lethargy has come over the minds and hearts of men, in which religion, virtue, duty, are looked upon as empty phantoms in a dream, leaving a momentary impression of their beauty, but soon to be forgotten in the more attractive and absorbing interests of daily life. While we boast of the triumphs of genius over matter, and point to a thousand inventions and discoveries that minister to our carnal wants, and carnal pleasures, we are silent on the fearful ravages which a total apathy to our higher and more lasting interests, has made in our midst "We have established lines of communication nmrFFERENCE m KELTGION.

with the most distant nations of the earth, but we have ceased to commune with Heaven. Our merchant vessels are laden with the riches of every land, but the barque of our soul is without cargo or ballast, tossed to and fro by every wind of error and passion. Our schools and academies, our colleges and universities, impart the highest instruction in every branch of human knowledge, but the science of God and revelation, the science of the saints, is banished from the class-room, and the professor's chair. We are becoming a Godless people.

A chief cause of this moral degeneracy may be traced to the principle of private judgment introduced by Luther and Calvin, as the highest and only authority in religion and morality. Since the time of these Reformers, religion ceased to be the mistress, and became the slave of man. He was no longer bound to obey her, but she was bound to obey him. His reason was no longer subject to her divine authority, but she became subject to his prejudices and passions. The Scriptures, although cried up aa the supreme authority, lost their objective value, and men no longer listened to the words, "Thus saith the Lord," but gave ear to the freaks and fancies of every upstart prophet and doctor, whose best reason for the faith that was in

INDIFFEEENCE IN BELIGION.

hinij was, " I believe so " It is my impression " It is my opinion." Eeason itself was soon dethroned, and feeling became the exponent of truth. Men judged of religion as they did oi their breakfasts and dinners. This was true, and that was false, because they liked the one and dislil^ed the other. They felt religion as they felt heat and cold, and behaved accordingly. New fashions of belief became as numerous as new fashions of dress. Every year, every month, produced a new one, which in its turn was succeeded by another still more recent. Oneness in faith and union of believers became impossibilities. Confessions and catechisms of doctrines, councils, and synods, reading recreant members out of church, excommunicating false teachers, and heterodox believers, could not stay the individualizing process of this principle. The most ignorant saw that such restraints upon their personal liberties were evident contradictions of the first principle introduced by the innovators. Had not every individual the same privilege as his neighbor to read the Bible, and interpret it as best he could, by the aid of his private judgment ? "Was the Spirit exclusive in his operations on the soul that wished to get religion from the common book of faith ? What right

10 mDrFFEEENCE m EELIGIOIT.

had Luther to denounce the Anabaptists as heterodox ? What right had Calvin to burn Servetns for opinions, which he also had conscientionsiy drawn from the pages of the inspired volume ? A shoe-black was as much entitled as the learned doctor of Wittenberg, or the profound thinker of Geneva, to tell the world what he understood by the mystery of the Trinity, the incarnation of the Word, the predestination of the just and the wicked, and all the other dogmas of faith.

Toleration was the necessary result of the principle established. Not a mere toleration of opinion, preventing physical violence and persecution, leaving every one to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience ; but a toleration which approved all, even the most glaring contradictions in faith, as the working of one and the same Spirit of truth, who was given differently to different individuals, according to their religious capacities and wants. Free from all external restraint, bound no longer by councils, synods, confessions, or catechisms, individual religion became naturally invisible. It remained confined within the chambers of the mind. This gave rise to the idea of an invisible Church, and of course of an unseen faith, which although unknown to earllij mDrFFEEENCE IN EELIGION. 11 was watched with peculiar interest in Heaven. Bnt how was this invisible Church to be known even as invisible ? That which cannot be seen by the eye of the body, nor the eye of the mind, must needs remain in impenetrable darkness. The common sense of the people was not slow in discovering the absurdity and the contradiction. But what was the remedy ? There was none ! Public authority was banished ; individual faith had retired into privacy ; the Bible truths were the property of each subjective understanding; apathy and indifference succeeded, as the natural consequences of a principle which dissolved all union among the members of the same faith, and all the obligations which spring from such a union. The educated, the talented among them, looked upon religion as a sham ; and the vulgar, the illiterate, as a thing beyond the reach of their understanding. The Eeformation ended in infidelity and indifference to all forms of faith and religion.

This is no unwarranted assertion of our own. Protestant writers bear ample testimony to its truth. Beckendorf writes that "there is no Church among his brethren, but merely parties ; the old Church is in ruinsP Ball says : " The dissolution of the Protestant Church is certain ;

12 INDirTEEENCE m EELIGIOK.

the "Hallisclie Literatar Zeitung" declares that " there is no Protestant Church, but only Protestant churches " One sees Protestantism," says Professor Schwann, " but no Protestant Church;" Schlegei avers, that, of the greatest part of the Evangelical churches, it may be doubted whether they make any pretence to the name of Christian Church.

The " Gazette" of Berlin, in Prussia, wrote a few years ago : " It is easy to prove, yea, it has been proved more than once, that there is not one of all our pastors, who believes what another believes." " They are all laughed at as so many false prophets." (Ludke). " The people seeing their contradictions, treat their guides as imbeciles and impostors." (Fischer). " We unhesitatingly affirm," says Dr. Planck, "that there is not one theologian among us, who has not renounced some important point of faith, considered important by the Eeformers." '*The Antichristian spirit shows an open front ; . . . the Bible is shamefully interpretted ; . . . our universities increase the evil." (John Mdller). " Satan himself," says Ewald, " has more faith than many of our Biblical interpreters, and Mohammed was much better than they." " The decadence of religion," exclaims Kirchaff, "in all Protestant countries, is

INDIFFEEENCE m EELIGION. 13 but too evident." "JSTot tlie higher classes alone, but the people also," writes Bickel, " plunge daily more and more into religious indifferentism." "We are come to that pass," wrote the " Theological Jom-nal," in 1830, that if the middle classes are not yet despoiled of every moral habit, the religious spirit, at least, has completely forsaken them." " The Lutheran Church," says Frceseisen, " resembles, as to its different factions, a worm cut up into a thousand pieces, every one of which stirs so long as it retains the least particle of life, but ends by dying." (Discourse at Strasburg). The same infidelity and indifference have paralyzed the Calvinistic Church of Switzerland. Vernet's system of theology, which denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, is the standard work used in their university. " Believe anything you like of Jesus Christ," said he to his theological students, " but do not believe him to be God." (Sketch of Religious Discussions). No wonder that the people should re-echo the voice of such masters, and exclaim in the very Greets, " down with Jesus Christ."

Pass over to France, — you hear the same words of wailing from the lips of the Protestant leaders. " We had a Church," writes Edmond Schever, " we have now only churches. We

14 INDrFFEKENCE IN EELIGION.

were a Eeformed Cliurcli, we are so no longer. Its name now adorns only a mutilated phantom!' (Present State of the Eeformed Church in France). The Foreign Aid Society's Eeport, read in IS^l, as follows : " A few years ago, it was hardly possible to find twenty pasteurs^ ^^ho confessed the doctrines of the Trinity and ^.tenement. At present. Protestantism in France is, for the most part,Socinianism."

The third volume of the " Scottish Christian Herald" (p. 51-54), informs ns that " of Protestant ministers who, in Belgium, afford religious instruction to thirteen different congregations, there are only four who know the truth ; the rest, being either Eationalists or Socinians, hate it with their whole hearts !"

Speaking of Sweden, Norway and Finland, Robert Haldane says, that, " Though the tide of infidelity reached these JSTorthern countries more slowly, its advent was none the less disastrous. The faith of the people was everywhere overturned by the preachers of humanity sent forth by the infidel University of Copenhagen. At present, one may travel through these countries, and, perhaps not find anything like the Gospel in parishes.'^ (E. Haldane's second review of the Conduct of the Directors of Brit, and' For. Bible Society,

INDIFFEKEiq^CE EST EELIGIOIT.

Edin., 1826-1861.) We all know wliat havoc mdifferentism has made in England and onr ovm country. Protestantism is no longer a protest against the religion of Eome, but against all religion. Positive dogmatism is no longer its attribute. It has lost the very few pieces of the seamless garment which it took along, at its first separation, and which it appeared willing to preserve, when it robbed the Catholic Church of some thousands of its nominal believers. Its ministers and doctors dare no longer preach or teach any article of faith, which the people are likely to disown, as uncongenial to their prejudices and feelings. Every minister who would be heard, must first feel the pulse of the audience to which he preaches the Gospel. Opposition to the sovereign wiU of the dear people in matters of faith and morals, is as sure to meet with contempt, as opposition in political matters. Every preacher is the creature of his congregation more thoroughly than every representative is the creature of his constituents. The awful truths, "He that belie veth not shall be damned;" " Without Faith it is impossible to please God " One Faith, one Baptism," are heard no longer in the general assembly, or fi-om the pulpit ; but instead of them, the soft,

16 INDIFFEEENCE IN EELIGION, flattering maxims, Believe what you tMnk fit " Suit yourselves " We shall all come right in the end."

Add to this intellectual apathy the no less general disregard of all moral obligation oi restraint, which increases in proportion as faith loses its hold upon the people. Its causes also lie in the principles set down by the first Reformers. Disappointed pride generally seeks refuge in the gratification of the senses. The idolatry of the intellect is succeeded by the deification of the flesh. The worship of gods and demigods is followed by the worship of the passions. Often they go hand in hand together. The flesh is a powerful antagonist of the spirit, and fights as unrelentingly for its pretended rights as does the intellect. Hence the Reformers could not separate the one from the other. The same pens that wrote in favor of the rights of reason, as the judge of truth and falsehood, also wrote that man has lost his free will, and that it is impossible even for the just, to observe the commandments. Tea more, they made God the author of evil, the mover and impeller to sin : so that the vocation of Paul to the apostleship among the Gentiles, and the adultery of David, were alike the work of God.(C9iemnitz, Loc TheoL Ed, Leyser,

INDIFFEEEKCE IN EELIGION. 17

1615, p. 173. Zwingle, De Providentia, torn, i., c. yi. Calvin's Institutes, lib. iv., c. 18, § 2. Beza, Aphorism, xxii.). It is not diflScult to see wliat an injurions influence such, a doctrine must have had on the morality of the individual and of society. If, said the logical youth, my sins are not my own ; if God is their author, why should I have faith any more than justice or purity ? Tea, the conclusions derivable from these principles were carried further still. The Infidels, Spiritualists, and other Freethinkers of our day, have deduced from them : that there is no moral evil in the world ; that all that is, is right ; that physical evils are the only obstacles to man's happiness ; that true virtue consists in obeying the voice of nature and the impulses of the heart.

Such is the lamentable condition to which many have come in our age and country. We ourselves have met several who had fallen into this deplorable abyss of mental and moral degradation. Can anything be done to remedy this evil ? "We must return to first principles, and from them deduce the obligations which have been disowned, the duties which have been neglected. This we shall endeavor to do in the following lectm*es.

2* •

18 rroiFTEEENCE m eeligion.

There is a God ; " the heavens and the earth are fall of his glory." "The firmament on high is His beauty. . . . The snn, when he appeareth, showing forth at his rising, an admirable instrument, the work of the Most High. . . . Great is the Lord that made Him. . . . The glory of the stars is the beauty of heaven; the Lord enlightened the world on high. . . . By the words of the Holy One they shall stand in judgment, and shall never fail in their watches. Look upon the rainbow and bless Him that made it ; it is very beautiful in its brightness. He encompasseth the heaven about, with the cu'cle of its glory. The hands of the Most High have displayed it. . . . What shall we be able to do to glorify Him? For the Almighty Himself is above all His works." (Ecclus. xliii.)

"What shall we be able to do to glorify Him ?" We shall fall down before Him and adore Him. This is our first, our reasonable, our necessary duty. If there is a God, and that God created us, as well as all things that exist, we are bound to acknowledge the relation in which we stand to Him. Now, we know and believe that it is not we ourselves who made ourselves, but that His hands have made us and formed us. God, then, is our

INDIFFERENCE IN EELIGIOK. 19 first beginning. He it is who "formed tlie eye and planted the ear" (Ps. xciii. 9) : He who "fashioned ns wholly round about" (Job X. 8) : He who " formed man of the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul!' (Gen. u. 7). "We are beholden to God for all that we are; and are therefore dependent on Him. Moreover, the same cause that made us, preserves our existence. "Without His almighty power and infinite goodness, we should fall back into the nothing out of which He drew us. As our Creator and Preserver, His dominion over His creatures is absolute and universal. He has all and every right over the works of His own divine hands. His first right is, that a free but dependent creature should acknowledge this dependence on Him. If the heavens and the earth themselves, after their own way, confess His wonders (Ps. Ixxxviii. 6) ; if from the earth the dragons, all the deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds, praise Him and fulfill His word (Ps. cxlviii. 7), how much more should man, who is created in Elis own image and likeness, praise and serve the Lord his God ? If they, after their manner, adore and worship Him as their sovereign" Lord, how much more should man ?

20 INDUTEEENCE IN RELIGION.

As God is onr first beginning, so is He also our last end. He proposeth to Himself an end worthy of Himself in creating the nniyerse and man. That end could be no other than Himself. The infinite cannot subject itself to the finite, the limitless to the limited — ^the eternal to that which is passing — the immutable to the ever changing — the perfect to that which is essentially imperfect. Nor can man exist for the finite and limited creatures of time. Endowed with an intellect which is created for truth, and a heart which is made for good, man, although finite in nature, tends to the possession of infinite truth and infinite good, and by so doing recognizes the infinite truth and good, as worthy of a higher love than any limited truth and good. This is interior worship, and includes only acts peculiar to the mind and heart. But since the whole man, body and soul, depends on his Maker and his last end, he must acknowledge that double ' dependence by acts corresponding to the nature of his compound beiag. His body, then, must manifest, after its own way, its entire dependence on the God that made it, so that man must adore his Creator, by acts of external as weU as internal worship. And as man is a Bocial being, his external acts of worship must rNDIFFEEEKCE IK EELIGIOK. 21 necessarily come under the observation of tlie society of which he is a member.

God, to be worshipped as He deserves, must be known to the worshipper. How could man otherwise tend to God as his last end ? We do not desire what is unknown to ns. Our intellect, therefore, must study the nature of the Deity and His attributes, both to satisfy its infinite longings after the truth, and to furnish the will with the means by which it can reach the goal to which it tends, and for which it is created. Religion is that means ; for its object is to make us acquainted with the nature of the Deity, the relations in which we stand to Him, and He to us, and consequently the obligations which flow from those relations.

Human reason can, absolutely speakings know that there is a being, which is Eternal, Omnipotent, Supreme, Infinitely Perfect, and that man owes Him worship and adoration; and the human will can, absolutely speaking, practise the obligations, which flow from the knowledge of our relations to God, — ^yet all history and experience teach us that, in point of fact, the one, unaided by revelation, has never understood the full extent of these truths, nor the other, unassisted by grace, ever practised the obligations which these truths

22 nmrFFERENCE m religion.

naturally entail. Scarcely was Adam banished from the delightful garden of Paradise, when those truths, which he beheld in all their beauty, and faithfully carried out in practice before his fall, were obscured in the minds of his children. The most absurd and contradictory notions of a Deity, and His attributes, began to prevail. The pure worship of the one true and living God was gradually abandoned, and idolatry and superstition succeeded in its stead. Not only the vulgar crowd, the illiterate multitude, but the most learned sages, the profoundest philosophers, the acutest lawgivers, the most prominent statesmen, orators and poets, lost sight of the true God, and indulged in the most ludicrous and revolting religious practices. Not one of them, from Confucius and Lao-Tsee, in China, to Cicero and Seneca, in Home, was able to give the world a natural theology or moral philosophy which answered all the wants of mind and heart. The works of the best of them teem with errors and absurdities. Nor could they, on the hypothesis that they had taught the whole truth concerning God and man, and the relations which exist between them, have succeeded in acquainting the world at large, with what they th selves knew, or in enforcing the obligations which mDIFFEEEITCE m EELIGION.

they deduced from that knowledge. To succeed iu tMs, they should have had it in their power to communicate the talent necessary to fathom these truths and obligations, and the moral force to put them into practice. This they could not impart. Meanwhile, error asserted its right to dogmatize, and passion to be gratified and indulged. How could then* most l]f.c\d demonstrations check the arrogance of the one, and the powerful impulses of the other, without the interposition of a higher influence ? No wonder, therefore, that Plato exclaimed, " A teacher is necessary, but no one will teach us, unless a God lead the way."

That teacher came, that God appeared and showed us the way. He gave us a revelation from Heaven. That revelation is twofold. In the first place, it consists of those truths which reason alone could, strictly speaking, know without this special assistance, such as the existence of God, His eternity, providence, the immortality of the soul, the reward of virtue, and punishment due to vice. These truths are supernatural through revelation, not as to their objective verity, but as to the manner in which they are made known. Secondly, it comprises truths which transcend the natural powers of reason, and the revelation of which is super-

INDrFFEEENCE m BELIGIOlir.

natural as to tlieir substance and their manner. Such, for example, is the truth that God is one in essence and three in person. Such truths, because they lie out of the natural capacity of liimian reason, are called mysteries. Since, . then, there were truths which reason, unaided by revelation, could not possibly think of, much less understand, even after they were revealed as to their intrinsic nature or manner of existence, it was necessary that God should attest the fact of His having revealed such truths by unmistakable evidences, such evidences as would convince the reason of man that He truly revealed them.

These evidences He did give to man, and they consist of miracles and prophecies. A miracle is a sensible effect, at variance with the known laws of nature, and produced in confirmation of a certain doctrine. A prophecy is a certain prediction of an event which can- . not possibly be foreseen in natural causes, and is uttered likewise in attestation of a certain truth.

Such miracles and prophecies transcending, as they do, all the known powers of created nature, can be the work of God alone. Whenever, therefore, they occur in confirmation oi the truth of revelation, that revelation is thereby proved to be Divine, if there remains no

INDHTirBENCE IN EELTGION. 25 solid reason to deny it after tlie revelation is made. But there can be no solid reason when the truth which the miracle attests is not evidently contradictory to any other well known tnith of reason or of revelation, and when there is nothing in the manner of proposing the truth, nor in the end for which it is made, or in other cu'cumstances, which could make it improbable.

Now, that such miracles have been wrought and prophecies uttered in attestation of the revelation made by God to man, is a well known fact of history.

The pages of the Old and New Testaments abound with miraculous facts and prophecies. The blind see, the lame walk, the dead rise from their graves, in confirmation of the doctrines which are there recorded. We are bound to accept revelations thus attested as the revelations of God Himself.

For, when God reveals any truth, whether of a speculative or practical nature. He must needs do so for an end. This end can be no other than His greater glory and our greater happiness. Both these motives oblige us to accept and believe His revelation. Has He not a perfect right to be known, to be reverenced, served, and adored as He pleases ? 3

26 INDIFFEEEKCE IN EELIGION.

To withhold that tribute of our mind and heart, is to insult His sovereign dominion over our whole being. Zeal for our own happiness impels US to make use of those means which will most certainly and infallibly realize that happiness. But among these means none is more necessary than a correct knowledge of God, and of the duties which we owe Him as our first beginning and last end. Religion is the only adequate guide to this knowledge. Hence the necessity of admitting religion is as great as the necessity of attaining our happiness itself. Faith, therefore, in the doctrine of Divine revelation, is necessary unto our real well-being for time and for eternity.

But this revelation is essentially one in its nature. God is infinite and infallible Truth. He cannot be deceived Himself, nor can He deceive us in the revelation of His truths. All, then, are bound to believe the revelation made in the one only sense in which it was made. Different faiths in one and the same revelation are an evident contradiction.

It is not true, that all religions are equaljy^acceptable to God. To predicate such absurdity of God is to blaspheme His name and to destroy His very nature. To believe God's word otherwise than as it lies in His divine mind, is rroiETEEENCE m EELIGIOK.

to believe God to be different from, and contradictory to Himself. God is the truth: He cannot at the same time be error. God is one : He cannot possibly be dirided. To admit that truth and error are the same in God is not only to place Him in contradiction with Himself, but to destroy His very nature. Error excludes truth. Put error in God and He will cease to be the Truth ; He will cease to be God.

If all religions are the same, then God can be served by error and vice, as well as by truth and virtue. For these religions contradict each other, both in points of speculative and practical doctrines. What the one admits, the other denies. What the one prescribes as duty, the other forbids as sin. Can it be the same to God whether with the Socinian you deny the Trinity of persons, or with the Trinitarian admit the Triunity of God? Can it be the same to the Author of all truth, whether you believe, or whether you do not believe, that He has predestined some to be damned and others to be saved, without any regard whatsoever to their good or evil deeds ? Is it the same, whether you believe in the necessity of regeneration by baptism, or absolutely deny its power to purify the soul ? Is there no distinction between the doctrine of Luther — that faith rraiFFEEENCE IN EELIGIOIT.