An appeal and a defiance ...

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Dedication

TO

CARDINAL DESCHAMPS.

Your Eminence :

Preface

But few words of preface are needed in presenting to the public a translation of any of Cardinal Deschamps' works. It has probably been a subject of surprise and regret to those who have read his works that so few, as yet, have been translated into English. For the translation itself I must claim great indulgence. This I trust will be granted by those who are aware that truly classical works are the most difficult to translate, and when I state that this translation has been made during the incessant labors of a laborious foreign mission.

The Translator.

Contents

Page.

An Appeal and a Defiance, ... 9

Chapter I

An Appeal to the good faith of a Protestant by birth, .... 13

CHAPTER II. A defiance to the reason of a Rationalist, . 35

1. The Biblical fact of the Two Tes-

taments from the point of view

of reason, . . . .36

2. The Biblical fact of the New Tes-

tament in presence of the fact of the Church, considered in its relation to reason, . . 65

3. Evidence induces obligation, . 84

VIII

CONTENTS.

Chapter III. Page

Why many people do not see what is Evident, and how what is clear for the Wise is also clear for the simple, , . 89

1. Why people do not see what is

evident, 89

2. What is clear to the learned is clear

to the simple, . , . .112

AN APPEAL AND A DEFIANCE.

AT the moment when the still recent attacks of rationalism against the divine foundation of religion were making the greatest sensation, we happened to meet with an English Protestant who had been much struck and still more grieved by a fact that forced itself upon his mind. On the one hand he remarked the absolute silence, or at least the weakness of the few protestations of Protestantism against the attacks of shallow science, while on the other hand he heard the chorus of voices which rose from the Catholic Church, to confess with love and to defend with might, the divinity of the Son of Man, the truth of the Incarnation of the Son of God, this essential truth of which he has said himself: " Whoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken." — (Matt. xxi. 44.) We saw at once that we were in the presence of a traditional Protestant, of a Christian attached to his Church in virtue of a Catholic principle ill applied, and we showed him how it was, that Protestantism, if it be faithful to its own principles, found itself necessarily disarmed in the combat with rationalism.

IO AN APPEAL AND A DEFIANCE.

But we endeavored especially to make him understand why the fragments of the Christian weapons which Protestants still possess by means of the Holy Scripture could not have the strength that these divine weapons possess, in the hands of the Church, to give combat to the enemies of the faith, and carry off the victory. Our travelling companion seemed rather pleased than annoyed at this conversation, which lasted until the different directions of our journey forced us to separate. He was on his way to Calais, and we were going to Tournai to prepare a new edition of the pamphlets, which certain circumstances have caused us to publish during the past few years.

It is from this meeting that the thought came to us to add to one of these pamphlets another chapter, in which we give the conversation just mentioned.

But as this last pamphlet had originally been written to unmask the freemasons who were seeking in the Evangelical alliance, recruits to combat the Christian doctrine, we hardly fancy that any one would expect to find in the last Edition of " Masques Bibliques" what was wanting to all the preceding editions, viz., the appeal we made to Protestants who are still in good faith, and the defiance we launched against rationalists by means of some detached extracts from larger controversial works.

We believe, therefore, that this last part,

AN APPEAL AND A DEFIANCE. II which was quite supplementary to our former work, will make its way better by itself, reach its destination more surely, and be attended with more success, now that it is developed and published under the title it bears at present, which more clearly points out its aim. This aim is at one and the same time to bring back our straying brethren to the full Christian or Catholic truth, to show the numerous disciples of rationalism that reason itself condemns them, and to preserve many a poor soul from the poisoned arrows which the Protestant Propaganda, aided in every way by Freemasonry, aims at them by means of the so-called liberalism of to-day and by all that no longer believe in Jesus Christ.

Moreover papers, reviews, and pamphlets, are making such a determined war on books properly so called, that these last, in order to have a chance of being read, are presented to their readers in portions suited to the appetite. Do not our best writers and even those who tickle the public curiosity the most, by treating of the history of our times, give us their works bit by bit. It is fitting, therefore, that more serious works, and those which have a much deeper interest for souls, should give them the bread of truth in the same way.

This is what Abbe Gratry did when he separated from his "Sophists" the chapter against M. Renan,to form the pamphlet which is so widely spread. Why should we not do the same, since before the publication of

12 AN APPEAL AND A DEFIANCE.

the last work of M. Renan we had already shown in the "Christ et les Antichrists" by facts which can not be called in question, that all that he had said of Christianity and the Gospels is evidently without foundation? Why should we not in like manner say to Protestants, if* not everything that can be said to prove the falseness of Protestantism, at least a few decisive words that will make their error stare them in the face.

Truth is like a diamond. You can break it in pieces, but each fragment keeps its natural brightness, and proves it is genuine by its lustre. The true religion, from whatever side you look at it, is always recognizable. Its splendor is not dead but living, and its divine life always pierces through the weakness of those who serve as the organ to her voice, and as instruments of action.

Chapter I

An Appeal to the Good Faith cf a Protestant by Birth.

OU are a Protestant because you have

X been born a Protestant. You belong to the Anglican Church or to the Presbyterian Church, to the high or low Church, you are a Calvanist, a Lutheran, a Methodist, or an Anti-baptist, or a member of any other sect, because your parents have been Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Calvanists, or have belonged to some other sect. Naturally speaking this must have been so, and if you say that I have become a Catholic in the same way, I willingly agree with you, with this distinction, that in becoming what you are, as those become what I am, you have become a Protestant in virtue of the Catholic principle, and in spite of the Protestant one. The Catholic principle, as also the principle of reason and common sense, is that religion by its very nature is not and cannot be an open question. It is not any kind of science, but the science of life itself, the science of the aim and end of man, the science of the road one must follow in this world not to lose one's time and trouble. This is the reason why

AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

religion cannot be a mere question, a difficulty or a problem to be solved, a matter of opinion and controversy without a judge, because man has too short a time to pass on earth to search what he must do with life, and God, morally speaking, could not have placed him on the path of time without giving him the reason, or without enlightening him on his end. Providence may well abandon the world to the disputes of men, and to the progress of science, because physical nature — the earth and the heaven, — necessarily continue their course without suffering from our ignorance. But God could not have left man in doubt about the course he is to follow, and in ignorance of the law he is to obey, because man acts freely and with intelligence, and without light from on high would fall into the abyss. "The word of God on high is the fountain of wisdom." — (Ecclus. i. 5.) "And thy word is a lamp to my feet" — (Ps. cxviii. 105.)

Thus in all ages and among all nations, religion has been transmitted as life has been, and as a gift of the author of life. Is it not altogether fitting that the parents who give life, should teach their children why this life has been given them ? Have not the parents themselves had to learn this themselves from their fathers? It is thus that in going back from generation to generation, the first family which came from the hands of God must needs have been taught by God, by Him from whom all paternity descends. It is evi-

AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

dent that in such matters parents do not invent but only receive, for they themselves are children with regard to God, before whom all families are as one. This is why domestic society is dependent here on religious society, in which the divinely established authority is invested with the character of spiritual paternity.

It is the character, therefore, of the true faith, to be transmitted as life is from the origin of the human race. This forms the living unity of religion through all ages.

You have been made believe, perhaps, that you are an Anglican, a Methodist, a Lutheran, a Calvanist, or anything else, because you have found in the Bible the opinions of the sect in which you were born. This is a mistake; you are what the teaching of your parents and of your Church have made you, in spite of the Protestant principle which Inukiplies among you so many Churches, doctrines and negatives. I say in spite of the Protestant principles, for you know that Protestantism owes its birth to the negation of the authority of the teaching Church, and to the corresponding affirmation of the all sufficiency of the Bible as the means of preserving and propagating the Christian religion. " The Bible'' it cries, u The Bible alone, and the Bible without explanation." But this has not prevented, and does not prevent, it from still flooding every day, the East and West with a deluge of little tracts and pamphlets, of all;

l6 AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

kinds, in order no doubt the better to prove that the Bible can be understood by itself and has no need of explanation. But it is not only necessary for it to deny in this way the affirmation of its origin, it has also especially to deny the fundamental negation which gave it birth, and after having been born of this negation of the perpetual mission of the ever teaching Church established by Jesus Christ, it resumes again, to its own profit, the Catholic principle, and lives only on condition of teaching, and even of reducing almost all its worship to preaching. Hence, in spite of the principle which causes opinions and sects to abound in Protestantism, you are, like all orthodox Protestants, what the teaching of your parents and your Church have made you. But you will say it is enough to belong to the creed of one's fathers, to be in the right. If this were the case the idolaters would not be wrong.

I grant you it is not enough for error to be traditional in order to enjoy the privileges of truth. Hence we must believe that in bestowing upon us our reason, God has given us sufficient light to discern the work of God from the work of man. It is by our reason that we are the living images of God, and when God comes to us, our reason easily recognizes its principle and its father. We do not therefore cling to God blindly. It is not enough that error should be proposed to us like truth in order to have the same right as truth, for there have always been wicked men who have broken the divine chain of the true religion, to transmit to their descendants a few broken, rusty and scattered links thereof. But on this account is it less certain that it is of the nature of religious truth to be transmitted as life is ? Is it not rather evident that if the evil men of whom we spoke had not more than once troubled the stream it would ever have been sufficient to be of the religion of one's parents to be in the right ? Thus the words <4 Religioji of our fathers'' are so powerful and are never without an echo in our souls. Those words really mean "The religion of God." He who really understands the purport of these words will always come to the knowledge of the truth.

No doubt God makes himself known in other ways than by the mark of the living unity of his words in all ages, and when Jesus Christ came to repair the divine chain of truth broken by the sacrilegious abuse of that power which is called <; the liberty of man /" He manifested the Divinity of His Mission by many other signs, but not the less by the one I have mentioned. He has proved Himself to be God by showing Himself the sole King of Ages. He said on His entry into the world: " I11 the head of the book it is written of me." — (Heb. x. 7.) He said also: " The law and the prophets are full of me." — (Luke xxiv. 44.) And lastly, " / am not come to destroy but to fulfil." — (Matt. v. 17.) He made two witnesses, of which God alone disposes, l8 AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

the past and the future, to render testimony to His Divinity. To those who listened to His word, He showed Himself the true master of the past, since He made them read His history divinely, written by the forty centuries that preceded His coming. To us who read the Gospels He has shown Himself the tiue Master of the future, since He has left us the prophetic announcement replete with wonderful details, and also an evidentl)* divine promise of the future which seemed scarcely credible, realized under our eyes by the constitution, the marks, the faith, the worship, the action, and the duration of the Universal Church. Here is the Master of ages to whom alone glory belongs. " J?egi seeculorum immortalitati, soli Deo, honor et gloria." " To the King of ages, immortal, the only God, be honor and glory." — (I. Tim. i. 17.) Here in very truth is the living unity of the primitive word coming back to man according to the Divine promise to be transmitted to the end of time by a perpetual apostolate. " Docete usque ad eo?isummatio?iem sceculi." u Teach even to the consummation of the world." — (Matt, xxviii. 20.) Listen to me now as children of God. Is it not evident that we must understand the Gospels, the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, as the Evangelists and the Apostles themselves understood them? Were not the bishops w 7 ho were placed by them over the primitive *I say evidently, this I will prove later on.

AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

Churches commanded to keep intact the deposit of the faith, such as had been confided to them orally and by writing. — (Thess. ii. 14.) The living unity of the faith throughout ages is therefore here again the mark of divine truth, and it is evident that the only true way of understanding the Holy Scriptures is the way in which they were first understood. Hence it is absurd to open the Bible as many do, to discover its meaning; he alone has true Christian sense who seeks in the Sacred Scriptures only for the Divine aliment of the faith, which is ever ancient and ever new.

Follow out the Catholic principle therefore to its last conclusions, and return to unity. Then the Gospels, which hitherto have been a book half closed to you, will henceforth be opened and full of light.

You have read these words of Christ: "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and behold / am with you all days even to the consummation of the world." — (Matt, xxviii. 19, 20.) In these words we have clearly a universal teaching authority, teach all nations; a perpetual teaching authority, teach until the consummation of the world. There is therefore manifestly an authority which has the divine assistance to preserve the divine teaching, and therefore an authority divinely faithful, or in other words, an infallible depository, of this teaching. "I am with you all days, even unto the end" You must therefore show

AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

me on earth a religious authority resting on the divine institution and assistance, affirming itself for this very reason infallible in the comain of the faith, and speaking to all the people as well as to all the centuries since Jesus Christ, or else you must tear up the Bible and cast the leaves to the wind. But up to this where have you come across this authority which teaches, which is universal and perpetual, resting on the promise of infallible assistance made to it by Jesus Christ? Make the avowal therefore that hitherto these divine words have been to you but mere vain words, and that they will only cease to be such, when you read them in the presence of the living fact of Catholicity. For the Church is the work of God, as well as the Holy Scriptures, and you must not separate the two works which have been united by the Almighty, if you have not misunderstood both the one and the other.

You have often read the following words in the Gospel: " Thou art Peter, ci7id ufon this rock I will build my Church, a?id the gates oj hell shall not prevail against it. J will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.'* — (Matt, xvi. 18, 19.)

The kingdom of heaven, as you know, is the spiritual empire, the fifth empire which Daniel foretold is not to be destroyed. It is to Peter that Christ has given the keys of this kingdom, and you are aware to whom the keys of a city are given. But this power on which Christ rests this Church, this corner-stone of His divine edifice, where have you found it? Since Jesus Christ, where reigns this supreme authority, which no power has been or ever will be able to destroy? Raise your eyes and look at Rome, see there Peter always reigning in his successors, and at last understand that the solemn promise of the Gospel is not in vain.

Doubtless you have been struck at the scene in which the Gospel shows us Jesus Christ when He appeared to His Apostles after His resurrection; showed them those divine sources of pardon, His wounds: breathed upon them the spirit of mercy in His divine breath and addressed to them these solemn words: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost \ whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain they are retained" — (John xx. 22, 23.) But have you been able to understand these wondrous words? God alone has power to forgive sins: this power He has communicated to the apostolate, to the authority which He has given to His Church: but where have you found the traces of this most wonderful power? Look, oh! Christian, and see it full of life in the Catholic Church, within which pardon descends by the hands of the priest on all the consciences ready to receive it, on all those souls who humble themselves and confess themselves guilty. Confession, such as it exists in the Church, such as it is practiced by the wise and the ignorant, by the Pope as well as by the low-

AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

liest of the faithful, by kings as by people, is a fact which is so superhuman that divine institution can alone account for it. But on the other hand, how can you explain the words of the Gospel which I have just quoted? Once again, therefore, the Gospel announces the Church and the Church explains the Gospel. You must not separate these two gifts of God from each other unless you wish to lose both.

Finally you have read, both in the Old and in the New Testament, in the Psalms, in the Prophets, in the Gospels, and in the Epistles, the following words, whose mysterious connection must have struck you:

**/ have no pleasure in you" said the Lord to the people of old, " /;/// behold from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great anion* the Gentiles, and there is offered to my name a clean offering. — (Malac. i. 10, ii.) The royal prophet, speaking of Christ the high priest of the new covenant, cries out: " The Lord said to my Lord, thou art a priest for ever according to the order of MelchisedecJi y (Ps. cix.), namely of the pontiff who blessed Abraham, the father of the true believers, and who offered to God bread and wine because he was the priest of the Most High. — (Gen. xiv. 18.)

" I am the living bread which came down from heaveti" says Jesus Christ himself, speaking of the participation in the sacrifice of the New Law; " he who eats this bread shall live

AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

forever; and the bread which 1 shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world" And as the Jews murmured on hearing these words, Jesus Christ continued, "Amen, amen, I say unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life; and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is m eat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him." — (St. John vi.)

On the eve of his death, after having celebrated with his disciples the supper of the ancient alliance, which was such a wondrous figure of the New, he dispelled the figurative shades of the past by the institution of the great reality which was to remain in all future ages.

"And taking bread, he %ave thanks and brake; and gave to them saying: This is my body which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. In like manner the chalice also, after he had supped^ saying: This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you." — (St. Luke xxii.)

"For I have received of the Lord," says the great Apostle to the first Christians, " that which also J delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and giving thanks, broke and said: Take ye and eat; this is my body, which shall be delivered for you; do this for the commemoration

AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

of me. In like manner also the chalice \ after he had supped, saving: This chalice is the new testament in my blood; this do ye, as often as you shall drink for the commemoration of me. For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord, until he come. Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body

AND OF THE BLOOD OF THE LORD. But let

a man prove himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of the chalice. Tor he that eaieth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and

DRINKETH JUDGMENT TO HIMSELF,NOT DISCER- NING THE BODY OF THE LORD." (I. Cor. XI.)

Elsewhere comparing this spotless victim with the victims which were offered to idols in the pagan sacrifices, St. Paul says to the Christians: " You cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord and of the table of devils " — (I. Cor. x.) Then referring to the shadows of the Mosiac sacrifices, he adds, " We have an altar whereof

THEY HAVE NO POWER TO EAT who Serve the

tabernacle." — (Heb. xiii.) "The bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord, and the chalice which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ f 9t — (I. Cor. x.)

Now have you never been struck with the agreement of these words of the two Testaments ? You must acknowledge that they are full of mystery, and that of yourself you can get but little light from them. Where is the sacrifice which is to be offered forever according to the order of Melchisedech ? Where is the victim without blemish that is offered in all places from the East to the West, among all nations? Open your eyes and look at the Catholic Church; there you will see the pure and bloodless victim who gives life to the world, the true living bread descended from heaven — (St. John vi.), offered always and everywhere by the hands of a new priesthood in memory of the bloody sacrifice once consummated on the cross. — (Heb. vii.)

Consider seriously and tell me if this fact is human; on the one side to see but the species of bread and wine, and on the other nations prostrate in adoration. How can you explain this way of acting without the help of the true word and the power of God ? The Eucharistic worship is the worship of civilized nations. It has been and still is an object of intense veneration to the greatest minds of all ages from Origen to Leibnitz, from Clement ot Alexandria to Descartes, from Augustine to Pascal, from Chrysostom to Bossuet. It is a source of consolation and life to the learned as well as to the simple; it is, as it were, the heart of Christianity, which is the soul of the world. Now this profound mystery is an actual, perpetual and universal fact! Once again I ask you, how can you explain this without the power of God ?* It is this mystery only, as you

* We propose these questions to rationalists as well as to Protestants.

AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT.

have seen, that can explain the Holy Scriptures, yet how should we know of this mystery were it not for the divine institution which the Holy Scriptures relate to us. Here then again, as elsewhere, the Church explains the Scriptures, the Scriptures the Church; and from the union of these two gifts of God, light is poured forth abundantly from on high. Separate these two gifts and everything is again enveloped in darkness.

Cease then to separate them, and the union of the living with the written word will give you in all its fulness that truth of which Protestantism has given you a few shreds. Consider how it has rent the truth asunder.

Faith saves us but by means of the charity which it inspires. Protestantism, through the unmistakable voice of its patriarchs, separates faith from charity and declares that faith, without good works, is sufficient to make us partake in the fruits of Redemption.

Hope rests, by means of prayer, on the merits of Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ Himself wills that we should go to Him in company with our brethren in heaven and on earth, with the men and angels who have already won their crown, and above all in company with that great model of hope and prayer, with Mary of whom Jesus was born. (St. Matt, i: 16.) This living union, this Comnnim'on of Saints (Apostles' Creed) which the Apostles preached to the whole world, which has been believed and practiced in all ages, which is graven on the stones of the catacombs and on all the monuments of the Apostolic churches, this it is that Protestantism rejects; and pretends that the Church Militant cannot speak to the Church Triumphant, nor make its groanings heard in heaven, as if any distance were too great for the voice of the heart, or of tears, and as if silence itself did not speak to spirits.

In Protestantism divine love is separated from worship, which is but the divine expression of this love; especially in the Eucharist, which is the heart of Christianity, grace is separated from its great reservoirs, the Sacraments; the one great sacrifice of Redemption, is separated from its perpetual oblation on the altars of the New Covenant; the universal society established by Jesus Christ is separated from the authority which Christ Himself placed as its foundation; the written word is separated from the living tradition which shows its origin and its meaning, and this very Scripture is divided, the texts are divided, the context, the unity, that is to say, the truth, is hidden, as was done by him who combatted Christ with the Bible in the temptation in the desert.