New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago:
BENZIGER BROTHERS
printers to the Holy Apostolic See

Permissu Superiorum

copyright, 1888, by Elias Frederick Schauer

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter I. Introductory
Chapter II. The Infallible and only True Guide to Heaven
Chapter III. The Great Revolt Against Christ
Chapter IV. Dishonesty of His Impudence Bishop Coxe
Chapter V. Refutation of the False Assertions of Rev'ds Sir Oracle, Cronin and Young, Divided into Two Parts.
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PART I.

There is no salvation out of the Church.

§  1. S.O begins to comment on some answers, contained in our little work, "Familiar Explanation of Christian Doctrine," (first edition)
§  2. S.O. continues to speak ex cathedra.
§  3. S.O. examines and explains the question and answer, "Have Protestants any faith in Christ?  A. They never had.
§  4. What Catholic faith is.
§  5. What Protestants' belief in Christ is.
§  6. More false oracles of Sir Oracle.
§  7. S.O. declares truth to be rant and abuse.
§  8. S.O. continues to declare false what is true.
§  9. S.O. declares wholly untrue what he cannot understand.
§ 10. S.O. avows that our conclusion is correct, but tells more d--d lies.
§ 11. S.O. declares that the final sentence of the Eternal Judge, "I know you not--Depart from me, etc." will fall, not on Protestants, but only on bad Catholics; but from his own words it is proved that Protestants, too, are included in that sentence.
§ 12. S.O. declares the honest life of Protestants a standing reproach to bad Catholics.
§ 13. S.O.'s. pharisaical language.

PART II.

Those who live in heresy without being guilty of the sin of heresy.

§  1. Natural Law.
§  2. The written Law.
§  3. The New Law or the Law of Grace.
§  4. Conscience in general.
§  5. Kinds of conscience:

1. The right or true conscience.
2. The certain conscience.
3. The timorous or tender conscience.
4. The doubtful conscience.
5. The lax conscience.
6. The perplexed conscience.
7. The scrupulous conscience.
8. The erroneous or false conscience.

§ 6. What heretics are not guilty of the sin of heresy -- Refutation of Rev. A. Young's erroneous doctrine on divine faith of material heretics.
§ 7. Invincible or inculpable ignorance neither saves nor damns a person.
§ 8. How Almighty God leads to salvation those who are inculpably ignorant of the truths of salvation.
§ 9. Those who sincerely seek the true religion.
§ 10. S.O. on confession.
§ 11. S.O. points out the road to heaven for heathen and Protestants of every denomination.
§ 12. S.O. gives us credit for our correct doctrine in a way very dishonorable to himself.
§ 13. S.O. as Catechist.
§ 14. Liberalism condemned by the Church.

PREFACE.

NECESSARY TO BE READ.

St. Paul, in his epistle to St. Timothy, exclaims: "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words, and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called." (l. Tim. vi. 20.)

"Who is at present this Timothy?" asks Vincent of Lerins, and he answers: It is the Body of the Pastors of the Church, and therefore every Pastor must apply these words of St. Paul to himself: O Timothy, O Pastor, O Doctor, O Priest, " Keep that which is committed to thy trust," pure and undefiled, "earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints; " (Jude, v. 3); never depart from the sacred words of God, "once put into thy mouth." (Isai. lix. 21.) "You, therefore," says Bishop Hay, "must never know what it is to temporize in religion, in order to please men, nor to adulterate even one iota of the Gospel of Christ to humor them. You must declare the sacred truths revealed by Jesus Christ in their original simplicity, without seeking to adorn them with the persuasive words of human wisdom, much less disguise them in a garb not their own. Truth, plain and unadorned, is the only weapon you must employ against your adversaries, regardless of their censure or their approbation. ‘This is the truth,’ you must say, ‘revealed by God; this you must embrace, or you can have no part with him.’ If the world looks upon what you say as foolishness, you must not be surprised, for you know that ‘the sensual man perceiveth not the things that are of the spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand’ (I. Cor. ii. 14.) ; ‘but that the foolishness of God is wiser than men;’ and pitying this blindness you must earnestly pray to God to enlighten them, ‘with modesty admonishing them . . . if, peradventure, God may give them repentance to know the truth.’ (II. Tim. ii. 25.)

"If there ever was a time when it was especially necessary for every Pastor of the Church to watch over the purity of faith and morals which the Church has entrusted to him, it is the present age and country, in which so many condescensions and compliances are admitted and received at the expense of the purity of Catholic faith and morals, and the narrow way that leads to life is converted, in the opinion of men, to the broad road that leads to destruction.

" This remark applies especially to that latitudinarian principle so common now-a-days, that a man may be saved in any religion, provided he lives a good moral life, according to the light he has; for, by this, the faith of Christ is evacuated, and the Gospel rendered of no avail; a Jew, a Turk, a Heathen, are all comprehended in this scheme, and if they live a good moral life have as good a right to salvation as a Christian!

"To be a member of the Church of Christ is no longer necessary, since, if we lead a good moral life, we are in the state of salvation, whether we belong to her or not! What a wide field does this give to the passions of men! What liberty to all the whims of the human mind! It is therefore of the utmost consequence to state and to show plainly the revealed Catholic truth that ‘there is no salvation out of the Catholic Church.'"

It must be remembered that every Catholic dogma is a revealed truth that has always been held by the Fathers of the Church from the beginning and must, therefore, be interpreted, not according to modern opinions and latitudinarian principles, but according to the faith of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church; and therefore Vincent of Lerins says: "A true Catholic is he who loves the truth revealed by God, who loves the Church, the Body of Christ, who esteems religion, the Catholic faith, higher than any human authority, talents, eloquence, and philosophy; all this he holds in contempt, and remains firm and unshaken in the faith which, he knows, has always from the beginning been held by the Catholic Church; and if he notices that any one, no, matter who he may be, interprets a dogma in a manner different from that of the Fathers of the Church, he understands that God permits such an interpretation to be made, not for the good of religion, but as a temptation, according to the words of St. Paul: ‘For there must be also heresies; that they also, who are reproved, may be made manifest among you.’ (I Cor. xi. 19) ‘And indeed, no sooner are novel opinions proclaimed, than it becomes manifest what kind of a Catholic a man is:’ (Commonit.) Hence, as St. Augustine says, ‘a theologian who is humble, will never teach anything as true Catholic doctrine, unless he is perfectly certain of the truth which he asserts, and proves it from Holy Scripture and the Tradition of the Church.’ Those who have learned theology well,’ says St. Basil, will not allow one iota of Catholic dogmas to be betrayed. They will, if necessary, willingly undergo any kind of death in their defence.’

"They will propose each dogma, especially the all-important dogma, "out of the Church there is No salvation," in the words of the Church and explain it as she understands it; they are most careful not to weaken in the least the meaning of this great dogma, by the way of proposing or explaining it. Why does not St. Paul say: if any one preach to you a Gospel contrary to that instead of beside that which. we have preached to you? ‘It is,’ says St. John Chrysostom, ‘to show us that one is accursed who even indirectly weakens the least truth of the Gospel.’ (Cornelius a Lapide in Epist. ad Gal. I. 8)"

"As there is," says Pius IX., "but one God the Father, one Christ his Son, one Holy Ghost, so there is also only one divinely revealed truth, only one divine faith--the beginning of man's salvation and the foundation of all justification, by which (faith) the just man lives, and without which it is impossible to please God and to be admitted to the Communion of his children; and there is but one true, holy, Catholic, Roman Church and divine teaching Authority, (cathedra) founded upon Peter by the living voice of the Lord, out of which (Church) there is neither the TRUE FAITH nor ETERNAL SALVATION, since no one, can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his Mother." (Encycl. Letter, March 17, 1856.)

"The Holy Ghost," says St. Augustine, "is to the Body of Christ, which is the Church, what the human soul is to the human body. It is by the soul that each member of the body lives and acts. In like manner, it is by the Holy Ghost that the just man lives and acts. As the soul does not follow a member which is cut off from the body, so, in like manner, does the Holy Ghost not follow a member which has been justly cut off from the Body of Christ. He, therefore, who wishes to obtain life everlasting, must remain vivified by the Holy Ghost; and in order to remain vivified by the Holy Ghost we must keep charity, love the truth, and desire unity." (Serm. 267.) "Therefore no one can find life everlasting except in the Catholic Church." (Serm. ad Caesarenses) "Where unity is wanting, there can be no divine charity. Hence it is that divine charity can be kept only in the Catholic Church." (Contr. lit. Petil., lib. ii., cap. 77.) Now, as no one can obtain salvation without having the spirit of Christ, or divine charity, and as this spirit or divine virtue, which is called the soul of the Church, is kept only in the unity of the Church, it is evident that out of the Church there is positively no salvation.

It must be remembered that every dogma is exclusive, and admits of no interpretation contrary to that which it has received from the beginning. To every dogma, therefore, may be added what Pius IX. added to the definition of the Immaculate Conception of the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary, namely: "Wherefore, if any persons--which God forbid--shall presume.to think in their hearts otherwise than we have defined, let them know that they are condemned by their own judgment, that they have suffered shipwreck in faith, and have fallen away from the unity of the Church."

"Let those, therefore," says Vincent of Lerins, "who have not learned theology well, learn it better; let them try to understand of each dogma as much as they are able, and let them believe what they are not able to understand; let them remember the words of St. Paul: ‘If any one shall teach you anything besides that which you have received, let him be anathema.’ (Ephes. i. 9.) Dediscant bene quod didicerant non bene; et ex toto Ecclesiae dogmate quod intellectu capi potest capiant, quod non potest credant. O Timothee, depositum custodi, devitans prophanas vocum novitates. Si quis vobis annuntiaverit..praeterquam quod accepistis, anathema sit. (Commonit.) "It is according to this Catholic and apostolic spirit that we have endeavored to explain our religion, and especially the great dogma "Out of the Catholic Church there is positively no salvation." But our explanation, it seems, is too Catholic for some individuals, because we have not admitted into it any modern opinions and latitudinarian principles. Believing, therefore, that "they would do a service to God" and to their fellowmen, especially to their separated brethren, they have, through the Buffalo Catholic Union and Times, made known that we have misrepresented Catholic belief concerning the dogma "Out of the Church there is no salvation."

The Right Reverend George Hay, Bishop of Edinburgh,, Scotland, who, when yet a Protestant, took the vow to do all he could to extirpate Popery, wrote a treatise entitled "An Inquiry whether Salvation can be had without true faith and out of the Communion of the Church of Christ." In this treatise, the pious and very learned Prelate of the Church proves most clearly that "out of the true Church no one can be saved," and adds "that it is only of late that that loose way of thinking and speaking about the necessity of true faith, and of being in communion with the Church of Christ, has appeared among the members of the Church, and that this is one of the strongest grounds of its condemnation. It is a novelty, it is a new doctrine; it was unheard of from the beginning; nay, it is directly opposed to the uniform doctrine of all the great lights of the Church in all former ages. It is, therefore; a matter of surprise that anybody should call this point in question; that indeed this can only be accounted for from the general spirit of dissipation and disregard for all religion, which so universally prevails now-a-days; for the first authors of the so-called reformation, and some of their most candid followers, seeing the strong proofs from Scripture for this point, and not finding the smallest foundation in the Sacred Writings to support the contrary, have solemnly acknowledged it, however much it made against themselves; for the Protestant Church of Scotland, in her Confession of Faith, agreed upon by the divines of Westminister, approved by the General Assembly in the year 1646, and ratified by Act of Parliament in 1649, in the chapter on the Church speaks thus, "The visible Church, which is also Catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before, under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and of their children, and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation." (Confession of Faith chap. xxv.)

"But their predecessors in the preceding century, when the Presbyterian religion first began in Scotland, speak no less clearly on the same subject; for in their Confession of Faith, authorized by Parliament in the year 1560, ‘ as a doctrine grounded upon the infallible word of God,’ they speak thus, Article xvi.: ‘As we believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so we do most constantly believe, that from the beginning there hath been, and now is, and to the end of the world shall be one Kirk--that is to say, one company and multitude of men, chosen by God, who rightly worship and embrace him by true faith in Jesus Christ;. . . which Kirk is Catholic--that is, universal; because it containeth the elect of all ages, etc.: out of which Kirk there is neither life nor eternal felicity: and therefore we utterly abhor the blasphemy of them that affirm that men who live according to equity and justice shall be saved, what religion so-ever they have professed.’ This confession of the original Kirk of Scotland was reprinted and published in Glasgow in the year 1771, from which this passage is taken. Calvin himself confesses the same truth, in these words, speaking of the visible Church: ‘Out of its bosom,’ says he, ‘no remission of sins, no salvation is to be hoped for, according to Isaiah, Joel, and Ezekiel; . . . so that it is always highly pernicious to depart from the Church;’ and this he affirms in his Institutions themselves, B. iv., c: 1, § 4.

We shall add one testimony more, which is particularly strong;.it is of Dr. Pearson, a Bishop of the Church of England, in his exposition of the Creed, edit. 1669, where he says, ‘The necessity of believing the Catholic Church appeared, first, in this, that Christ hath appointed it as the only way to eternal life. We read at the first, Acts ii. 47, "That the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved:" and what was then daily done hath been done since continually. Christ never appointed two ways to heaven; nor did he build a Church to save some, and make another institution for other men's salvation (Acts iv. 12): "There is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus;" and that name is not otherwise given under heaven than in the Church. As none were saved from the deluge but such as were within the ark of Noe, framed for their reception by the command of God; as none of the first-born of Egypt lived but such as were within those habitations whose door-posts were sprinkled with blood, by the appointment of God, for their preservation; as none of the inhabitants of Jericho could escape the fire or sword, but such as were within the house of Rahab, for whose protection a covenant was made;--so NONE shall ever escape the eternal wrath of God who belong not to the Church of God.’ Behold how far the force of truth prevailed among the most eminent members of the Reformation before latitudinarian principles had crept in among them!

"It is true, indeed, that, though the founders of these Churches, convinced by the repeated and evident testimonies of the Word of God, professed this truth, and inserted it in the public standards of their religion, yet their posterity now disclaim it, and accuse the Catholic Church of being uncharitable for holding it; but this only shows their inconsistency, and proves that they are devoid of all certainty in what they believe; for if it was a divine truth, when these religions were founded, that out of the true Church, and without the Catholic faith, there is no salvation, it must be so still; and if their first founders were mistaken on this point, what security can their followers now have for any other thing they taught? But the Catholic Church, always consistent and uniform in her doctrine, always preserving the words once put in her mouth by her Divine Master, at all times and in all ages has believed and taught the same doctrine as a truth revealed by God, that ‘out of the true Church of Christ, and without his true faith, there is there is no possibility of salvation;’ and the most authentic public testimony of her enemies proves that this is the doctrine of Jesus, and of his holy Gospel, whatever private persons, from selfish and interested motives, may say to the contrary. ‘What a reproach must this be before the judgment-seat of God to those members of the Church of Christ who call in question or seek to invalidate this great and fundamental truth, the very fence and barrier of the true religion; which is so repeatedly declared by God in his Holy Scriptures, professed by the Church of Christ in all ages, attested in the strongest terms by the most eminent lights of Christianity, and candidly acknowledged by the most celebrated writers and divines of the Reformation! Will not every attempt to weaken the importance of this divine truth be considered by the great God as betraying his cause and the interests of his holy faith? and will those who do so be able to plead even their favorite invincible ignorance in their own defence before him?’ (From Sincere Christian, American Edition.)

But let us hear a greater Authority speaking, on this all-important subject.

In his Encyclical Letters, dated Dec. 8, 1849; Dec.. 8, 1864; and Aug. 10, 1863, and in his Allocution on Dec. 9, 1854: Pope Pius IX. says:--

"It is not without sorrow that we have learned another not less pernicious error, which has been spread in several parts of Catholic countries, and has been imbibed by many Catholics, who are of opinion that all those who are not at all members of the true Church of Christ, can be saved: Hence they often discuss the question concerning the future fate and condition of those who die without having professed the Catholic faith, and give the most frivolous reasons in support of their wicked opinion . . . . .
"It is indeed of faith that no one can be saved outside of the Apostolic, Roman Church; that this Church is the one ark of salvation; that he who has not entered it, will perish in the deluge....

"We must mention and condemn again that most pernicious error, which has been imbibed by certain Catholics, who are of the opinion that those people who live in error and have not the true faith, and are separated from Catholic unity, may obtain life everlasting. Now this opinion is most contrary to Catholic faith, as is evident from the plain words of our Lord, (Matt. xviii. 17 ; Mark xvi. 16; Luke x. 16; John iii. 18) as also from the words of St. Paul, (II. Tim. Iii. 11) and of St. Peter (II. Peter. ii. 1). To entertain opinions contrary to this Catholic faith is to be an impious wretch.

"We therefore again reprobate, proscribe, and condemn all and every one of these perverse opinions and doctrines, and it is our absolute will and command that all sons of the Catholic Church shall hold them as reprobated, proscribed, and condemned. It belongs to our Apostolic office to rouse your Episcopal zeal and watchfulness to do all in your power to banish from the minds of the people such impious and pernicious opinions, which lead to indifference of religion, which we behold spreading more and more, to the ruin of souls. Oppose all your energy and zeal to these errors and employ zealous priests to impugn and annihilate them, and to impress very deeply upon the minds and hearts of the faithful the great dogma of our most holy religion, that salvation can be had only in the Catholic faith. Often exhort the clergy and the faithful to give thanks to God for the great gift of the Catholic faith."

Now is it not something very shocking to see such condemned errors and perverse opinions proclaimed as Catholic doctrine in a Catholic newspaper, and in books written and recently published by Catholics?

We have, therefore, deemed it our duty to make a strong, vigorous, and uncompromising presentation of the great and fundamental truth, the very fence and barrier of the true religion, "OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE IS POSITIVELY NO SALVATION," against those soft, weak, timid, liberalizing Catholics who labor to explain away all the points of Catholic faith offensive to non-Catholics, and to make it appear that there is no question of life and death, of heaven and hell, involved in the differences between us and Protestants.

Not to free your neighbor from religious errors, says Pope Leo, when it is in your power to do so, is to show to be in error yourself, and "therefore," says Pope Gregory, "he whose duty it is to correct his neighbor when he is in fault, and yet omits to make the correction, makes himself guilty of the faults of his neighbor." "Indeed," says Pope Innocent III. of those whose duty it is to keep the deposit of faith pure and undefiled, "not to oppose erroneous doctrine is to approve of it, and not to defend at all true doctrine is to suppress it."

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY

In 1874 we wrote a little volume, entitled Familar Explanation of Christian Doctrine. Our Mother, the holy Catholic Church, has wisely decreed that no book treating of faith and morals shall be printed without the approbation of the Bishop of the diocese, and that no Bishop shall give his approbation before the Manuscript has been submitted to the criticism of a learned and pious theologian, in order that the reader of the book may know that it contains nothing contrary to faith and morals. (See Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. p. 120, No. 220.) The Rule of the Redemptorist Fathers, however, requires that a book written by one of them must be examined by two learned theologians, before it appears in print. We submitted our little volume to the criticism of the late very learned Rev. A. Konings, C. SS. R., Professor of Moral Theology and Canon Law at the Redemptorist College, Ilchester, Md., to the late Rev. Doctor Francis J. Freel, then the beloved Pastor of the Church of St. Charles Borromeo; Brooklyn, L.I., to the late Rev. Father M. Sheehan, a learned priest of Ireland, and to James A. McMaster, the late learned Editor of the New York Freeman's Journal. As the little book was very favorably criticised, it received the Imprimatur of the Most Rev. J. Roosevelt Bailey, Archbishop of Baltimore, and of the Very Rev. Jos. Helmpraecht, the Provincial of the Redemptorist Society in the U. S., and was published in 1875. The little volume had a wide circulation for these fifteen years. Last year we published, by Benziger Brothers, a new edition of this little volume, considerably improved and enlarged.

In the little volume (first edition) we have shown, from page 12 to page 86, that only the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ on earth, established for the salvation of mankind, that she is the only infallible interpreter of the Written and Unwritten Word of God, and that consequently all those who wish to be saved must die united to this Church.

From page 87 to page 124, we have given several popular reasons why salvation out of the Roman Catholic Church is impossible for those who live up to the principles and spirit of Protestantism. In the second part of this short treatise we speak of those Protestants who are not guilty of the spirit of Protestantism or the sin of heresy. The Catholic Union and Times of Buffalo, issued on January 26, 1888, contained an anonymous article, headed, "A Queer Explanation of Christian Doctrine." The writer of the article endeavors to prove from a few questions and answers contained in our Familiar Explanation that we have misrepresented the Catholic Doctrine, "There is no salvation out of the Roman Catholic Church," From the manner in which the article is written, it is evident that it is not written by an Irish priest, who was educated in Ireland; for if the whole article were put in the form of questions any Irishman or Irishwoman would confound the writer of that article by the way of answering those questions. The writer is probably a convert from the so-called Episcopalian Church, who was received into the Church without the gift of divine faith, and consequently understood neither the spirit of the Catholic faith nor that of Protestantism. If he is not such a convert, then rest assured that he is a liberal-minded priest. He gives no other proof for the truth of his assertions than his own authority, and how great this is appears clearly from the fact that he did not sign the article, and therefore it deserves no more credit than a dream-book. The fact that the Rev. Editor of the Buffalo Catholic Union and Times calls the writer of the article "the most prominent priest of the United States" shows his want of prudence, for no sensible man would have called him so; he might have said, a prominent priest of the U. S.

Here is the editorial: "The most prominent priest in the United States has honored our columns this week with an article upon a most important matter. The recognized ability of the writer and the recent publicity given to the points he discusses deserve the editorial space given to the masterly communication. We hope our readers--and especially our esteemed Protestant readers--will give this article careful perusal. We endorse his every statement and heartily thank the writer for his able and timely criticism."

Strange, to call a priest THE most prominent priest in the United States without giving the public his name. The Cardinal Archbishop, and all other Archbishops, and Bishops, and all the priests, and even every Catholic of the United States would have thanked him for letting them know who, in his opinion, is not only a prominent, but even THE MOST prominent priest in the United States. For brevity's sake we shall call him "Sir Oracle."

The Rev. Editor and his brother-priest, the writer of "Queer article," are peremptory and self-sufficient in proclaiming their erroneous opinions, as if they had nothing better to learn from the Church and her holy doctors. To them may be applied what St. Francis Xavier wrote one day to one of the Jesuit Fathers; namely: "You, like so many others who resemble you, are greatly mistaken, when you fancy you can follow your opinions and judgment, merely for the reason that you are Members of the Society." (Life of St. Fr. Xav.)

"Did you read in the Buffalo Union and Times, the article "Queer Explanation?’" I asked a priest. "I did," he answered: "What did you think of it?" – "I thought the writer of it is an illustration of what Cardinal Manning says in his work The Vatican Council namely: ‘A school of errors partly sprung up in Germany by contact with Protestantism, and partly in England, by the agency of those who, being born in Protestantism, have entered the Catholic Church, but have never been liberated from certain erroneous habits of thought.’"

"What does your Reverence advise me to do, in the matter? Will it be well for me to return to "Sir Oracle" the compliments which he has made to the author of ‘Familiar Explanation of Christian Doctrine?’"-- "Indeed, it is not only well, but even a duty for you to do so on account of the readers of the B. U. and T., some of whom may have received false impressions, especially liberal Catholics, who never learned well the reasons of the faith that is in them. Hence, if you were silent, and omit to give strong proofs for the Catholic doctrine in question, Catholics and even Protestants who read the article "Queer Explanation" would, in fact, begin to doubt your doctrine, and that writer would triumphantly assert that you had been silenced by the anonymous assertions brought forward by him, and published by the Rev. Editor of the B. U. and T., who has made that article all his own, by cheerfully endorsing every statement of it. Expose, therefore, to the Public his counterfeit theology by contrasting it with sound theology, so clearly explained that even the most ignorant can understand it."

"Should these compliments be returned through the B. U. and T.?" "The B.U. and T. would indeed be bound to communicate them to all its readers; but as the instructions conveyed through a newspaper are easily forgotten, and often thrown into the waste basket, I advise you to have them printed and published in pamphlet form through the energetic Publishers, Benziger Brothers. If you writer these compliments, like all your other works, and have them published at a cheap price, they will have a wide circulation, and thousands of Catholics and non-Catholics will devour them and be benefited by them. If certain priests are so very ignorant in matters of great importance how ignorant must be those who never had an opportunity to learn sound Catholic theology concerning certain dogmatical truths.

"That there are such also among the German Clergy is evident from the fact that, in 1886, the Rev. A. Klug published, in Germany, a new catechism, in which he asserts that ‘Protestants are saved in those truths which they hold with us in common.’ Cardinal Manning also says in his work, The Vatican Council, ‘that many of the clergy were brought up in dangerous traditional errors during two hundred years, up to the time of the Vatican Council; that their errors were owing to the fact that they never conceived a clear and precise idea of the Church, because they never had a clear and precise knowledge of the supreme power of her Head; that, unless this be distinctly understood, the doctrine of the Church will always be proportionally obscure; the doctrine of the Church does not determine the doctrine of the Primacy; but the doctrine of the Primacy does precisely determine the doctrine of the Church.’

"Many are still affected by those errors and entertain erroneous views of certain Catholic doctrines; you know, it is not an easy task to get rid of the errors of the intellect and of lying spirits. If you, then, clearly show the errors of these men, you will earn the thanks of the greater part of the American clergy and laity, and even of many honest Protestants, who are eager to know the true religion."

These remarks of a pious priest are very correct.

The present age is completely absorbed in speculations of every kind—political, commercial, literary, scientific, and even religious; so that the source whence the rising generation ought to derive more knowledge of their moral and religious duties is contaminated by invincible pride, immoderate luxury, ridiculous fashion, self-interest, and general ignorance of the doctrine of salvation. Hence the predominant tendency of the present generation is to enjoy material life, indulge the passions, gratify the sensitive and appetitive powers, and neglect the religious cultivation of the intellect, heart, and soul. It is, therefore, the indispensable duty of priests, parents, and of all those who have the spiritual direction of children and Christian families, to communicate to all sound Catholic doctrine as the great means to oppose and to cure the moral leprosy of the age. This is the only object we had in view in publishing our catechisms and other larger works for every class of society. Quack doctors in all sciences, speculating pedants in literature, monopolists of every kind, and hypocrite in religion and politics, are contemptible in every age and nation and deserve universal animadversion. This language may tickle and fret some individuals. The exposition of Catholic doctrine in our smaller as well as in our larger works is too Catholic for the consciences of certain men, who, on this account, will not fail to heap upon us their rancorous and vindictive criticisms in pharisaical language. One day St. Alphonsus said that he though he could bear in silence every insult offered to him except one: that of being called a heretic. We, too, are ready to bear in silence personal insults, except one--that of having misrepresented Catholic doctrine in any of our works. Even from our childhood the study of our religion has been our greatest pleasure; we have always loved it too much to misrepresent any truth whatsoever. We have taken unspeakable pains to make it plain and attractive to all classes of society, even to the little ones. We have never published a line that was not read by excellent theologians before it went into the hands of the printer. Hence we have felt it our duty to vindicate, in strong language, the insult which has publicly been offered to us in the B. U. and T. We have now one foot in the grave and the other shall soon follow it. We, therefore, have no reason to be a coward in publishing the truths of the Catholic religion and in opposing erroneous principles. It would, indeed, be a great shame for us to keep silence in a matter of the greatest importance. If there are priests who are bold enough to make false and fallacious assertions concerning our holy religion, without any due respect to learned and pious Prelates and priests and the Catholic Press in general, who have bestowed high praises upon our works, for their orthodox and solid teaching, we must not be less bold in showing to the Public the ignorance of those priests in matters in which the salvation of souls is at stake.

Since we wrote the above we have received a copy of the Buffalo Catholic Union and Times, issued March 22, 1888 in which an article is published, headed "Have Protestants Divine Faith?" The writer of it is the Rev. Alfred Young, a Paulist Father of New York. The article is written to corroborate at least part of that written by the "Most Prominent Priest of the U. S." He praises the Rev. Father Cronin for having published that article "Queer Explanation." We are very sorry for the grave errors which these priests have taught the public, not of course, intentionally, but because they knew not what they were doing.

In showing their erroneous doctrine on Catholic and Protestant belief in Christ, etc., we will chiefly follow the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, and other doctors and eminent theologians of the Church.

"That method of teaching," says Pope Leo XIII., "which rests on the authority and judgment of individual professors, has a changeable basis, and hence arise different and conflicting opinions which cannot present the mind of the holy Doctor (Thomas Aquinas) and foster dissensions and controversies which have agitated Catholic schools for a long time and not without great detriment to Christian Science." (Brief, June 19. 1886). "St. Thomas, indeed, is a most wise doctor, who walks within the confines of truth; who not only never disputes with God, the Head and Fount of all truth, but is always strictly in full accord with Him, and is always docile to Him when disclosing his secrets in any manner whatever; who no less piously listens to the Roman Pontiff when speaking, reveres in him the divine authority; and fully holds that submission to the Roman Pontiff is necessary to salvation. (Opusc. contra errores Graecorum). In following St. Thomas Aquinas as our author and master, we safely teach without any danger of passing over the boundaries of truth. But to gather and scatter opinions according to our own will and pleasure is to be reputed the vilest license, lying, and false science, a disgrace and slavery of the mind." (Encyc., Dec. 21., 1887.) 

CHAPTER II.

THE INFALLIBLE AND ONLY TRUE GUIDE TO HEAVEN

Many years ago a celebrated architect built a magnificent palace. When he had completed the costly edifice he gave it to some friends for their dwelling. But, these soon behaved badly, and became a scandal to the whole neighborhood. People often said: "Why was so splendid a palace erected for such wicked wretches?" At last the king arrived and took possession of the palace. He pardoned the servants and tried to make them good again. Then the people said: "Now we understand why this magnificent palace was built; it was for the king."

The architect in this parable is God the Father. He built a magnificent palace--the world. He put into it his friends--Adam and Eve. They soon behaved badly; and the angels asked, "Why was so splendid a palace--the world--created for these wicked people?"

At last the King, Jesus Christ, arrived. He pardoned the servants and tried to make them good again, and the angels exclaimed : "Now we understand why this great palace--the world--was made; it was for Jesus Christ, the King of the world."

God decreed from all eternity to create the world as a dwelling-place for men, where, by a holy life, they should gain an eternal reward. He foresaw from all eternity that men would not live up to the end of their creation. God would then have been frustrated in his design, had he not decreed from all eternity the Incarnation for the redemption of the human race. It was, therefore, principally for the sake of the God-Man that the world was created. He was to come for the justification and glorification of man.

Hence St. Thomas Aquinas says: Ordo naturae creatus est et institutus propter ordinem gratiae.

The principal end of the creation of the universe is, first, Jesus Christ, and, secondly, that the elect may receive here below the grace of God through Christ. Although it is true that the world existed before the Son of God became man, nevertheless, in the plan of creation and redemption, Jesus Christ is prior to the world. On this account St. Paul calls Jesus Christ the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that, in all things, he may hold the primacy: because in him it hath pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell, and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, making peace through the blood of the cross, both as to the things on earth, and the things that are in heaven. (Coloss. i. 18-20.)

There is, therefore, a certain intimate union between the creation of the world and the nativity of Christ. God did not wish that Christ should be born except in this world; and again, he did not wish that this world should exist without Jesus Christ. Nay, it was chiefly for his sake, as we have said, that God created the world and for his sake has preserved it and shall continue to preserve it to the end of time.

God had decreed to institute through him the order of grace, that is, the order of the justification and glorification of the elect.

As the artist produces his work according to his conception and knowledge, so, also, God created man to his own image, which is his Son, his eternal Wisdom, the prototype of all things. Now, when a work of art is deteriorated by time or accident, it is restored by the skilful hand of the artist to its original state; so, in like manner, the image of God in man being disfigured in Adam, its source, the Son of God became man to repair his image. "As the children are partakers of flesh and blood, so Jesus also made himself partaker of the same: wherefore it behooves him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful High Priest before God, and be a propitiation for the sins of the people." (Heb. ii. 14, 17.) Thus we receive our sonship or adoption of children of God from him who is the Son of God by his nature. "And if sons, heirs also of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." (Rom. viii. 17.)

Hence it has always been, from the beginning, absolutely necessary for salvation to know, by divine faith, God as the Creator of heaven and earth and the eternal Rewarder of the good and the wicked, and the Incarnation of the Son of God, and consequently the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity; "For he that cometh to God," says St. Paul, "must believe that he is, and is a rewarder of those who seek him." (Heb. xi. 6.) Upon these words of the great Apostle, Cornelius a Lapide comments as follows:

"The knowledge of God acquired from the contemplation of the world teaches only that God is the Author of the world and of all natural blessings, and that only these natural goods can be obtained and asked of him. But God wishes to be honored and loved by men, not only as the Author of natural goods, but also as the Author of the supernatural and everlasting goods in the world to come; and no one can in any other way come to him and to his friendship, please him, and be acceptable to him. Hence true, divine faith is necessary, because it is only by the light of divine faith that we know God, not only as the Author of nature, but also as the Author of grace and eternal glory; and therefore the Apostle says that to know that there is a God, who rewards the good and punishes the wicked, is to know him as such, not only from natural knowledge, and belief, but also from supernatural knowledge and divine faith.

"But if St. Paul speaks here only of these two great truths, it does by no means follow, that he wishes to teach that the supernatural knowledge of these two truths only and divine faith in them are sufficient to obtain justification, that is, to obtain the grace to become the children of God; but they are necessary in order to be greatly animated with hope in undergoing hard labors and struggles for the sake of virtue. However, to obtain the grace of justification, we must also believe other supernatural truths, especially the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ and that of the Moat Holy Trinity." (Comm. in Ep. ad Heb., ix. 6.)

"Some theologians," says St. Alphonsus, "hold that the belief of the two other articles--the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the Trinity of Persons--is strictly commanded but not necessary, as a means without which salvation is impossible; so that a person inculpably ignorant of them may be saved. But according to the more common and truer opinion, the explicit belief of these articles is necessary as a means without which no adult can be saved." (First Command. No. 8.) According to St. Augustine (De Praedest. Sanctorum C. 15.) and other Theologians, the predestination, election, and Incarnation of Christ alone were owing, not to the foreseen merit of any one, not even to that of Christ himself, but only to the good pleasure of God. However, the predestination of all men in general, or the election of some in preference to others, is all owing to the merit of Christ, on account of which God has called all men to life everlasting and gives them sufficient grace to obtain it, if they make a proper use of his grace, especially that of prayer.

"That faith," says the same great Doctor of the Church , "is sound, by which we believe that neither any adult nor infant could be delivered from sin and the death of the soul, except by Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man." ( Ep. 190, olim 157, parum a principio.) Hence St Thomas says: Almighty God decreed from all eternity the mystery of the Incarnation, in order that men might obtain salvation through Christ. It was therefore necessary at all times, that this mystery of the Incarnation should, in some manner, be explicitly believed. Undoubtedly, that means is necessarily a truth of faith, by which man obtains salvation. Now men obtain salvation by the mystery of the Incarnation and Passion of Christ; for it is said in the Holy Scripture: "There is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved." (Acts, iv. 12.) Hence it was necessary at all times that the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ should be believed by all men in some manner (aliqualiter, either implicitly or explicitly), however, in a different way, according to the circumstances, of times and persons.

Before the fall, man believed explicitly the Incarnation of Christ. Ante statum peccati homo habuit explicitam fidem de Christi incarnatione, secundum quod ordinabatur ad consummationem gloriae, non autem secundum quod ordinabatur ad liberationem a peccato per passionem et resurrectionem, quia homo non fuit praescius peccati futuri. But that he had the knowledge of Christ’s Incarnation seems to follow from his words: "Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife." (Gen. 11. 24) And St. Paul calls this a great sacrament in Christ and in the Church; (Eph. v. 32.) and therefore it cannot be believed that the first man was ignorant of this sacrament.

After the fall of man, the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ was explicitly believed, that is, not only, the Incarnation itself, but also the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, by which mankind is delivered from sin and death; for otherwise they could not have prefigured Christ's Passion by certain sacrifices offered as well before as also after the Written Law, the meaning of which sacrifices was well known to those whose duty it was to teach the religion of God; but as to the rest of the people, who believed that those sacrifices were ordained by God to foreshadow Christ to come, they had thus implicit faith in Christ.

As the mystery of the Incarnation was believed from the beginning, so, also, was it necessary to believe the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity; for the mystery of the Incarnation cannot be explicitly believed without faith in the Most Holy Trinity, because the mystery of the Incarnation teaches that the Son of God took to himself a human body and soul by the power of the Holy Ghost. Hence, as the mystery of the Incarnation was explicitly believed by the teachers of religion, and implicitly by the rest of the people, so, also, was the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity explicitly believed by the teachers of religion and implicitly by the rest of the people. But in the New Law it must be explicitly believed by all." (De Fide, Q ii., art. vii. et viii.)

God revealed these great truths of salvation to our first parents immediately after the fall. He preserved the knowledge of them through the holy patriarchs and prophets who, in clear language, foretold that the Redeemer would come, and "be a priest upon his throne" (Zach. vi. 13.), "a priest according to the order of Melchisedech," (Ps. cix. 4.), and that he himself would be the victim offered up for the sins of mankind.

From these great, fundamental truths of religion we easily understand why St. Paul wrote to the Hebrews: "Jesus Christ yesterday, and to-day, and the same forever" (Heb. xiii. 8.), "through whom it hath well pleased the Father to reconcile all things unto himself, making peace through the blood of the cross, both as to the things on earth and the things that are in heaven." (Coloss. i. 20.)

The great apostle means to say: O Hebrews, Jesus Christ, the God-Man and High Priests, was yesterday, that is, he was in the time before you from the beginning. Jesus was the victim and priest before the Law, not in person, but in figure. He was the victim in figure in the lamb and other animals which priests and patriarchs offered in sacrifices. The faithful worshippers saw Christ in those sacrifices either explicitly or implicitly; and they believed in him. They believed that he would come and redeem the world. By this spiritual knowledge they guided their lives: Thus their sins were forgiven both as to their guilt and their punishment. The sacrifice of Abel was acceptable to God, because in the lamb which he sacrificed he saw not merely the lamb, but also a better victim--that is, the Saviour, and he believed in him, and therefore God had regard to Abel and his offering; and "God the Father," says St. Augustine, " reconciles to himself, through Christ, the things on earth, and the things in heaven, by offering pardon to all men, on account of Christ, and by giving those who make themselves worthy of it the seats of glory which the fallen angels have lost." (See Cornel. a Lap., Epist. ad Ephes., c. i., from v. 1-10.)

We also learn from Christ and his Church, that the explicit faith in the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation of the Son of God is also required as a necessary means of salvation.

"This is life everlasting," says our Saviour, "that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent; " (John, xvii. 3.), for, says he, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," that lead man to the Father. Hence "no man cometh to the Father but by me." John, xiv.6.)

But if a man act according to the dictates of his conscience, and follow exactly the light of reason which God has implanted in him for his guide, is that not sufficient to bring him to salvation?

"This is, indeed," says Bishop Hay, "a specious proposition; but a fallacy lurks under it. When man was created, his reason was then an enlightened reason. Illuminated by the grace of original righteousness, with which his soul was adorned, reason and conscience were safe guides to conduct him in the way of salvation. But by sin this light was miserably darkened, and his reason clouded by ignorance and error. It was not, indeed, entirely extinguished; it still clearly teaches him many great truths, but it is at present so influenced by pride, passion, prejudice, and other such corrupt motives, that in many instances it serves only to confirm him in error, by giving an appearance of reason to the suggestions of self-love and passion. This is too commonly the case, even in natural things; but in the supernatural, in things relating to God and eternity, our reason, if left to itself, is miserably blind. To remedy this, God has given us the light of faith as a sure and safe guide to conduct us to salvation, appointing his holy Church the guardian and depository of this heavenly light; consequently, though a man may pretend to act according to reason and conscience, and even flatter himself that he does so, yet reason and conscience, if not enlightened and guided by true faith, can never bring him to salvation.

"Nothing can be more striking than the words of Holy Scripture on this subject. ‘There is a way,' says the wise man, ‘that seemeth right to a man, but the ends thereof lead to death.' (Prov. xiv. 12.) What can be more plain than this, to show that a man may act according to what he thinks the light of reason and conscience, persuaded he is doing right, and yet, in fact, he is only running on in the way to perdition! And dot not all those who are seduced by false prophets, and false teachers, think they are in the right way? Is it not under the pretext of acting according to conscience that they are seduced? and yet the mouth of truth itself has declared, that 'if the blind lead the blind; both shall fall into the pit.' (Mat. xv. 14.) In order to show us to what excess of wickedness man may go under the pretence of following his conscience, the same Eternal Truth says to his apostles, ' the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doth God a service;' (John xvi. 2.) but observe what he adds, --' And these things will they do because they have not known the Father nor me.' (Ib. 3.) Which shows that, if one has not the true knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, which can be obtained only through true faith in the Church, there is no enormity of which he is not capable while thinking he is acting according to reason and conscience. Had we only the light of reason to direct us, we would be justified in following it; but as God has given us an external guide in his holy Church, to assist and correct our blinded reason by the light of faith; our reason alone, unassisted by this guide, can never be sufficient for salvation.

"Nothing will set this in a clearer light than a few examples. Conscience tells a heathen that it is not only lawful, but a duty, to worship and offer sacrifice to idols, the work of men's hands. Will his doing so, according to his conscience, save him? or will these sets of idolatry be innocent or agreeable in the sight of God, because they are performed according to conscience? ' The idol that is made by hands is cursed, as well as he that made it; . . . for that which is made, together with him that made it, shall suffer torments.' (Wis. xiv. 8, 10.) Also, ‘He that sacrificeth to gods shall be put to death, save only to the Lord.' (Exod. xxii. 20.) In like manner, a Jew's conscience tells him that he may lawfully and meritoriously blaspheme Jesus Christ, and approve the conduct of his forefathers in putting him to death upon a tree. Will such blasphemy save him, because it is according to the dictates of his conscience? The Holy Ghost, by the mouth of St. Paul, says, 'If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema,' that is, 'accursed.’ (I. Cor. xvi. 22.) A Mahometan is taught by his conscience that it would be a crime to believe in Jesus Christ, and not believe in Mahomet; will this impious conscience save him? The Scripture assures us that 'there is no other name given to men under heaven by which we can be saved,' but the name of Jesus only; and ‘he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remaineth on him.’ All the various sects which have been separated from the true Church, in every age, have uniformly calumniated and slandered her, speaking evil of the truth professed by her, believing in their conscience that this was not only lawful, but highly meritorious. Will calumnies and slanders against the Church of Jesus Christ save them because of their approving conscience? The Word of God declares, ‘That the nation and the kingdom that will not serve her shall perish;' and ‘there shall be lying teachers who shall bring in damnable heresies, bringing upon themselves swift destruction, . . . through whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.' (II. Pet. ii. 1.) In all these, and similar cases, their conscience is their greatest crime, and shows to what a height of impiety conscience and reason can lead us, when under the influence of pride, passion, prejudice, and self-love. Conscience and reason, therefore, can never be safe guides to salvation, unless directed by the sacred light of revealed truth."

"An effect," says St. Thomas, "is never greater than its cause, nor any act more efficacious than the active power which produces it, wherefore the enjoyment of eternal beatitude is not within the power of our natural faculties. So, man, left to his own powers, can only produce acts conformable to his nature and existence, such as to acquire art and science, to labor in any employment, and to enjoy private and social happiness, but he can never come to God and possess him without supernatural assistance. It is useless to adjust the strings of a harp or lyre; they remain silent until they are put in motion by the hand of a musician. A vessel is rigged out with its masts, cables, and sails, and ready for sailing, but wants a fair breeze to launch it into the deep. In like manner, people, to be saved, want the powerful hand of God to direct their course to another world, to assist and to enlighten them in their pilgrimage. Hence it is evident that the first step towards God and salvation is supernatural knowledge of God and divine faith in the four great truths of salvation as a necessary preparatory means to obtain the grace of justification; that neither invincible ignorance of the necessary truths of salvation, nor the mere knowledge of these truths can be means to convey sanctifying grace to the soul: To the knowledge of those truths must be joined supernatural divine faith in them, confident hope in the Redeemer, and perfect charity, which includes perfect sorrow for sin and the implicit desire to comply with God's will in all that he requires of the soul, to be saved.

These dispositions of the soul are the effects of the grace of God, and not of anything else whatsoever; and the infusion of sanctifying grace into the soul that is thus prepared is the gratuitous gift granted by the infinite mercy of God on account of the merits of the Redeemer.

St. Thomas asks the question: Did Jesus Christ, when he descended into Limbo, deliver the souls of children who died in original sin? To understand this, we must remember a certain principle and doctrine, namely: There is no salvation possible for any one without being united to Jesus Christ crucified. Hence the great Apostle St. Paul says: "It is Jesus Christ whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in his blood." (Rom. iii. 25.) Now, those children were not united to Christ by their own faith because they had not the use of reason, which is the foundation of faith; nor were they united to Christ by the faith of their parents, because the faith of their parents was not sufficient for the salvation of their children; nor were those children united to Christ by means of a sacrament, because there was no sacrament under the Old Law which had of itself the virtue of conferring either grace or justification.

Besides, life eternal is granted only to those who are in the state of sanctifying grace. "The grace of God is life everlasting in Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom, vi. 23.) All those, therefore, who died at any age without perfect charity and faith in the Redeemer to come, as well as those who die without the sacrament of spiritual generation after the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, are not purified from the mortal stain of original sin, and are, consequently, excluded from the kingdom of eternal glory. (De Incarn., Q. lii., art. vii.)

All this is also certain from what the Council of Trent has defined (Sess. 6. can. 3.) namely, that, without supernatural knowledge and faith, it is impossible to fulfil the Law of God, to be justified and become acceptable to him. (See Cornel. a Lap., Comment. in Ep. ad Rom., c. ii.)

Hence the foot-note, found on page 230 in Catholic Belief is not correct, namely: "A believer in one God who, without any fault on his part, does not know and believe that in God there are three divine Persons, is, notwithstanding, in a state of salvation, according to the opinion of most Catholic theologians."

No good theologian ever made such an assertion. All good theologians attribute justification neither to inculpable ignorance of, nor even to the knowledge of, the necessary truths of salvation; they attribute it to the infinite mercy of God, who unites himself with the soul only when it is prepared by the supernatural acts of divine faith, hope, and charity.

Therefore, only a theologian like "Sir Oracle" might easily endorse the above assertion.

"The three theological virtues," says St. Thomas, "incline and prepare man for supernatural happiness. Reason receives supernatural lights by faith; which gives us a foresight of eternal glory; the will tends by hope towards it as possible and attainable; and charity unites us to God, the eternal source of all joy and happiness."

"It is impossible" says O. A. Brownson, "to make Catholics and non-Catholics understand this great truth and conceive a correct idea of the spirit and essence of religion, unless it is clearly shown that our religion is based on divine revelation, and placed in the guardianship of a body of men divinely commissioned to teach the world, authoritatively and infallibly, all its sacred and immutable truths,--truths which all men are consequently bound in conscience to receive without hesitation. This is the fixed standard of Catholic belief; it is the basis upon which all dogmas rest. If this all-important truth be well understood by Catholics, the snares to entrap them may be very cunningly laid yet they will not be easily caught in the meshes."

Nor can a discussion of doctrinal points be of any great use to one who is not thoroughly convinced of the divine authority of the Church: This being once accepted, everything else follows logically, as a matter of course. Hence no one should be admitted to the one fold of Christ who does not firmly hold and declare that the Roman Catholic Church, ruled by the successors of St. Peter, is God's whole and sole appointed teacher of the Gospel on earth. However familiar persons may be with our doctrines, or however much they may believe our dogmas, without holding this, the fundamental truth of Catholic faith, they should not be allowed to join the Church. The moment it is well understood, and firmly believed, there need be but little delay about the abjuration.

The Church herself teaches us this lesson in her Profession of Faith for Converts and in her Ritual.

In the profession of faith which the Church requires converts to make before they are received into the Church, the very first article of faith reads as follows: "I, N. N., having before my eyes the holy Gospels which I touch with my hand, and knowing that no one can be saved without that faith which the holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church holds, believes, and teaches, against which I grieve that I have greatly erred," etc.

When a child is taken to church for baptism, the first question addressed to the child is: "What dost thou ask of the Church of God?" and the answer is: "Faith." What we must believe, etc., is learned from the Catholic Church alone. Hence it is that a Catholic, well instructed, when asked, "Why do you believe this this?" answers: "Because the Church, our Mother, believes and teaches this." And "from whom did your Mother learn this?" "From God."

The Church, therefore, is not one religious body among many; it is the only religious body, inherent in the divine order of creation and representing its as we said above.

What is here especially insisted upon is that, in treating of the Church, the reasons why salvation outside of her is impossible should be plainly stated, especially in our age, in which secret societies are doing all they can to undermine the divine teaching authority of the Church. The lesson, therefore, on the Church must be plain, and solid, and deeply impressed upon all who wish to be saved; all must learn and understand that only the Catholic Church is the Teacher from God, and the reasons why salvation out of her is impossible.

This doctrine is clearly expressed in the following words of the Athanasian Creed: "He, therefore, who wishes to be saved, must thus think of the Trinity," that is, he must believe the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as explained in this Creed. "Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hence St. Peter says: "Be it known to you, that there is no salvation in any other name than that of Jesus Christ; for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved." (Acts, iv. 10, 12). "Thus," says St. Alphonsus, " there is no hope of salvation except in the merits of Jesus Christ. Hence St. Thomas and all theologians conclude that, since the promulgation of the Gospel, it is necessary, not only as a matter of precept, but also as a means of salvation (necessitate medii, without which no adult can be saved), to believe explicitly that we can be saved only through our Redeemer." (Reflections on the Passion of Jesus Christ, Chapt. I., No. 19). The explicit belief in the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation of the Son of God is therefore of the greatest importance. This belief teaches the origin of the world, its creation by God the Father; it teaches us the supernatural end of man, his fall, and the redemption of mankind by God the Son; it teaches the sanctification of souls by the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

The work which the Redeemer began in his Incarnation and completed in his Passion was not yet firmly established and secured; his Kingdom was not to come all at once, nor his dominion to be immediately established on the ruins of the empire of evil. The number of the elect must be gathered from all nations and generations of men. The merits of his Passion must be applied to the souls he has redeemed through all succeeding ages. This great mission is carried on through his Church, which, at Pentecost, came forth in the power of the Holy Spirit. Through her our Lord continues to act in the accomplishment of his designs.

"The Church, therefore," as Dr. O. A. Brownson, says, "is inherent in the divine order of creation and grace. God decreed her establishment and indestructibility when he decreed the order of creation and grace. Whatever is incompatible with her teaching, is incompatible with her divine order, aye, with the Divine Being Himself. As without God there is nothing, so without the Church, or outside of her, there is no religion, no spiritual life. All the pretended religions outside of her are shams, at best have no basis, stand on nothing and are nothing, and can give no life or support to the soul, but leave it out of the divine order to drop it into hell.

"Catholics need to know this, and to be armed with principles and arguments that enable them to prove it against all gainsayers, or, at least, to enable them to defend themselves, and to be always on their guard against Protestant contamination and sophistry."

CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT REVOLT AGAINST CHRIST.

From the beginning of the world there have been two elements--the good and the bad--combating each other. "There must be scandals," says our Lord; St. Michael, and Lucifer combat each other in heaven; Cain and Abel in the family of Adam; Isaac and Ismael in the family of Abraham; Jacob and Esau in the family of Isaac; Joseph and his brethren in the family of Jacob; Solomon and Absolom in the family of David; St. Peter and Judas in the company of Our Lord Jesus Christ; the Apostles and the Roman emperors in the Church of Christ; St. Francis of Assisi and Brother Elias in the Franciscan Order; St. Bernard and his uncle Andrew in the Cistercian Order; St. Alphonsus and Father Leggio in the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer; orthodox faith and heresy and infidelity, in the Kingdom of God on earth; the just and the wicked, in all places; in fact, where is the country, the city; the village, the religious community, or the family, howsoever small it may be, in which these two elements are not found in opposition. The parable of the sower and the cockle is everywhere verified; even should you be quite alone, grace and nature will combat each other. "And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household." (Matth. x. 36.) Strange to say, not only the good and the wicked are found in perpetual conflict; but God, for wise ends, permits that even the holiest and best of men are sometimes diametrically opposed to one another, and even incite persecution, one against the other, though each one may be led by the purest and holiest of motives.

There must be scandals,--a fatal, though divine warning! There must be storms in nature to purify the air from dangerous elements. In like manner, God permits storms--heresies to arise in his Church on earth, in order that the erroneous and impious doctrines of heretics may, by way of contrast, set forth in clearer light the true and holy doctrines of the Church. As light is in the midst of darkness, gold contrasted with lead, the sun among the planets, the wise among the foolish,--so is the Roman Catholic Church among non-Catholics. "If two things of different natures," says the Wise Man, "be brought into opposition, the eye perceives their difference at once." "Good is set against evil, and life against death: so also is the sinner against the just man. And so look upon all the works of the Most High. Two and two, and one against another." (Eccl. xxxiii. 15.)

Christ, then, permits the storms of heresies to beat upon his Church, in order to bring forth into clearer light his divine doctrine, and to remove dangerous elements from his Mystic Body--the Roman Catholic Church.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, with the exception of the Greek schismatics, a few Lollards in England, some Waldenses in Piedmont, scattered Albigenses or Manicheans, and a few followers of Huss and Zisca among the Bohemians, all Europe was Roman Catholic. England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden,--every civilized nation was in the unity of the Catholic faith. Many of these nations were at the height of their power and prosperity. Portugal was pushing her discoveries beyond the Cape of Good Hope, and forming Catholic settlements in the East Indies. Christopher Columbus, a Roman Catholic, had discovered America, under the patronage of the Catholic Isabella of Spain. England was in a state of great prosperity. Her two Catholic Universities of Oxford and Cambridge contained, at one time, more than fifty thousand students. The country was covered with noble churches, abbeys, and monasteries, and with hospitals where the poor were fed, clothed and instructed.

However, the progress of civilization tended to foster a spirit of pride, and encourage the lust of novelties. The prosperity of the Church led to luxury, and in many cases to a relaxation of discipline. There were, as there always have been, in every period of the Church, the days of the apostles not excepted, bad men in the Church.

The wheat and tares grow together until the harvest. The net of the Church encloses good and bad. The writings of Wickliffe, Huss, and their followers, had unsettled the minds of many. Princes were restive under the check held by the Church upon their rapacity and lusts. Henry VIII., for example, wanted to divorce a wife to whom he had been married twenty years, that he might marry a young and pretty one. He could not do this, so long as he acknowledged the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, wanted two wives. No Pope would give him a dispensation to marry and live with two women at once. Then there were multitudes of wicked and avaricious nobles, who wanted but an excuse to plunder the churches, abbeys, and monasteries, whose property was held in trust for the education of the people and the care of the poor, aged, and sick, all over Europe. Then there were priests and monks eager to embrace a relaxed discipline, and many people who, incited by the cry of liberty, were ready to rush into license, and make war upon every principle of religion and social order, as soon as circumstances would favor the outbreak of this rebel spirit in individuals and masses. Now, when God, says St. Gregory, sees in the Church many revelling in their vices, and, as St. Paul observes, believing in God, confessing the truth of his mysteries, but belying their faith by their works, he punishes them by permitting that after having lost grace, they also lose the holy knowledge which they had of his mysteries, and that, without any other persecution than that of their vices, they deny the faith. It is of these David speaks, when be says: "Destroy Jerusalem to its foundations;" (Ps. cxxxvi. 7.) leave not a stone upon stone. When the wicked spirits have ruined in a soul the edifice of virtue, they sap its foundation, which is faith. St. Cyprian, therefore, said: "Let no one think that virtuous men and good Christians ever leave the bosom of the Church; it is not the wheat that the wind lifts, but the chaff; trees deeply rooted are not blown down by the breeze, but those which have no roots. It is rotten fruits that fall off the trees, not sound ones; bad Catholics become heretics, as sickness is engendered by bad humors. At first, faith languishes in them, because of their vices; then it becomes sick; next it dies, because, since sin is essentially a blindness of spirit, the more a man sins, the more he is blinded; his faith grows weaker and weaker; the light of this divine torch decreases, and soon the least wind of temptation or doubt suffices to extinguish it." Witness the great defection from faith in the sixteenth century, when God permitted heresies to arise, in order to exercise his justice against those who were ready to abandon the truth, and his mercy toward those who remained attached to it; to prove, by trials, those who were firm in the faith, and to separate them from those who1oved error; to exercise the patience and charity of the Church, and to sanctify, the elect; to give occasion for the illustration of religious truth and the holy Scripture; to make pastors more vigilant, and value more the sacred deposit of faith; in fine, to render the authority of tradition more clear and incontestable. Heresy arose in all its strength; Martin Luther was its ringleader and its spokesman.

Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar, a bold man, and a vehement declaimer, having imbibed erroneous sentiments from the heretical writings of John Huss of Bohemia, took occasion, from the publication of indulgences promulgated by Pope Leo X., to break with the Catholic Church, and to propagate his new errors, in 1517, at Wittenberg, in Saxony. He first inveighed against the abuse of indulgences; then he called in question their efficacy; and at last totally rejected them. He declaimed against the supremacy of the See of Rome, and condemned the whole Church, pretending that Christ had abandoned it, and that it wanted reforming, as well in faith as discipline. Thus this new evangelist commenced that fatal defection from the ancient faith, which was styled "Reformation." The new doctrines, being calculated to gratify the vicious inclinations of the human heart, spread with the rapidity of an inundation. Frederick, Elector of Saxony, John Frederick, his successor, and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, became Luther's disciples. Gustavus Ericus, King of Sweden, and Christian III., King of Denmark, also declared in favor of Lutheranism. It secured a footing in Hungary. Poland, after tasting a great variety of doctrines, left to every individual the liberty of choosing for himself. Munzer, a disciple of Luther, set up for doctor himself, and, with Nicholas Stark, gave birth to the sect of Anabaptists, which was propagated in Suabia, and other provinces in Germany, in the Low Countries. Calvin, a man of bold, obstinate spirit, and indefatigable in his labors, in imitation of Luther, turned reformer also. He contrived to have his new tenets received at Geneva, in 1541. After his death, Beza preached the same doctrine. It insinuated itself into some parts of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and became the religion of Holland. It was imported by John Knox, an apostate priest, into Scotland, where, under the name of Presbyterianism, it took deep root, and spread over the kingdom. But among the deluded nations, none drank more deeply of the cup of error than England. For many centuries this country had been conspicuous in the Christian world for the orthodoxy of its belief, as also for the number of its saints. But by a misfortune never to be sufficiently lamented, and by an unfathomable judgment from above, its Church shared a fate which seemed the least to threaten it. The lust and avarice of one despotic sovereign threw down the fair edifice, and tore it off the rock on which it had hitherto stood. Henry VIII., at first a valiant asserter of the Catholic faith against Luther, giving way to the violent passions which he had not sufficient courage to curb, renounced the supreme jurisdiction which the Pope had always held in the Church, presumed to arrogate to himself that power in his own dominions, and thus gave a deadly blow to religion. He then forced his subjects into the same fatal defection. Once introduced, it soon overspread the land. Being, from its nature, limited by no fixed principle, it has since taken a hundred different shapes, under different names, such as: the Calvinists, Arminians, Antinomians, Independents, Kilhamites, Glassites, Haldanites, Bereans, Swedenborgians, New-Jerusalemites, Orthodox Quakers, Hicksites, Shakers, Panters, Seekers, Jumpers, Reformed Methodists, German Methodists, Albright Methodists, Episcopal Methodists, Wesleyan Methodists, Methodists North, Methodists South, Protestant Methodists, Episcopalians, High Church Episcopalians, Low Church Episcopaleans, Rirualists, Puseyites, Dutch Reformed, Dutch non-Reformed, Christian Israelites, Baptists, Particular Baptists, Seventh-day Baptists, Hardshell Baptists, Soft-shell Baptists, Forty Gallon Baptists, Sixty Gallon Baptists, African Baptists, Free-will Baptists, Church of God Baptists, Regular Baptists, Anti-mission Baptists, Six Principle Baptists, River Brethren, Winebremarians, Mennonites, Second Adventists, Millerites, Christian Baptists, Universalists, Orthodox Congregationalists, Campbellites, Presbyterians, Old School Presbyterians and New School Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians, United Presbyterians, The Only True Church of Christ, 573 Bowery, N. Y., up stairs, 5th story, Latter-day Saints, Restorationists, Schwenfelders, Spiritualists, Mormons, Christian Perfectionists, etc., etc., etc. All these sects are called Protestants because they all unite in protesting against their mother, the Roman Catholic Church.

Some time after, when the reforming spirit had reached its full growth, Dudithius, a learned Protestant divine, in his epistle to Beza, wrote: "What sort of people are our Protestants, straggling to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, sometimes to this side, sometimes to that? You may, perhaps, know what their sentiments in matters of religion are to-day, but you can never tell precisely what they will be to-morrow. In what article of religion do these churches agree which have cast off the Bishop of Rome? Examine all from top to bottom, and you will scarce find one thing affirmed by one which was not immediately condemned by another for wicked doctrine." The same confusion of opinions was described by an English Protestant, the learned Dr. Walton, about the middle of the last century, in his preface to his Polyglot, where he says: " Aristarchus heretofore could scarce find seven wise men in Greece; but with us, scarce are to be found so many idiots. For all are doctors, all are divinely learned: there is not so much as the meanest fanatic who does not give you his own dreams for the word of God. The bottomless pit seems to have been opened, from whence a smoke has arisen which has darkened the heavens and the stars, and locusts have come out with stings, a numerous race of sectaries and heretics, who have renewed all the ancient heresies, and invented many monstrous opinions of their own. These have filled our cities, villages, camps, houses, nay, our pulpits, too, and lead the poor deluded people, with them to the pit of perdition." "Yes," writes another author, "every ten years, or nearly so, the Protestant theological literature undergoes a complete revolution. What was admired during the one decennial period is rejected in the next, and the image which they adored is burnt, to make way for new divinities; the dogmas which were held in honor, fall into discredit; the classical treatise of morality is banished among the old books out of date; criticism overturns criticism; the commentary of yesterday ridicules that of the previous day, and what was clearly proved in 1840, is not less clearly disproved in 1850. The theological systems of Protestantism are as numerous as the political constitutions of France--one revolution only awaits another." - ( Le Semeur, June, 1840.) It is indeed utterly impossible to keep the various members of one single sect from perpetual disputes, even about the essential truths of revealed religion. And those religious differences exist not only in the same sect, not only in the same country and town, but even in the same family. Nay, the self-same individual, at different periods of his life, is often in flagrant contradiction with himself. To-day he avows opinions which yesterday he abhorred, and to-morrow he will exchange these again for new ones. At last, after belonging, successively, to various new-fangled sects, he generally ends by professing unmitigated contempt for them all. By their continual disputes and bickerings, and dividing and subdividing, the various Protestant sects have made themselves the scorn of honest minds, the laughing–stock of the pagan and the infidel.

These human sects, the "works of the flesh," as St. Paul calls them, alter their shape, like clouds, but "feel no blow, says Mr. Marshall, "because they have no substance." They fight a good deal with one another, but nobody minds it, not even themselves, nor cares what becomes of them. If one human sect perishes, it is always easy to make another, or half a dozen. They have the life of worms, and propagate by corruption. Their life is so like death that, except by the putridity which they exhale in both stages, it is impossible to tell which is which, and when they are buried, nobody can find their graves: They have simply disappeared.

The spirit of Protestantism, or the spirit of revolt against God and his Church, sprung up from the Reformers' spirit of incontinency, obstinacy, and covetousness. Luther, in despite of the vow ho had solemnly made to God of keeping continency, married a nun equally bound as himself to that sacred religious promise; but, as St. Jerome says, "it is rare to find a heretic that loves chastity."

Luther's example had indeed been anticipated by Carlostadtius, a priest and ringleader of the Sacramentarians, who had married a little before; and it was soon followed, by most of the heads of the Reformation.

Zwinglius, a priest and chief of the sect that bore his name, took a wife.

Bucer, a member of the order of St. Dominic, became a Lutheran, left his cloister, and married a nun.

OEcolampadius, a Brigitin monk, became a Zwinglian, and also married.

Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, had also his wife.

Peter Martyr, a canon-regular, embraced the doctrine of Calvin, but followed the example of Luther, and married a nun.

Ochin, General of the Capuchins, became a Lutheran, and also married.

Thus the principal leaders in the Reformation went forth, preaching the new gospel, with two marks upon them: apostasy from faith, and open violation of the moat sacred vows.

The passion of lust, as has been already said, hurried also Henry VIII. of England into a separation from the Catholic Church, and ranked him among the Reformers.

Those wicked men could not be expected to teach a holy doctrine; they preached up a hitherto unheard-of "evangelical liberty," as they styled it. They told their fellow-men that they were no longer obliged to subject their understanding to the mysteries of faith, and to regulate their actions according to the laws of Christian morality; they told that everyone was free to model his belief and practice as it suited his inclinations. In pursuance of this accommodating doctrine, they dissected the Catholic faith till they reduced it to a mere skeleton; they lopped off the reality of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the divine Christian sacrifice offered in the Mass, confession of sins, most of the sacraments, penitential exercises, several of the canonical books of Scripture, the invocation of saints, celibacy, most of the General Councils of the Church, and all present Church authority; they perverted the nature of justification, asserting that faith alone suffices to justify man; they made God the author of sin, and maintained the observance of the commandments to be impossible.

As a few specimens of Luther's doctrine, take the following: "God's commandments are all equally impossible." (De Lib. Christ., t. ii., fol. 4.) "No sins can damn a man, but only unbelief." (De Captiv. Bab., t. ii., fol. 171.) "God is just, though by his own will he lays us under the necessity of being damned, and though he damns those who have not deserved it." (Tom. ii., fell. 434, 436.) "God works in us both good, and evil." (Tom, ii.., fol. 444.) "Christ's body is in every place, no less than the divinity itself." (Tom. iv., fol. 37.) Then, for his darling principle of justification by faith, in his eleventh article against Pope Leo, he says: "Believe strongly that you are absolved, and absolved you will be, whether you have contrition or no."

Again, in his sixth article: "The contrition which is acquired by examining, recollecting, and detesting one's sins, whereby a man calls to mind his life past, in the bitterness of his soul, reflecting on the heinousness and multitude of his offences, the loss of eternal bliss, and condemnation to eternal woe,--this contrition, I say, makes a man a hypocrite, nay, even a greater sinner than he was before."

Thus, after the most immoral life, a man has a compendious method of saving himself, by simply believing that his sins are remitted through the merits of Christ.

As Luther foresaw the scandal that would arise from his own and such like sacrilegious marriages, he prepared the world for it, by writing against the celibacy of the clergy and all religious vows; and all the way up, since his time, he has had imitators. He proclaimed that all such vows "were contrary to faith, to the commandments of God, and to evangelical liberty." (De Votis Monast.) He said again: "God disapproves of such a vow of living in continency, equally as if I should vow to become the mother of God, or to create a new world." (Epist. ad Wolfgang Reisemb.) And again: "To attempt to live unmarried, is plainly to fight against God."

Now, when men give a loose rein to the depravity of nature, what wonder if the most scandalous practices

Ensue? Accordingly, a striking instance of this kind appeared in the license granted, in 1539, to Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, to have two wives at once, which license was, signed by Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, and five other Protestant preachers.

On the other hand, a wide door was laid open to another species of scandal: the doctrine of the Reformation admitted divorces in the marriage state in certain cases, contrary to the doctrine of the Gospel, and even allowed the parties thus separated to marry other wives and other husbands.

To enumerate the errors of all the Reformers would exceed the limits of this treatise. I shall therefore only add the principal heads of the doctrine of Calvin and the Calvinists: 1. that baptism is not necessary for salvation; 2. good works are not necessary; 3. man has no free-will; 4. Adam could not avoid his fall; 5. a great part of mankind are created to be damned, independently of their demerits; 6. man is justified by faith alone, and that justification, once obtained, cannot be lost, even by the most atrocious crimes; 7. the true faithful are also infallibly certain of their salvation; 8. the Eucharist is no more than a figure of the body and blood of Christ. Thus was the whole system of faith and morality overturned. Tradition they totally abolished; and though they could not reject the whole of the scripture, as being universally acknowledged to be the word of God, they had, however, the presumption to expunge some books of it that did not coincide with their own opinions, and the rest they assumed a right to explain as they saw fit.

To pious souls, they promised a return to the fervor of primitive Christianity; to the proud, the liberty of private judgment; to the enemies of the clergy, they promised the division of their spoils; to priests and monks who were tired of the yoke of continence, the abolition of a law which, they said, was contrary to nature; to libertines of all classes, the suppression of fasting, abstinence, and confession. They said to kings who wished to place themselves at the head of the Church as well as of the States that they would be freed from the spiritual authority of the Church; to nobles, that they would see a rival order humbled and impoverished; to the middle classes and the vassals of the Church, that they would be emancipated from all dues and forced services.

Several princes of Germany and of the Swiss cantons supported by arms the preachers of the new doctrines. Henry VIII. imposed his doctrine on his subjects: The King of Sweden drew his people into apostasy. The Court of Navarre welcomed the Calvinists; the Court of France secretly favored them.

At length Pope Paul III. convoked a General Council at Trent, in l545, to which the heresiarchs had appealed. Not only all the Catholic bishops, but also all Christian princes, even Protestants, were invited to come.

But now the spirit of pride and obstinacy became most apparent. Henry VIII. replied to the Pope that he would never intrust the work of reforming religion in his kingdom to any one except to himself. The apostate princes of Germany told the papal legate that they recognized only the emperor as their sovereign; the Viceroy of Naples allowed but four bishops to go to the council; the king of France sent only three prelates, whom he soon after recalled. Charles V, created difficulties, and put obstacles in the way. Gustavus Vasa allowed no one to go to the council. The heresiarchs also refused to appear. The council, however, was held in spite of these difficulties. It lasted over eighteen years, because it was often interrupted by the plague, by war, and by the deaths of those who had to preside over it. The doctrines of the innovators were examined and condemned by the council, at the last session of which there were more than three hundred bishops present; among whom were nine cardinals, three patriarchs, thirty-three archbishops, not to mention sixteen abbots or generals of religious orders, and one hundred and forty-eight theologians. All the decrees published from the commencement were read over and were again approved and subscribed by the Fathers. Accordingly, Pius IV., in a consistory held on the 26th of January, in 1564, approved and confirmed the council in a book which was signed by all the cardinals. He drew up, the same year, a profession of faith conformable in all respects with the definitions of the council, in which it is declared that its authority is accepted; and since that time, not only all bishops of the Catholic Church, but all priests who are called to teach the way of salvation, even to children, nay, all non-Catholics, on abjuring their errors, and returning to the bosom of the Church, have sworn.that they had no other faith than that of the holy Council.

The new heresiarchs, however, continued to obscure and disfigure the face of religion. As to Luther's sentiments in regard to the Pope, bishops, councils, etc., he says, in the preface to his book, De Abroganda Missa Privata: "With how many powerful remedies and most evident Scriptures have I scarce been able to fortify my conscience so as to dare alone to contradict the Pope, and to believe him to be Antichrist, the bishops his apostles, and the universities his brothel-houses;" and in his book,.De Judicio Ecclesiae de Grave Doctrina, he says: "Christ takes from the bishops, doctors, and councils both the right and power of judging controversies, and gives them to all Christians in general."

His censure on the Council of Constance, and those that composed it, is as follows: "All John Huss' articles were condemned at Constance by Antichrist and his apostles," (meaning the Pope and bishops), "in that synod of Satan, made up of most wicked sophisters; and you, most holy Vicar of Christ, I tell you plainly to your face, that all John Huss' condemned doctrines are evangelical and Christian, but all yours are impious and diabolical. I now declare," says he, speaking to the bishops, "that for the future I will not vouchsafe you so much honor as to submit myself or doctrine to your judgment, or to that of an angel from heaven." (Preface to his book Adversus falso nominatum ordinem Episcoporum.) Such was his spirit of pride that he made open profession of contempt for the authority of the Church, councils, and Fathers, saying "All those who will venture their lives, their estates, their honor, and their blood, in so Christian a work as to root out all bishoprics and bishops, who are the ministers of Satan, and to pluck by the roots all their authority and jurisdiction in the world,--these persons are the true children of God and obey his commandments." (Contra Statum Ecclesia et falso nominatum ordinem Episcoporum.)

This spirit of pride and obstinacy is also most apparent from the fact that Protestantism has never been ashamed to make use of any arguments, though ever so frivolous, inconsistent, or absurd, to defend its errors, and to slander and misrepresent the Catholic religion in every way possible. It shows itself again in the wars which Protestantism waged to introduce and maintain itself. The apostate Princes of Germany entered into a league, offensive and defensive, against the Emperor Charles V., and rose up in arms to establish Protestantism.

Luther had preached licentiousness, and reviled the emperor, the princes, and the bishops. The peasants lost no time in freeing themselves from their masters. They overran the country in lawless bands, burned down castle and monasteries, and committed the most barbarous cruelties among the nobility and clergy. Germany became at last the scene of desolation and most cruel atrocities during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). More than one hundred thousand men fell in battle; seven cities were dismantled; one thousand religious houses were razed to the ground; three hundred churches and immense treasures of statuary, paintings, books, etc., were destroyed.

But what is more apparent and better known than the spirit of covetousness of Protestantism? Wherever Protestantism secured a footing, it pillaged churches, seized Church property, destroyed monasteries, and appropriated to itself their revenues.

In France, the Calvinists destroyed twenty thousand Catholic churches; they murdered in Dauphine alone two hundred and twenty-five priests, one hundred and twelve monks, and burned nine hundred towns and villages. In England, Henry VIII. confiscated to the crown, or distributed among his favorites, the property of six hundred and forty-five monasteries and ninety colleges, one hundred and ten hospitals, and two thousand three-hundred and seventy-four free-chapels and chantries.

They even dared to profane, with sacrilegious hands, the remains of the martyrs and confessors of God. In many places they forcibly took up the saints bodies from the repositories where they were kept, burned them, and scattered their ashes abroad. What more atrocious indignity can be conceived? Are parricides or the most flagitious of men ever worse treated? Among other instances, in 1663, the Calvinists broke open the shrine of St. Francis of Paula, at Plessis-Lestours; and finding his body uncorrupted fifty-five years after his death, they dragged it about the streets, and burned it in a fire which they had made with the wood of a large crucifix, as Billet and other historians relate.

Thus at Lyons, in the same year, the Calvinists seized upon the shrine of St. Bonaventure, stripped it of its riches, burned the Saint's relics in the market-place, and threw his ashes into the river Saone, as is related by the learned Poesevinus, who was in Lyons at the time.

The bodies also of St. Irenaeus, St. Hilary, and St. Martin, as Surius asserts, were treated in the same ignominious manner. Such, also, was the treatment offered to the remains of St. Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose rich shrine, according to the words of Stowe, in his annals, "was taken to the king's use, and the bones of St. Thomas, by the command of Lord Cromwell, were burnt to ashes in September, 1538.

The Catholic religion has covered the world with its superb monuments. Protestantism has now lasted three hundred years; it was powerful in England, in Germany, in America. What has it raised? It will show us the ruins which it has made amidst which it has planted some gardens, or established some factories. The Catholic religion is essentially a creative power, built up, not to destroy, because it is under the immediate influence of that Holy Spirit which the Church invokes as the Creative Spirit, "Creator Spiritus." The Protestant, or modern philosophical spirit, is a principle of destruction, of perpetual decomposition and disunion. Under the dominion of English Protestant power, for four hundred years, Ireland was rapidly becoming as naked and void of ancient memorials as the wilds of Africa.

The Reformers themselves were so ashamed of the progress of immorality among their proselytes, that they could not help complaining against it. Thus spoke Luther: "Men are now more revengeful, covetous, and licentious, than they were ever in the Papacy." (Postil. Super Evang. Dom.i., Advent.) Then again: " Heretofore, when we were seduced by the Pope, every man willingly performed good works, but now no man says or knows anything else than how to get all to himself by exactions, pillage, theft, lying, usury." (Postil. super Evang. Dom. xxvi., p. Trinit.)

Calvin wrote in the same strain: "Of so many thousands," said he, "who, renouncing Popery, seemed eagerly to embrace the Gospel, how few have amended their lives! Nay, what else did the greater part pretend to, than, by shaking off the yoke of superstition, to give themselves more liberty to follow all kinds of licentiousness?" (Liber de scandalis.) Dr. Heylin, in his History of the Reformation, complains also of "the great increase of viciousness" in England, in the reforming reign of Edward VI.

Erasmus says: "Take a view of this evangelical people, the Protestants. Perhaps 'tis my misfortune, but I never yet met with one who does not appear changed for the worse." (Epist. ad Vultur. Neoc.) And again: "Some persons," says he, "whom I knew formerly innocent, harmless, and without deceit, no sooner have I seen them joined to that sect (the Protestants), than they began to talk of wenches, to play at dice, to leave off prayers, being grown extremely worldly, most impatient, revengeful, vain, like vipers, tearing one another. I speak by experience." ( Ep. ad Fratres Infer. Germania.)

M. Scherer, the principal of a Protestant school in France, wrote, in 1844, that he beholds in his Reformed Church "the ruin of all truth, the weakness of infinite division, the scattering of flocks, ecclesiastical anarchy, Socinianism ashamed of itself, Rationalism coated like a pill, without doctrine, without consistency. This Church, deprived alike of its corporate and its dogmatic character, of its form and of its doctrine, deprived of all that constituted it a Christian Church, has in truth ceased to exist in the ranks of religious communities. Its name continues, but it represents only a corpse, a phantom, or, if you will, a memory or a hope. For want of dogmatic authority, unbelief has made its way into three-fourths of our pupils." ( L' Etat Actual de l' Eglise Reformee en France, 1844.)

Such has been Protestantism from the beginning. It is written in blood and fire upon the pages of history. Whether it takes the form of Lutheranism in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden; Anglicanism in Great Britain, or Calvinism and Presbyterianism in Switzerland, France, Holland, Scotland, and America, it has been everywhere the same. It has risen by tumult and violence; propagated itself by force and persecution; enriched itself by plunder, and has never ceased, by open force, persecuting laws, or slander, its attempt to exterminate the Catholic faith, and destroy the Church of Christ, which the fathers of Protestantism left from the spirit of lust, pride, and covetousness,--a spirit which induced so many of their countrymen to follow their wicked example; a spirit on account of which they would have been lost at all events, even if they had not left their mother, the One, Holy, Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The main spirit of Protestantism, then, has always been to declare every man independent of the divine authority of the Roman Catholic Church and to substitute for this divine authority a human authority. Pope Pius IX spoke of Protestantism, in all its forms, as a "revolt against God, it being an attempt to substitute a human for a divine authority, and a declaration of the creature's independence of the Creator." "A true Protestant, therefore," says Mr. Marshall, "does not acknowledge that God has a right to teach him; or, if he acknowledges this right, he does not feel himself bound to believe all that God teaches him through those whom God has appointed to teach mankind. He says to God: If thou teachest me, I reserve to myself the right to examine thy words, to explain them as I choose, and admit only what appears to me true, consistent, and useful." Hence St. Augustine says: "You, who believe what you please, and reject what you please, believe yourselves or your own fancy rather than the Gospel." The faith of the Protestant, then, is based upon his private judgment alone; it is human. "As his judgment is alterable," says Mr. Marshall, "he naturally holds that his faith and doctrine is alterable at will, and is therefore continually changing it. Evidently, then, he does not hold it to be the truth; for truth never changes; nor does he hold it to be the law of God, which he is bound to obey; for if the law of God be alterable at will, it can only be altered by God himself, never by man, any body of men, or any creature of God."

CHAPTER IV.

BISHOP COXE'S DISHONESTY.

The story is told of a Western-bound train, flying along with lightning speed; the time was shortly after sunset. Suddenly a crash was heard: the train stopped. "What is the matter?" the passengers asked one another. A huge owl, dazzled by the glare, had struck against the reflector in front of the engine, shivered the glass, and tried to extinguish the light, and a great bull had set its head against the engine, to stop the train. The lamp was rekindled, the engine sped on, but the stupid owl and the obstinate bull were cast aside, dead, and left to rot and be devoured by wild beasts. An Irishman, on seeing them, exclaimed: "I admire your courage, but condemn your judgment."

This train may be likened to the holy Catholic Church, speeding on, on her heaven-sent mission, to lead men to heaven by the light of her holy doctrine. The foolish owl, the enemy of light and the friend of darkness, represents Lucifer, who, as the foe of God and of the light of God's holy religion, has always been endeavoring to extinguish the light of the true religion. The bull represents the kings and emperors, the heretics and members of secret societies, whom Lucifer uses to stop, if possible, the progress of the Catholic Church, the bearer of the light of faith. Although it is hard, in a certain sense, not to admire the courage of Lucifer's agents, yet we cannot but condemn their judgment, their folly, and wickedness, in opposing the work of God, and bringing down upon themselves the everlasting curse of the Almighty.

Our Divine Saviour, Jesus Christ, came to break the power of the devil over mankind; he came to banish idolatry, the worship of the devil, from among men, and lead them back to the worship and service of his heavenly Father by his holy example and divine doctrine. But no sooner had he begun to teach men his saving doctrine, than Satan opposed him. Satan is called, in Holy Scripture, the father of lies. From the beginning of the world he has tried to misrepresent every religious truth. He practised this black art in paradise; and so unhappily successful was he in it, that ever since he has practised it, in order to propagate error and vice among men. When our Saviour began to preach his holy religion, Satan practised his black art, even in the presence of Christ himself. By malicious men, the ministers of Satan, Christ was contradicted and misrepresented in his doctrine; for, instead of being believed, he was held up to the people as a blasphemer, for teaching that he was the Son of God, as the impious Caiphas declared him to be, saying, "He hath blasphemed, he is guilty of death." (Matt. xxvi. 65.) He was misrepresented in his reputation; for he was noble, of royal lineage, and yet was despised: "Is not this the carpenter's son?" (Matt. xiii. 55.) He is wisdom itself, and was represented as an ignorant man: "How doth this man know letters, having never learned?" (John vii. 17.) He was represented as a false prophet: "And they blindfolded him, and smote his face . . . saying: Prophesy who is this that struck thee ?" (Luke, xxii. 64.) He was represented as a madman: "He is mad, why hear you him?" (John, x. 20.) He was represented as a winebibber, a glutton, and a friend of sinners: "Behold a man that is a glutton and a drinker of wine, a friend of publicans and sinners." (Luke, vii. 34.) He was represented as a sorcerer: "By the prince of the devils he casteth out devils." (Matt. ix. 34.) He was represented as a heretic and possessed person: "Do we not say well of thee, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?" (John, viii. 48.) In a word, Jesus was represented to the people as so bad and notorious a man, that no trial was deemed necessary to condemn him, as the Jews said to Pilate: "If be were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up to thee." (John, xviii. 30.) If ever infamous calumny was carried to excess, it was undoubtedly in the case of our Saviour, "who knew not sin," who had never uttered a deceitful Word, who "did all things well," and who "passed his life in doing good, and healing all kinds of infirmities." Christ's holy doctrine and his holy Church, the teacher of his divine doctrines, are still misrepresented by Lucifer's agents, now that he is on his throne, gloriously reigning in heaven.

Our divine Saviour and his holy Apostles spoke of these agents and warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. That the Protestant Bishop Coxe is one of them is a well-known fact. In several passages of Holy Scripture he is spoken of. We give some of them for his benefit:--

   1.Our blessed Saviour, foretelling the coming of false teachers, says, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves; by their fruits ye shall know them;" and then he tells us, going on with the similitude of a tree, what shall be the portion of such false prophets. " Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire." (Matt. vii. 15, 19.) Such is the fate of false teachers, according to Jesus Christ. St. Paul describes them in the same light, and exhorts the pastors of the Church to watch against them, that they may prevent the seduction of the flock. "I know that after my departure ravening wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock: and of your own selves shall arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them; therefore watch." (Acts, xx. 29.) Such is the idea the word of God gives of all who depart from the doctrine of the Church of Christ and teach falsehood; they are ravenous wolves, seducers of the people, who speak perverse things, and whose end is hel!fire.

   2. St. Paul, concluding his Epistle to the Romans, warns them against such teachers in these words: "Now, I beseech you, brethren, to mark them who cause dissensions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and to avoid them: for they that are such serve not Christ our Lord, but their own. belly, and by pleasing speeches and good words seduce the hearts of the innocent." (Rom. xvi. 17.) Can such as these, who cause dissensions contrary to the ancient doctrine, and seduce the souls redeemed by the blood of Jesus, who are not servants of Christ, but his enemies, and are slaves to their own belly--can these, I say, be in the way of salvation? Alas! the same holy Apostle describes their fate in another text, "That they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame." (Philip. iii. 18.)

   3. In St. Paul's absence some false teachers had come in, among the Galatians, and persuaded them that it was necessary for salvation to join circumcision with the gospel; on this account the apostle writes his epistle to correct this error; and though it was but an error on one point, and apparently not of great importance, yet, because it was false doctrine, the holy Apostle condemns it: "I wonder how you are so soon removed from him that called you to the grace of Christ, unto another gospel: which is not another; only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we said before, I say now again, if any one preach to you a gospel besides that which ye have received, let him be accursed." (Gal. i. 6.) This shows, indeed, the crime and fate of false teachers, though their doctrine was false only on a single point.

   4. St. Peter describes these unhappy men in the most dreadful colors. "There shall be among you lying teachers, who shall bring sects of perdition " (or, as the Protestant translation has it, damnable heresies) "and deny the Lord who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction." (II. Pet. ii. 1.) and going on to describe them, he says: "Their judgment of a long time lingereth not, and. Their destruction slumbereth not." (ver. 3.) "The Lord knoweth how: ..to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be tormented; and especially them who . . . despise governments, audacious, pleasing themselves, they fear not to bring in sects blaspheming," (ver. 9.) "leaving the right way, they have gone astray." (ver. 15. "These are wells without water, and clouds tossed with whirlwinds, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved." (ver. 17.) Good God! what a dreadful state to be in!

   5. St. Paul, speaking of such as are led away by what St. Peter calls damnable heresies, says: "A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid; knowing that he that is such an one is subverted and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment." (Tit. iii. 10.) Other offenders are judged and cast out of the Church by the sentence of the pastors; but heretics, more unhappy, leave the Church of their own accord, and by so doing give judgment and sentence against their own souls. (Sincere Christian by BISHOP HAY.)

Whilst writing this, we remember something remarkable that happened in France, in 1556. It may be well for Mr. Coxe to know it.

It is a well-known fact that the Catholic Church has received power from Jesus Christ to cast out devils and restrain them from injuring any of God's creatures. The Church often makes use of this power. She has instituted certain rites and prayers to be used by bishops and priests in casting out devils from possessed persons. In our little work, Triumph of the Blessed Sacrament, we have related how Almighty God permitted evil spirits to possess a certain person, called Nicola Aubry, of the town of Vervins, in France. The possession took place 1565, and lasted for several months. The Bishop of Laon, by Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, expelled the evil spirits forever, on February 8th, 1566.

When the strange circumstances of Nicola's possession became known everywhere, several Calvinist preachers came with their followers to "expose this popish cheat," as they said. On their entrance, the devil saluted them mockingly, called them by name, and told them that they had come in obedience to him. One of the preachers took his Protestant prayer-book, and began to read it with a very solemn face. The devil laughed at him, and, putting on a most comical face, he said: "Ho! ho! my good friend, do you intend to expel me with your prayers and hymns? Do you think that they will cause me pain? Don't you know that they are mine? I help to compose them?"

"I will expel thee in the name of God," said the preacher solemnly.

"You!" said the devil mockingly. "You will not expel me, either in the name of God, or in the name of the devil. Did you ever hear, then, of one devil driving out another?"

"I am not a devil," said the preacher angrily, "I am a servant of Christ."

"A servant of Christ, indeed!" said Satan with a sneer. "What! I tell you, you are worse than I am. I believe, and you do not want to believe. Do you suppose that you can expel me from the body of this miserable wretch! Ha! go first and expel all the devils that are in your own heart!"

The preacher took his leave, somewhat discomfited. On going away, he said, turning up the whites of his eyes: "Oh Lord, I pray thee, assist this poor creature !"

"And I pray Lucifer," cried the spirit, "that he may never leave you, but may always keep you firmly in his power, as he does now. Go about your business now. You are all mine; and I am your master." So they went away. They had seen and heard more than they wanted.

Bishop Coxe is well known as a famous exorcist. He does all in his power to prevent the devil (that is what he takes the Roman Catholic faith for ) from taking possession of Protestants. He knows that, if this possession should really take place, he would have no power to expel the devil of idolatry. An ounce of preventive is, in his opinion, better than a pound of cure. In this, he imitates his ancestors.

St. Augustine tells us that the Manichees and the Donatists did all in their power to raise prejudices in the minds of the people against the Roman Catholic Church. They told men that the teaching of the Church was unsound and profane doctrine, that it was full of wicked principles and human inventions, instead of divine faith; and all these calumnies were spread abroad among the people, in order that they might not think of going to the Church to learn the truth, or even suspect her to be the Church. of Christ. "The chief reason," says St. Augustine, "why I continued to live so long in the errors of the Manichees, and impugned the Catholic Church with so much violence, was, because I thought that all I heard against the Church was true. But when I found out that it was all false, I made known this falsehood to the world, in order to undeceive others who were caught in the same snare. I mingled joys and blushes, and was ashamed that I had now for so many years been barking and railing, not against the Catholic Faith, but only against the fictions of my carnal conceits. For so rash and impious was I, that those things which I might first have learned from Catholics by inquiry, I charged upon them by accusation. I was readier to impose falsehood than to be informed of the truth." This he did, deluded and deceived by the Manichees. Alas! this has not been the case of St. Augustine alone, but of almost as many as have given ear to the deserters of this Church; nay, it is at this very day the case of infinite numbers of Protestants and infidels, who, following St. Augustine in his errors, do not inquire how this thing is believed or understood by the Church, but insultingly oppose all, as if understood as they imagine. They make no difference between that which the Catholic Church teaches, and what they think she teaches. Thus they believe her guilty of as many absurdities, follies, and impieties, as the heathens did of old.

There is a Protestant. He considers the antiquity of the Roman Catholic Church; her unity in faith; the purity and holiness of her doctrine; her establishment by poor fishermen all over the world, in spite of all kinds of opposition; her invariable duration from the time of the apostles; the miracles which are wrought in her; the holiness of all those who live according to her laws; the deep science of her doctors; the almost infinite number of her martyrs; the peace of mind and happiness of soul experienced by those who have entered her bosom; the fact that all Protestants admit that a faithful Catholic will be saved in his religion; the frightful punishment inflicted by God upon all the persecutors of the Catholic Church; the melancholy death of the authors of heresies; the constant fulfillment of the words of our Lord, that his Church would always be persecuted. He seriously considers all this; he is enlightened by God's grace to see that the Roman Catholic Church alone is the true Church of Jesus Christ; he is convinced that her authority is from God, and that to hear and obey her authority is to hear and obey God himself: and so he accepts and believes all that she teaches; because it comes to him on the authority of God, and therefore must be true; not because he himself sees how or why it is true. This is true divine faith--this is the right way to become a Catholic. Such faith is absolutely necessary. It is necessary by necessity of precept. Our blessed Lord says: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be condemned." This precept is affirmative, in as far as it obliges us to believe all that God has revealed; it is negative, in as far as it forbids us to hold any opinions contrary to the revealed truth.

Such faith is necessary by necessity of medium, for, "without faith, it is impossible to please God." (Heb. xi. 6.) "If you believe not, you shall die in your sins." (John, v. 38; viii. 27.)

Now, this Protestant is about to join the Catholic Church. Coxe hears of it. So he goes and lectures on the idolatry and errors of the Roman Catholic Church, to prevent him from falling, as he calls it, into bad hands.

Lord Stafford was a good Catholic, but his wife a strict Protestant. He had been living several years in Abbeville, France. He begged the Bishop of Amiens, Monseigneur de la Motte, to convert his wife. "God only can convert the soul," answered the Bishop; "you can do her more good by praying for her than by talking to her."

Now Lady Stafford had a great esteem for St. Francis de Sales. "If I could meet a bishop like him," she said, "I might become a Catholic." She had an interview with the Bishop of Amiens. At first, he avoided the subject of religion, and sought to gain her confidence. One day he asked her if her conscience was entirely at rest, if she had no doubts about her religion, living thus separated from the Church. "With the Bible in my hand," she answered, "I fear no one. I am quite satisfied." The words of the bishop, however, made a deep impression on her. She began to doubt seriously of the truth of her sect. She consulted the bishop. She heard one of his sermons, and conceived a great desire to be able to profess the same religious belief as this saintly prelate. She had yet some doubts about holy Mass and purgatory. She consulted the bishop once more. Instead of settling her doubts immediately, the bishop said: "Madame, you are acquainted with the Protestant Bishop of London. You have evidently great confidence in him. Go, then, and lay before him what I now tell you: The Bishop of Amiens declares that he will become a Protestant, if you can disprove the fact that St. Angustine, whom you regard as one of the greatest lights of the Church, offered up the holy Mass, and offered it up for the dead, viz., for his own deceased mother." The proposition was accepted. Lady Stafford begged her husband to go to London, and there, incognito, place the written message in the hands of the Protestant bishop, and bring back his written answer. The Protestant bishop read the message, and, on being requested to write an answer, he said: "This lady has fallen into bad hands; she will be perverted. Whatever I might say will not hinder the evil. A letter from me would only give rise to misunderstandings and unpleasant recriminations." As we may imagine, Lady Stafford was