UNITY OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
In our October article on Councils we closed with the council that was assembled by Mrs. Irene in the year 787. The Franks, having heard that a council at Constantinople had ordained the adoration of images, assembled, in the year 794, by order of Charles, son of Pepin, afterwards named Charlemagne, a very numerous council. In this council the second council of Nice is spoken of as an impertinent and arrogant synod held in Greece for the promotion of the worship of pictures. This council, held at Frankfort, was composed of three hundred clergymen from England, Italy, France and Germany. Aventin, Hinemar and Regina say the Frankfortians rescinded the decisions of the false Grecian synod in favor of image worship.
In 842 a grand council was held at Constantinople, convened by the Empress Theodora. Here the worship of images was solemnly established. The Greeks still have a feast in honor of this council called "Orthodoxia." Theodora did not preside at this council.
"In 861 a council was held at Constantinople consisting of three hundred and eighteen bishops, assembled by the Emperor Michael. St. Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople, was deposed and Photius elected.
"In 866 another council was held at Constantinople, in which Pope Nicholas III. was deposed for contumacy and excommunicated.
"In 869 was another council at Constantinople; in this Photius, in turn, was deposed and excommunicated and St. Ignatius restored.
"In 879 another council was held in Constantinople, in which Photius, already restored, was acknowledged as true patriarch by the legates of Pope John VIII., who declares all those to be Judases who say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
"In 1122–3 a council was held at Rome, in the church of St. John of Lateran, by Pope Calixtus II. This was the first general council assembled by the popes. The emperors of the west had now scarcely any authority, and the emperors of the east, pressed by the Mahometans and by the crusaders, held none but little wretched councils. In this council the bishops complained heavily of the monks. 'They possess,' said they, 'the churches, the lands, the castles, the tithes, the offerings of the living and the dead; they have only to take from us the ring and the crosier.' The monks remained in possession."
"In 1139 was another council of Lateran, by Pope Innocent II. It is said a thousand bishops were present. Here the ecclesiastical tithes are declared to be of divine right, and all laymen possessing any of them are excommunicated.
"In 1215 was the last general council of Lateran, by Pope Innocent III. Four hundred and twelve bishops and eight hundred abbots were here. This was in the time of the Crusades, and the popes have established a Latin patriarch at Jerusalem and one at Constantinople. These patriarchs attend this council. This council declares, among other things, that 'no one can be saved out of the Catholic church.' The word transubstantiation was not known until after this council. It forbade the establishment of new religious orders; but, since that time, no less than eighty have been instituted. It was in this council that Raimond, Count of Toulouse, was stripped of all his lands.
"In 1245 a council assembled at the city of Lyons. Innocent IV. brings thither the Emperor of Constantinople, John Puleologus, and makes him sit beside him. He deposes the Emperor Frederick as a felon, and gives the cardinals a red but, as a sign of hostility to Frederick, and the source of thirty years of civil war.
"In 1274 another council is held at the city of Lyons. Five hundred bishops are present, seventy great and a thousand lesser abbots. The Greek emperor, Michael Paleologus, that he may have the protection of the Pope, sends his Greek patriarch, Theophanes, to unite, in his name, with the Latin church; but the Greek church disowns these bishops.
"In 1311 Pope Clement V. assembled a general council in the small town of Vienne, in Dauphiny, in which he abolishes the order of the Templars. It is here ordained that the Begares, Beguins and Beguines shall be burned. These were a species of heretics 'to whom was imputed all that had formerly been imputed to the primitive Christians.'" So says Voltaire. He does not, like the pitiful blaspheming infidels of to-day, try to heap all this corruption of the dark ages upon primitive Christianity. No! The hull of Voltaire's soul was too great for such a deed.
"In 1414 the great council of Constance was assembled by an emperor who resumes his rights, viz: by Sigismund. Here Pope John XXIII., convicted of numerous crimes, is deposed, and John Huss and Jerome of Sprague convicted of obstinacy and burned.
"In 1431 a council was held at Basle, where they in vain depose Pope Eugene IV., who is too clever for the council. This was a stormy council, and it is said that Eugene regretted in his old age that he ever left his monastery.
"In 1438 a council assembled at Ferrara, transferred to Florence, where the excommunicated pope excommunicates the council, and declares it guilty of high treason. Here a feigned union is made with the Greek church, crushed by the Turkish synods held sword in hand.
"Pope Julius II. would have had his council of Lateran in 1512 pass for an ecumenical council. In it that pope solemnly excommunicated Louis XII., King of France, laid France under an interdict, summoned the whole Parliament of Provence to appear before him, and excommunicated all the philosophers because most of them had taken part with Louis XII. Yet this council was not like that of Ephesus, called the council of robbers.
"In 1537 the council of Trent was first assembled at Mantua, by Paul III., afterwards at Trent, in 1543, and terminated in Dec., 1561, under Pius VI." See vol. Phil. Dic.
"Pope Pius IX. convened a council in 1869, which in July, 1870, decreed the personal infallability of the Pope in matters of faith and morals, to be a dogma of the church."
Reader, if you will digest this little piece of history, you will doubtless discover good reasons for asserting the right of private judgment and the liberty of conscience. Truth stands true to her god; men alone vascillate.
FREE-THOUGHT IN GERMANY, FRANCE AND RUSSIA, OR RUSSIAN NIHILISM.
BY FITZ CUNLIFFE OWEN. LIBRARY MAG. VOL. 3.
Rationalism and radicalism exist to a certain extent in every country of Europe. But the Social Democrats of Germany and Austria and the Communists of France and Spain turn with horror from Russian revolutionists, who consider the programme of the Paris commune of 1871 condemnably weak, and Felix Pyat, Cluseret and their companions as little better than conservatives. The Social Democrats and even the Communists of the rest of Europe have in view aims which, no matter how fantastic, are always of a sufficiently defined nature. They look forward to an entirely democratic form of government, and hope for a recognization of the social world, under which all capital and property would be held either by the State or Commune for the equal benefit of everybody. They are levellers, but they are not destroyers. Take the right of property from the citizens of a government and the greatest motive to industry and prosperity is gone.
The revolutionary party in Russia has no definite aims of either reorganization or improvement. In its sight everything as it now exists is rotten, and before anything new and good can be created all existing institutions must be utterly destroyed. Religion, the state, the family, laws, property, morality, are all equally odious, and must be rooted out and abolished. It is because "nothing," as it exists at present, finds favor in their eyes that they have been called "Nihilists." They maintain that no one should be bound by laws or even moral obligations of any kind, but that every body should be allowed to do exactly as he pleases. They desire to break up the actual social organization into mere individualism, with entire independence for each separate person. Their object is anarchy in the very truest sense of the word. They are only modest enough to decline the attempt to create a new order of things in the place of what they propose to destroy. That they intend to leave for a better and more enlightened generation. The following, from a Nihilist paper, Narodnia Volya (The Will of the People), which is published at St. Petersburg by means of secret presses, will set them forth in their true inwardness:
"The Russian press is bent almost double by the imperial government. Notwithstanding its disagreeable position it does its utmost to curry favor of its oppressors. Whenever thefts, murders, or incendiarisms take place in Russia the press invariably attributes them to the Nihilists. There is an old proverb which says, 'Slander, slander; some result will always be obtained.' Judging from the tone of the press some result has been obtained. According to its statements the Nihilists are little better than wild beasts. We do not venture to assert that there are no bad men in our ranks, but are yours entirely free from them? The number of bad persons among the Nihilists is so very small that we need hardly enumerate them. Since 1862 over 17,000 persons have been exiled to Siberia for political offenses.
"You accuse us of adopting means of action which are unjustifiable in every way. But what can we do? We are reduced to silence. We only adopt questionable means of action very rarely, and then only in self-defense; whereas you use them daily.
"The money obtained from private individuals by means of theft and blackmail has not been levied by order of the 'committee,' but by certain unscrupulous Nihilists acting on their own behalf. However, we are all the more ready to admit that such things have been done when we remember that only five such cases are known to have taken place.
"Do not accuse us of being murderers, because of our attempts to take the life of His Most Sacred Majesty? Why, we would most gladly accomplish his destruction, and he has only escaped until now in consequence of the many cowards in our ranks! It has been stated that Solowjew's attempt in April last has disturbed the rest and peace of mind of many harmless and respectable citizens. Some of the Liberal papers even go so far as to say that it will have the effect of producing a reaction in favor of the government. Why, what idle and stupid talk! These good newspaper proprietors, who love their ease and their books, must have been asleep not to have perceived that the reaction began sixteen years ago, not in favor of the government, but against it.
"We are quite persuaded that if Solowjew's attempt had succeeded, everybody would talk in a different manner, even the slaves and asses who surrounded the throne would have rejoiced.
"Do not be surprised at these political assassinations, but rather be astonished that they are not more frequent. Unfortunately for our cause, the Nihilists are too humanitarian, and hence are incapable of carrying out many necessary measures. Perhaps in time they will acquire the aptitude necessary in critical moments; perhaps it will be your conduct which will effect this change in them. Then in that case the responsibility of terrorism and assassination will rest with you, and not with us."
How many amusing and ridiculous scenes should we witness if each pair of men that secretly laugh at each other were to do it openly!
AXIOMS LYING AT THE FOUNDATION OF ALL PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.
Out of nothing, nothing comes. Into nothing, nothing goes. These are foundation axioms underlying the entire system of Christian theology. The first looks backward, and the second looks forward. The first correllates with the saying, "So things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." The converse of this is the following: Things which are seen were made of unseen things; that is, the visible universe is the manifestation of the invisible. The real universe is the invisible. There is nothing that can not be thrown into the invisible. Even the diamond has been thrown into solution, and all solutions may be thrown into the invisible by heat. The question, What is matter? has puzzled the best minds of earth, and puzzled all, both infidels and Christians, as much as any other question. The visible, organic universe was created, but it was created out of the invisible. The invisible is eternal. There is an eternal world, and that is the invisible and real universe, without which the visible would not be, for of nothing, nothing comes. All matter is to be referred to antecedent substance—that which lies under and causes it to be. Substance, strictly speaking, lies in the invisible. Matter, properly speaking, is an effect, which is the visible manifestation of an unseen substance, and this is eternal.
God created the universe by means of eternal substance. He is the king eternal. The time never was when he was the king of nothing. It is said of Leibnitz that he thought inert matter insufficient to explain the phenomena of body, and had recourse to the entelechies of Aristotle, or the substantial forms of scholastic philosophy, conceiving of them as primitive forces, constituting the substance of matter, atoms of substance, but not of matter imperishable, but subject to transformation. This view of the atomic theory is two-fold: First, the atomic invisible, as the very term atom indicates, for it is from "ha temno," which means not cut—literally indivisible. You can't cut an atom chemically or otherwise, unless you are working upon that which is an atom in the loose and more modern sense of the term. You may reduce matter chemically to the invisible or underlying substance, but beyond this you can not cut? Can you run it into nothing? No. Into nothing nothing goes. Physicists are indebted to the oldest philosophers, who lived prior to Democrites, for the use of the term atom. Those oldest philosophers used the term to indicate something that was not matter, viz: immaterial substance. The term in its primary sense is applicable nowhere else.
The invisible world of substance is undoubtedly eternal. But those men who try to make this fact an argument against the existence of God are guilty of the most stupid nonsense and impudence, for, having allowed eternity not only to substance, but to material substance, they have no right in logic to deny eternity to life and mind; because it is as easy, and as rational, to conceive of the eternity of one thing known to exist as of another. But the idea that the visible world is eternal is in direct conflict with the facts of science, which establish beyond contradiction the mutable nature of all organized bodies. Aristotle, though a believer in the existence of God, did affirm the world's eternity, and therefore held that there never was any first male or female in the history of any animals whatsoever, but affirmed, on the contrary that one begat another infinitely, without any beginning. This thought was so repugnant to common sense that Aristotle himself seemed to be skeptical about it, admitting it to be a disputable thing. After affirming his notion he added, "If the world had a beginning, and if men were once earth-born, then must they have been, in all probability, either generated as worms, out of putrefaction, or else out of eggs." But the question comes up for an answer, From whence came the eggs?
Old Epicurus, after Aristotle, fancied that the first men and animals were formed in certain wombs or bags growing out of the earth, by a fortuitous concourse of dead atoms. Here we have the last home stretch of all physicists in their efforts to get rid of the Christian idea of creation; beyond it no modern infidel has traveled in his speculations, nor ever will.
But if men were formed from eggs growing out of the earth, or from bags, or from wombs created by a fortuitous concourse of dead atoms, by chance, why, the motion of atoms being as brisk and vigorous as ever, should we not expect the same thing to occur occasionally throughout all the ages?
Anaximander, however, concluded that men, because they require longer time than other animals to be hatched up, were at first generated in the bellies of fishes, and there nourished till they were able to defend and shift for themselves, and were then disgorged and cast upon dry land. So we are driven to the conclusion that there is nothing in the world too absurd for those men, both ancient and modern, to swallow down in their efforts to get rid of the notion of an intelligent creation by the hand of an intelligent creator.
ESTOPPELS; OR, FOSSILIZATION.
In our religion we find no law requiring uniformity of thought. Think the same things. Be of the same opinion. These and like statements are no part of our religion. Faith and opinion are not the same. All Christians have one faith, "the faith of Christ." "Be of the same mind and of the same judgment." "Speak the same things." These are to be taken in their proper relations. The made up judgment is the result of faith in the judgment of Christ. "I judge nothing by myself; he that judgeth me is the Lord." The one great mind enjoined is the result of thought upon the one great subject of the life of Christ, which is given as the light of men. These imperatives are summed up in the beautiful expression, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." Uniformity of thoughts or opinions is a very different thing. A man would be considered worse than a knave who would throw chains around the human intellect, so as to put an end to progress in thought; it would be the stagnation of all in which we are most interested. Christians are not to be charged with any such wickedness, for they are using all their powers to produce thought; money and talent are freely bestowed in many ways to get men to think, and then decide, not in reference to opinions but facts; not in reference to things which are matters of opinion only, but of the living object of faith, Christ and Christian duty. There is no system of things in which investigation, liberty of thought and action, upon all matters of interest to our humanity, both as respects this world and the world to come, is more encouraged and insisted upon. Wicked and unholy thoughts only are prohibited.
Who would paint every flower of the same hue? Who would trim all the trees of the forest into one and the same shape? Or, who is so foolish as to want all faces cast into one mould? Who would chain human thought or mould the opinions of men so that they should not only be one in Christ, the greatest living fact in history, but one in every other being known in the world's history—one in opinions? The freeist thing in the universe is thought. The liberties of thought are charter liberties from the King of Kings. The spirit of man is free in its normal state. You can not chain it in slavery against its will. No. It knows no servitude but the voluntary. But, then, its wanderings are many. In the field of search after beauty, rectitude and truth, many minds may come into collision. But greater evils would result from chaining them all to one spot, and thus ending progress in many things of interest lying in the realm of thought. Of all the varieties known among men those of thought are the most sublime and useful.
This variety causes the investigation of every interest; it brings every truth and every error to the surface.
Men have made many attempts to check the onward march of intellect. But every attempt in that direction is marked by some great dread. Men are not anxious to put on the brakes unless they are in fear of being wrecked. Nothing is more dangerous in any government than perfect indifference to public interests. Men in places of public trust always need watching. Irresponsible power, it is said, would corrupt an archangel, and is, doubtless, unknown among the inhabitants of the better land. Among men there is great liability. Every political candidate has his accusations, his promises, and scheme, with which he confronts his rival and agitates the minds of the people. So we have been saved from that stagnation of thought which has retarded progress among other nations. Many men, seeking office, have been wise enough to see the danger to their interests of an expose of corruption. So they have been perfectly willing that mechanics, artisans and farmers should investigate and expose to public view all the questions of interest belonging to our government, but good Christians, "and especially preachers, entering the field of political investigation, at once forfeit their right to the crown of life.(?)"
But just how it is that lawyers, doctors and politicians will all reach heaven in spite of political action, and preachers will sink to perdition on account of the same, is a problem among problems that has never yet been satisfactorily solved. Are we to conclude that such men as Generals Hancock and Garfield, along with a great many more, had, and have, no religion to be disturbed? Or is there a double portion of sacrifice, the sacrifice of principle and liberty, demanded at the hands of ministers of the Gospel of Christ? How is this? We are anxious to know. Are the politicians of the country the voluntary scapegoats of the nation, who risk their own salvation for political toil, which, from its character, would, according to a very common opinion, kill out the religion of all the saints in America? Surely we ought to feel grateful to the political sinners who so willingly take all the risk of being shut out of Paradise that they may have the exclusive right of controlling the offices of the government. They seem to say to us Christians, Hear us, ye hard-thinking toilers and aspirants to the realms of bliss while we proclaim to you the perils of our position; we warn you against the crime of accustoming yourselves to the investigation of the political and civil interests of the day, and let not your devout meditations be disturbed by secular pursuits. Read your Bibles and other pious books; attend to all your prayer meetings and all your philanthropic societies.
What is the object of all this pious policy? Is it to keep the national mind as far as possible in a state of political stagnation, or, otherwise, to ostracise politically the preachers of the land with reference to party success? How is this? Are the preachers of the United States a dangerous element in our land? If they are, then the fewer we have of them the better we are off. Do any but infidels take that view of the subject? It correllates with infidelity, but not with Christianity.
TO KEEP A ROOM PURE.
To keep a room purified it is only necessary to keep a pitcher or some other vessel full of water in it. The water will absorb all the respired gases. The colder the water is the greater is its capacity to hold the gases. At ordinary temperature a pail of water will absorb a pint of carbonic acid gas and several pints of ammonia. The capacity is nearly doubled by reducing the water to the temperature of ice. Water kept awhile in a room is unfit for use. The pump should always be emptied before catching water for use. Impure water is more injurious than impure air.
Man, being essentially active, must find in activity his joy, as well as his beauty and glory, and labor, like everything else that is good, is its own reward.
INTERESTING FACTS.
Glass windows were used for lights in 1180.
Chimneys first put up to houses in 1236.
Tallow candles for lights in 1290.
Spectacles invented by an Italian in 1240.
Paper made from linen in 1302.
Woolen cloth made in England in 1341.
Art of printing from movable types in 1440.
The first book printed with movable types in 1450.
Watches first made in Germany in 1447.
Telescopes invented by Porta and Janson in 1590.
Tea first brought from China to Europe in 1501.
Circulation of blood discovered by Hervey in 1610.
Newspaper first established in 1629.
Pendulum clocks first invented in 1639.
Barometer invented by Torricelli in 1535.
Steam engine invented in 1649.
Bread made with yeast in 1650.
Cotton planted in the United States in 1759.
Fire engine invented in 1685.
Telegraph invented by Morse in 1832.
Cure for a Felon.—"Take common salt, dry it in the oven, then pound it fine and mix it with turpentine, equal parts. Put it on a rag and wrap it around the finger, and as soon as it gets dry put on some more, and in twenty-four hours the felon will be as dead as a door nail."—Old Mr. Mix.
Transcriber’s Note
The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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