Of the conclusion here arrived at, it is only necessary to say that it is founded upon an assumption. Look again at the passage upon which the argument is based, in connection with its context. "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying: All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, Go ye therefore, and teach all nations; * * * and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."[[4]] It will be seen that the promise was to the eleven apostles, not to the church. To say that this promise "regards the successors of the apostles no less than the apostles themselves," is an assumption unwarranted by the text; and it is upon that assumption that the Rev. John Milner and other Catholic writers, base their conclusions that the word of Jesus is pledged to an uninterrupted continuation of His church in the earth.
The argument of Cardinal Gibbons is still worse than that of Dr. Milner. He says the promise of Jesus to the apostles contains three important declarations, the first of which is: "The presence of Christ with His church." This is worse than assumption. The learned Cardinal has written "church," where he should have written "apostles;" and therefore the conclusion he reached, namely, the perpetual duration of the church, is based upon a misstatement; and as the premises upon which the argument is based are untrue, the conclusion is false.
The argument by Catholics is thought to be invulnerable, because the promise of Jesus to be with the apostles to the end of the world is impossible of fulfillment, unless it "regarded the successors of the apostles no less than the apostles themselves." But to be with their successors is not being with the apostles. Hence the device arranged by Catholics for the fulfillment of this promise of the Lord, misses its purpose altogether. Moreover, there is no need of such device to explain how the promise of Jesus could be fulfilled. "In my Father's house," said he, addressing these same men, "are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, * * * that where I am there ye may be also;"[[5]] And there they are with Jesus in the place he prepared for them, and they will continue to be with him even unto the end of the world.
No less erroneous is the Catholic argument for the uninterrupted continuation of the church of Christ on earth, based on the passage in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew, when Jesus in the course of a conversation with Peter says to him: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." "By this promise," says a foot-note on this passage in the Douay Bible—the version accepted by the Catholic Church,—"we are fully assured that neither idolatry, heresy, nor any pernicious error whatever, shall at any time prevail over the church of Christ." "Our blessed Lord clearly intimates here," says Cardinal Gibbons, "that the church is destined to be assailed always but to be overcome never."[[6]] The argument of Catholics is, that if the great apostasy took place which, as we have seen, is clearly predicted in the scriptures, and, as I believe, confirmed by the facts already presented to the reader in this volume, then the express promise of Jesus Christ that the gates of hell should not prevail against His church has failed. "If the prediction of our Savior about the preservation of His church from error be false, then Jesus Christ is not God, since God cannot lie. He is not even a prophet, since he predicted falsehood. Nay, he is an imposter, and all Christianity is a miserable failure, and a huge deception, since it rests on a false prophet."[[7]]
This argument and its conclusion is based upon too narrow a conception of the Church of Christ. That church exists not only on earth, but in heaven; not only in time, but in eternity. It has not been prevailed against, because men on earth have departed from it; corrupted its doctrines, changed its ordinances, transgressed its laws. The Church of Christ in heaven, consisting of "an innumerable company of angels—the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven—"[[8]] the church there has been far beyond the reach of the powers of hell; and ultimately here on earth it shall be triumphant. To repeat an illustration I before used: Truth may lose a single battle, it may lose two or three, and yet be victorious in the war. So with the Church of Christ: many of those enrolled as its members may be stricken down by cruel persecution; those remaining may capitulate with the enemy, and by compromises betray the cause of Christ, and put him to an open shame. Repose and luxury, the reward of the above perfidy, may bring in such floods of wickedness that virtue can scarce be found among men, and no abiding place found on earth for the church of the Redeemer. That church, however, still exists in heaven, in all the glory of the general assembly of the firstborn; and from time to time dispensation after dispensation of the gospel will be sent from thence to the children of men, until a people shall be found who will remain true to all its doctrines, accept its ordinances, obey its precepts, preserve its institutions, and the Church of Christ everywhere become triumphant as well on earth as in heaven. The promise of the Lord Jesus will not fail—the gates of hell will not finally prevail against his church.
The reader's faith in the above view will doubtless be strengthened if I remind him that the apostasy contended for in the foregoing pages, is not the first time in the experience of men that the gospel has been taken from among them. It is written by Paul that, "the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith preached before the gospel unto Abraham."[[9]] A little further on the apostle asks: "Wherefore then serveth the law?" Referring to the law of Moses. That is to say, if the gospel was preached unto Abraham, wherefore serveth the law of Moses? His answer is, "It was added because of transgression till the seed should come, to whom the promise was made * * * Wherefore the law was our school master to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith."[[10]] Having in the third chapter of his epistles to the Hebrews referred to the dealings of God with the children of Israel in the wilderness, and having in the opening verse of the fourth chapter warned the saints against similar sins to those committed by Israel, Paul says: "For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them [ancient Israel], but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it." The only conclusion to be drawn from these passages is this: In very ancient times the Gospel was introduced among men; but because of their disinclination or inability to keep its laws and live in harmony with its precepts—"because of transgression," it was taken from among them. God, however, not willing to leave His children utterly without light, gave unto them a less exalted law—the law of carnal commandments. A law better suited to their condition, wherein were forms and ceremonies foreshadowing things to come, designed to act as a school master to bring the people to Christ.
Taking away the gospel from the earth, then, is not a new thing; not a thing peculiar to the first centuries of the Christian era. It had been done before when transgression led the people to depart from its ordinances and disregard its precepts. So, too, after the introduction of the gospel by the personal ministry of the Son of God, when men transgressed its laws, and corrupted its teachings and ordinances by their vain and foolish fancies, or by their efforts to modify it to make it acceptable to a pagan nation, because of transgression, it was taken from among them. Not abruptly. Not in such a sense as that the Christians some night in the third century all laid down to sleep good, faithful saints and awoke next morning stripped of the Gospel and turned pagans. No; but as the elders and bishops who held divine authority were destroyed by persecution, or passed away by natural death, the people with each succeeding generation growing worse and worse, and less and less worthy of the gospel—false teachers without authority from God usurped power, corrupted the gospel and the church until the false displaced the true, and anti-Christ sat in the temple of God.
Nothing remained but fragments of the gospel; here a doctrine and there a principle, like single stones fallen and rolled away from the ruined wall; but no one able to tell where they belonged in the structure, and so many of the stones missing that to reconstruct the wall with what remains is out of the question.
The fragmentary accounts of the gospel, as recorded by some of the apostles, and their associates, is all that was left to the world. All! But this was much. It has stood to the people since the days of the great apostasy as the law of carnal commandments did to Israel after the transgression which occasioned the gospel to be taken from them. Those fragments of the truth, however disconnected, have been as the light of the moon and the stars to the night traveler; not the sunlight, indeed, which makes so clear the way, but light which, however dim, is still better than absolute darkness; and will, I trust, yet lead many of our Father's children into the sunlight of Christ's restored gospel.
It will not be necessary to examine at length the Protestant argument, viz.: The gospel had been corrupted, and buried under the rubbish of idolatry for ages it is true, but the "Reformers" of the sixteenth century cleared away the rubbish and brought to light again the gospel, and restored the Church of Christ in all its simplicity of organization, and efficacy of power. Of this one need only say that the gospel having been taken from the earth, and divine authority lost, the only way for their restoration is through the re-opening of the heavens and the committing of a new dispensation thereof to men. As this answers the argument, it is only necessary to prove that Protestants admit the apostasy.