It is declared that the history of Rome shows what man can do without God, and I assert that the history of the Inquisition shows what man can do when assisted by a church of divine origin, presided over, by the infallible vicars of God.
The fact that the early Christians not only believed incredible things, but persuaded others of their truth, is regarded by the Cardinal as a miracle. This is only another phase of the old argument that success is the test of divine origin. All supernatural religions have been founded in precisely the same way. The credulity of eighteen hundred years ago believed everything except the truth.
A religion is a growth, and is of necessity adapted in some degree to the people among whom it grows. It is shaped and molded by the general ignorance, the superstition and credulity of the age in which it lives. The key is fashioned by the lock.
Every religion that has succeeded has in some way supplied the wants of its votaries, and has to a certain extent harmonized with their hopes, their fears, their vices, and their virtues.
If, as the Cardinal says, the religion of Christ is in absolute harmony with nature, how can it be supernatural? The Cardinal also declares that "the religion of Christ is in harmony with the reason and moral nature in all nations and all ages to this day."
What becomes of the argument that Catholicism must be of divine origin because "it has ascended the stream of human license, contra ictum fluminis, by a power mightier than nature"?
If "it is in harmony with the reason and moral nature of all nations and all ages to this day," it has gone with the stream, and not against it. If "the religion of Christ is in harmony with the reason and moral nature of all nations," then the men who have rejected it are unnatural, and these men have gone against the stream. How then can it be said that Christianity has been in changeless opposition to nature as man has marred it? To what extent has man marred it?
In spite of the marring by man, we are told that the reason and moral nature of all nations in all ages to this day is in harmony with the religion of Jesus Christ.
Are we justified in saying that the Catholic Church is of divine origin because the Pagans failed to destroy it by persecution?
We will put the Cardinal's statement in form: