The state of heart and will which these principles engender no lengthened paragraphs are needed to describe. Previous to the age of discretion, the Protestant child, in spite of these principles, is compelled to recognize, in religion, an authority external to himself. His parents, his masters, his catechisms are, in his sight, equally with the Bible, the teachers of divine truth; and, by their aid and influence, he arrives at maturity with certain more or less distinctly formed notions of Christian doctrine, and with certain rules of life grained into his character by the long course of years. At this period he is emancipated, in theory, from all external direction, and placed under the sole guidance of his reason and the Bible. That sacred book he opens. It has no voice to him of its own. Its pages offer to him the same words as to all men before him; but those words contain no meaning independent of the meaning that he gives them. It places before him the formal statement of all doctrine; but teaches him, as absolutely and infallibly true, no one specific dogma which, whether consistent with his present views or not, he must receive. That which interprets, not that which is interpreted, is ever the real teacher; and, in his case, his privates judgment, trained and biassed by the prejudices and conclusions of a lifetime, utters the only voice and defines the only doctrine which it is possible for him to hear or to receive. The Scripture does not teach him new and otherwise undiscoverable truth. It rather confirms and expresses the truth, which is already accepted and declared. The oracle, whose utterance is the indisputable law, speaks from the depths of his interior being. The Bible is a mere "phrase-book," in which it finds the words and symbols fitted to convey its thought. The divine authority dwells in the man, not in the volume. He holds the sacred book before the mirror of his reason. The image it presents, however imperfect or deformed, becomes to him the truth of the Eternal Word. He casts the pure wheat of God between the millstones of his human judgment and his human loves. The grist they grind is all the bread he has whereon to feed his soul. It is not difficult to see that, by the process of investigation, every man must become the worshipper of a God who is as truly his own handiwork as is the brazen idol of the Hindoo or the living Buddha of Sha-Ssa.
Some of the better class of Protestant minds have perceived this. A few of the most fearless have declared it, and received, in consequence, the name of "infidels" from their less logical and less consistent brethren. "Belief," says Mr. Emerson, "consists in the acceptance of the affirmations of the soul; unbelief in their denial." The English language might be exhausted and no better definition given of Protestant belief than this. When once the soul—that is, the reason, [{467}] the affections, and the will—when once the soul affirms; when once those affirmations are expressed in Scripture phraseology, no Protestant can venture to pronounce them ultimately untrue without destroying the hold principle on which his own faith has been built. That many have done so is only evidence that the grace of God within them rebels against this degradation of a Gospel which the Eternal Son died in order to inaugurate, and which his church has battled earth and hell for fifty generations in order to preserve.
The office which the heart and will perform in this religious work is simply one of choice. The element of submission to divine authority is only so far exercised as consists in the acceptance of Scripture phrases as the vehicle of individual conclusions. To no extent is the formal, detailed idea indebted for existence to other than the intellect, the affections, the will of the believer. He chooses his dogma for his precept according to the dictates of his reason; receiving this, denying that, on the sole ground of their consistency with preconceived ideas; and, anon, discarding old faiths and adopting new as time and circumstances operate upon his heart and mind. And it is nothing singular to see him wandering from Tractarianism down to Unitarianism—from Calvinism to Universalism—and back again, stopping perchance at Methodism or Congregationalism on the way; clinging to his Bible all the while, triumphantly pointing to this paragraph as proving that he is right at last, and as triumphantly declaring the reverse when a few steps forward have landed him upon the other side. All this and more—unless, indeed, his inner life lays at the door of his professions the charge of conscious falsehood, and underneath his soul is bent the arm of an authority whose very existence his theory has totally denied.
No truer definition, no better example of heresy than such a spectacle affords, has any age of Christianity presented. "[Greek text]" meant "choice." The grand distinction between the heretic and the Christian resides in this: that the one chooses doctrine to suit himself, the other receives doctrine on the authority of God. That Protestantism is choice—nay, that it logically compels choice to every individual in it, cannot admit a question. It is, therefore, heresy; not, perhaps, in the most odious sense of the word, but still in that strict etymological signification which is the best clue to the appropriate application of the name. Like all other heretics, of whatever sect, the Protestant relies upon himself. He is his own Bible-maker, his own doctrine-monger, his own law-giver. Faith and theology and moral law are only the result of his own private judgment and divine command, moulded and digested into one confused and contradicting mass of good and evil.
It is to his deliverance from this spiritual state that the name conversion alone properly belongs.
Catholicity, on the other hand, is also based upon two principles, which are the logical postulates of its existence, and whose necessary developments will account for the immeasurable contrast which its severe and holy tranquillity presents to the seething and tumultuous incoherency around it. The first of these is this: that the truths with which alone revealed religion deals, are in their nature above human reason, and though never contradicting it, cannot by it be estimated, comprehended, or discerned, but rest upon the sole veracity of a revealing God. The second is: that God has chosen and appointed, as the medium of this unerring revelation, a visible, organized society, founded by Jesus Christ, presided over by the Holy Ghost, perpetuated through all ages by his own impregnable decree; and that this society is the Catholic Church. The inevitable consequence of the first principle is: that revealed truth, as such, is ultimately and infallibly true, and whether or not consistent [{468}] with private judgment, prejudice, and present conviction, must be received and heartily believed. The inevitable consequence of the second is: that whatever the church teaches as revealed truth, is so revealed, is therefore ultimately true, and must be rested on implicitly as the infallible utterance of God.
The result of this first principle has been that the wonderful, and often ludicrous, admixture of divine and human truth, which may be found in the religion of many Protestants, is utterly impossible to Catholics. With all the questions of natural religion, as distinguished from revealed; with all the theorems of science and of art; with the dark mysteries of nature and the still darker mysteries of man; nay, even with those inferences from divine truth which make up systems of theology, reason is competent to deal. It may pierce the glittering nebulae of the Milky Way; it may fathom the recesses of the ocean and cleave the crystal bowels of the world; it may climb the dizzy heights of intellectual philosophy; it may conquer the vast problems of political and social happiness. But here its journey ends. When it stands beside that boundless sea which rolls between the finite and the infinite, it finds no bark to bear it outward. Of all that lies beyond, its eye, its ear, its touch remains insensible. It can but sit down on the hither shore and wait for light—the light of revelation. [Footnote 148]
[Footnote 148: The able writer of this article certainly does not intend to deny the competence of reason to judge of the evidence of revelation, or to judge that any proposition evidently contradictory to reason cannot be a revealed truth.—Ed. Catholic World.]
Reason is limited from above. Revelation is limited from below. In the mysteries of God, in the supernatural, and in questions of faith, her voice is law: and where it is law, it is absolute, unconditional, indisputable. Free as the thought of God is man's thought everywhere but there. There he must put his shoes from off his feet and listen and obey. The ground he treads is holy. The voice he hears is that which spoke of old out of the burning bush. He cannot gainsay God.
And thus it is that, practically, Catholics are so free in all matters except those pertaining to religion. The line is drawn so clearly and so definitely between what is and what is not of faith, that not in one mind in ten thousand is there ever the slightest doubt as to what must be received and what may be disputed. The consolation given by this simple maxim: "If God has not revealed it, I need not believe it; but if God has declared it, whether or not I understand it, it is surely true."—when once incorporated into the guiding principles of the heart, as in the case of every true Catholic it entirely is, repays the soul for those dark hours of Protestant doubting and perplexity, by contrast with which it can alone be truly valued.