The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870

by Various

We find, therefore, that the spokesmen of the Presbyterian assemblies admit the obligation of Catholic unity, profess their belief in the Catholic church and the Catholic faith, and yet do not venture to assert that the Presbyterian family is the Catholic Church, its doctrine the Catholic faith; that it possesses unity in itself, and that all those Christians who are separated from it are bound to seek admission into its fold. They take what they implicitly admit to be an exceptional, abnormal position; they profess themselves to be only a fragmentary portion of Christendom, and excuse themselves for their isolation on the plea that there is a chasm separating them from the great mass of Christians which they cannot pass. When we examine the special points made in this plea more closely, we find that all the positive affirmations of doctrine are affirmations of truths held in common with the Catholic Church, and that all the statements peculiar to the authors of the document are protests or negations. The Trinity, Incarnation, Redemption, etc., are palpably Catholic doctrines. The Augustinian doctrines of sin, grace, and predestination, so far as they are the statements or definitions of Catholic faith in opposition to the heresy of Pelagius, are dogmas, and so far as they are the opinions of a school, are sound opinions, though open to discussion. No Catholic writer ever dreamed of censuring them as heretical. The inspiration and infallibility of the holy Scriptures, the priesthood of all Christians, the right and duty of private judgment, the illumination and inward guidance of individual believers by the Holy Spirit, are all sound Catholic doctrines, when properly explained and harmonized with other doctrines. These are the principal positive statements of the document, and they add nothing whatever in the shape of new, living, constructive principle of belief or organization to that sum of truth which the Presbyterians have received from the old tradition. Although some of the negations of Catholic doctrine are put in a positive form, yet it is only the mode of expression which is positive, while the substance of the proposition is a negation. For instance, the proposition that Scripture is the sole authority, so far as it enunciates a truth which is positive, declares the inspiration and infallibility of the Scripture; but so far as it goes beyond that declaration, is really a negation of the authority of the unwritten word, expressed in the form of an affirmation that the Scripture is the sole authority. So, also, the whole of what is peculiar to the Presbyterian doctrine as distinguished from the Catholic, in the affirmation of the universal priesthood, the rights of individual reason, the inward light of the Holy Spirit, is derived from a negation of the hierarchical and sacerdotal orders, the authority of the church, and her infallibility. Then follows a long list of Catholic doctrines which are denied, and which the Roman Church is accused of having added to the ancient creed. We cannot be expected to go into the details of these doctrines singly, for the purpose of proving that the church has defined and proposed them on sufficient motives.

There are plenty of books in which the reverend gentlemen of the Presbyterian Church, and the intelligent laymen who adhere to that communion, can find the full and complete statement, with the proofs, of every portion of Catholic doctrine and discipline. For certain portions of it, they need not look beyond the bounds of Protestantism. The divines of the Church of England, and the controversial writers of the High-Church party in the United States, have proved the hierarchical principle, the episcopal succession, the grace of the sacraments, the real presence, and other doctrines akin to these, with solid arguments from Scripture and history which the advocates of Presbyterianism have never been able to refute. A section of the clergy of another Presbyterian communion, to wit, the German Reformed, have been led by their study of Scripture and the ancient authors to adopt and advocate similar principles totally contrary to those of the reverend moderators. They certainly cannot put forth their statements, therefore, as certain and evident facts or truths, admitted by all who have studied the Scriptures and ancient authors, even among Protestants. Their reiteration of them consequently establishes nothing, proves nothing; in no wise can be alleged as a justification of their position. It is a mere defining of their position, which gives no new information whatever to any person, and therefore the discussion may justly be relegated to the arena of regular polemics.

So far as the reverend doctors have made use of arguments, however, it is proper that we should pay some attention to these, and this they have done in regard to a few points, although with the brevity to which the nature of their document restricted them.

(1.) Their first argument is against the authority of tradition. It is that, by receiving the teachings of tradition as of equal authority with the teachings of Scripture, we incur the condemnation pronounced by our Lord against the Pharisees when he said, "Ye make void the word of God by your traditions." The answer to this is obvious. The traditions of the Pharisees were private, human, recent traditions, not derived from the oral teaching of Moses or other inspired prophets, but from the unauthorized glosses or interpretations of the text of the law, made by the rabbis and scribes exercising their own private judgment. They were contrary to the true sense of the law, subversive of it, and maintained in opposition to the authority of Jesus Christ, the divinely commissioned interpreter and judge of doctrine. What has this to do with a tradition descending from the oral teaching of Jesus Christ and the apostles, agreeing with, explaining, and supplementing the teaching of the Scripture? The canon of the New Testament is such a tradition, and the Presbyterians have, consequently, if their opinion is a true one, incurred the condemnation of the Lord by receiving it. That traditions which are derived from the pure, original source of revelation are to be received, is proved by the commandment of St. Paul to the Thessalonians to "Stand firm: and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word or our epistle."[48] This is precisely what Catholics do. We hold all that has been delivered to us by the apostles, whether transmitted through the Scriptures or through tradition. Presbyterians reject apostolic and Catholic tradition, but make void the word of God; that is, they pervert or deny a great portion of the doctrine revealed by Jesus Christ through the apostles, by their own human, unauthorized traditions. Thus, they reject a number of the books of the Old Testament declared canonical by the same apostolic tradition which fixes the canon of the New Testament, by following the tradition of the Jews. They follow, in respect to divers other essential points of doctrine as well as discipline, the traditions of Luther and Calvin. Practically, they are entirely under the control of this human, modern tradition, which is designated by the reverend moderators as "the principles which prompted our 'ancestors,' in the name of primitive Christianity, and in defence of the 'true faith,' bravely to protest against the errors and abuses which had been foisted upon the church;" that is to say, against Catholic and apostolic tradition.

(2.) Their second argument is in favor of the right of private judgment—that is, according to their way of understanding this right—against the authority of the teaching church as the final, supreme judge of doctrine. The argument in brief is, that the Scriptures address the individual mind and conscience of every reader in an authoritative manner, commanding him to search their pages, promising him the divine illumination to understand their meaning, holding him responsible to God for the belief and practice of their teachings, and forbidding him to listen to any teacher who shall present to him any doctrine differing from that which they contain. Suppose we grant all this. What then? Presbyterianism gains nothing. It cannot defend itself against other forms of Protestantism. It cannot establish its system either of doctrine or discipline. Moreover, an able, profound, biblical scholar, such as is Dr. Pusey, for example, will be able to prove from the Scripture the greater number of all those Catholic doctrines against which these divines protest as errors of the Roman Church. Among these doctrines thus contained in Scripture, and ascertainable even by one who begins his search properly qualified and disposed, but without any other authority except private judgment to direct him, are the authority of tradition and of the church. What now is the individual to do? The Scripture, as he supposed when he began to search it, teaches the right and duty of private judgment upon its own contents, as the exclusive method of learning the truths revealed from heaven to men. He has followed this method conscientiously, relying on the promise of divine illumination made to all sincere seekers after truth, and he now finds himself referred to another authority, that of the church. What is he to do now? Reject the Scriptures and the whole system of positive Christianity as inconsistent and self-contradictory? The Presbyterian divines cannot sanction this conclusion. Then he must conclude that he had imperfectly apprehended what the Scriptures teach respecting the right and duty of the individual to judge of their true sense and meaning, and must harmonize in some way their teaching on this point with their teaching on the other point, namely, the authority of the church. This is the way in which many have reached the church by the road of private judgment. They have opened and searched the Scriptures, assuming at the outset that they are the inspired word of God, addressed to them as individuals and intelligible to their own private reason, assisted by grace, without any extrinsic aid or interpreter. The fact that they have been able to reach the same knowledge of their true sense which the Catholic Church imparts to her children in a shorter way, is no proof, however, that this is the ordinary way in which the Lord intended that men should gain this knowledge. We deny totally that it is. It is very easy to assume the Scriptures in arguing with Catholics who affirm their authority. We deny, however, that the assumption is justifiable on Protestant principles. When the reverend doctors quietly say, "We open the Scriptures," we meet them at once with a denial of their logical right to assert that there are any Scriptures to be opened. If the word of God is manifested to each individual directly through a book, without human media, that book must be a miraculous work of God created by him immediately, and authenticated by some manifest sign from heaven. The Bible is not such a book. It is not a book at all, in the strict sense of the word. It is a collection of writings made by the church, authenticated as divine by her authority, and therefore always presupposing her existence and the existence of that faith and those laws by which she is constituted the church. To say that the exhortations of the sacred books of Scripture are addressed to each individual singly, without reference to the church of which he is a member or of the doctrine which she teaches, is about as sensible as to say that St. Paul's direction to "salute Andronicus and Junias" was directed to the moderators of the two assemblies.

If all explicit teaching of the revealed truths were contained in the Scripture, exclusively, and sufficiently for the immediate instruction of all the faithful, the Scripture would clearly and distinctly affirm this, and furnish us with a description of itself or canon specifying the books which are inspired, duly authenticated by St. John, the last of the apostles. It does nothing of the kind, and the moderators are forced to allude to certain indirect references which are made to the authority of the Scripture in some of the sacred books. These indirect statements are not without their value as proofs of the Catholic doctrine of inspiration, but they by no means support the position of the moderators. Our Lord directs the unbelieving Jews to search the Scriptures of the Old Testament, because they testify of him, the living teacher, as the Vicar of Christ now points to the pages of the New Testament, where Protestants may find the proofs of his divine commission and authority. St. Timothy is commended as having studied the same Scriptures of the old law, which made him "wise unto salvation" by preparing him to receive the oral teaching of St. Paul. St. Peter incidentally informs us that the epistles of St. Paul are a portion of the inspired Scripture, when he gives the caution to all who read them that in them "are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as also the other Scriptures, to their own perdition."[49] All this is in perfect harmony with the teachings of the Catholic Church, as any one may see without our taking the trouble to develop the matter any further.

The promise of the Holy Spirit to the faithful generally is not in the least contrary to the doctrine of the infallibility of the teaching church, and the duty of obeying its decisions. It is a necessary condition to the participation in this light of the Holy Spirit that an individual should be a member of the body of Christ—the church—in which the Spirit resides. He must be instructed and baptized in the faith, the true doctrine must be given to him, the key to the sense of the sacred writings must be furnished him, the criterion of discernment between true and false interpretations of the revelation of Christ must exist in his mind, in order that he may exercise his judgment rightly. Under these conditions, the private Christian can possess the faith in himself in such a way that he needs no man to tell him what the true doctrine of Christ is, and detects at once the heresy of any false teacher, even though he be a priest or bishop, who attempts to preach his own new and private opinions contrary to the Catholic faith. This is that supernatural, Catholic instinct pervading the church and keeping the faithful loyal to their religion, under the longest and bloodiest persecutions, like those which the Irish and the Poles have endured with such martyr-like constancy. This "unction from the Holy One" was in the fathers of the first six councils, by the confession of the reverend doctors themselves, and in the universal church which adhered to the true faith attacked by the Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite heretics. And if so, this same unction must have enabled them to understand the true doctrine of the apostles on all other points of the Christian faith, as well as on the Trinity and Incarnation. If this unction is in all true Christians, then they must all believe alike, in all ages and all places. Why, then, do the Presbyterian divines reject the doctrines of the fathers of the first six centuries, and the doctrines of all Christendom during these and subsequent centuries, until the revolution of the sixteenth century, concerning the sacraments, the priesthood, and other matters of the most essential character?

(3.) The third argument is, that the doctrine of a human priesthood implies a denial of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, or of its sufficiency. We are surprised to see such manifestly inconsequent reasoning in a document coming from a body of such high repute for ability and learning as the Presbyterian clergy. The affirmation that the Bible is the word of God implies, then, a rejection of Jesus Christ as the Word of God, or a denial of his sufficiency. The recognition of human teachers and pastors implies, then, the rejection of Jesus Christ as the teacher and pastor, or the denial of his sufficiency. What, then, are the five thousand Presbyterian pastors but so many usurpers of the titles and offices of Jesus Christ? Christ and the Holy Spirit are sufficient for each man without any human intervention. Away, then, with your church, your sacraments, your assemblies, your ministers, your confession of faith, your bibles. Every man is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and has unrestricted access to God through Jesus Christ, as the fanatics said in the time of Luther, who had no argument by which he could refute them, and was forced to call on the princes to use the more efficacious weapon of the sword, and to sweep away the too consequent but most unfortunate imitators of his own example by a deluge of blood.

(4.) The fourth argument is, that there can be no apostolic succession in the church, because bishops do not possess the gifts and perform the miracles of the apostles. This argument merely proves that the apostles can have no successors in that which was peculiar to themselves as founders of the church, or fathers in the spiritual order of the line of succession. They alone received immediately from Jesus Christ the revelation of Christian faith and Christian law. Their successors received this deposit from their hands without any power to add to it or take from it. There is no necessity that the successors of the apostles should receive by a new revelation that which they have received from the apostles themselves by tradition. They need not the gifts necessary to originate, but only those necessary to preserve and continue the work of Christ, committed to the apostles. It is, therefore, no argument against the infallibility of the episcopate in preserving, proclaiming, explaining, or protecting against contrary errors the deposit of faith received from the apostles, to say that it lacks the immediate inspiration necessary to an infallible proclamation of revealed truths at first hand. The miracles wrought by the apostles as signs of their apostleship authenticate this revelation as taught by their successors to the end of time, and seal the credentials of the episcopal line which they founded throughout its entire length without any new miracles. As to the fact of the establishment of the hierarchy containing the three distinct grades of bishop, priest, and deacon, deriving its power through episcopal ordination from the apostles, it is enough to refer to the learned works of Protestant authors who have fully proved it. Catholic authors do not teach that bishops succeed to the extraordinary apostolic office of the apostles, but only to their episcopal office. We hold that St. Peter alone has successors to the plenitude of his apostolic power, with the reservation of so much as only the founder of the line could or need exercise. To this supremacy of the successor of St. Peter the divines object still more strongly than to the power of the episcopate, that it substitutes the pope in the place of Jesus Christ. It is very hard to find by what logical process this conclusion is reached. The divines admit that St. Peter and the apostles were the infallible teachers and rulers of the church. If their argument is sound, they cannot admit this without substituting the apostles in the place of Jesus Christ. If the church could be governed by a human, infallible authority for half a century, without prejudice to the supreme authority of Jesus Christ, it could be governed for an indefinite number of centuries in the same way, without any such prejudice. It is quite irrelevant to this side of the question whether this authority is exercised by one or by several, over local churches or over the church of the whole world, Christ is the head of all particular churches as well as of the church universal. If it is compatible with this headship of Christ that a man should be the pastor of a single congregation, it is quite as much so that he should be a pastor over a diocese, over a province, over a nation, over a collection of nations, or over the whole world. The reverend doctors have therefore confused the issue. It is simply a question of fact as to what constitution Jesus Christ actually gave the church, and what powers he delegated to his ministers. The Presbyterians, on their own principles, are bound to prove from the New Testament alone that our Lord did not give the church an episcopal and papal constitution, but did give it a Presbyterian polity. When they made their case out against the Episcopalian divines on the one side, and against such Catholic authors as Archbishop Kenrick, Mr. Allies, F. Bottalla, and F. Weninger, on the other, it will be time to listen to them, but not sooner.

We have done with the arguments of the reverend doctors, but we cannot withhold an expression of surprise at the signs of the divine sanction to their principles which they appeal to, apparently in lieu of the miracles which are wanting, or of the four marks by which the church used to be known in the old times. That men believing in total depravity and election should appeal to the temporal prosperity of nations—the mass of whom, on their principles, are hopelessly doomed to everlasting fire, there to be tormented for ever, even for those actions which the world calls virtuous and brilliant—as a proof of the divine favor, is somewhat strange. We wonder they did not add, "Behold we are rich and increased in goods; in this great capital where we are assembled, our churches are principally in the upper portion of the city, handsomely carpeted, richly cushioned, and principally frequented by the wealthier classes. Indeed, we are the church both of the élite and of the elect."