DR. HARWOOD'S PRICE LECTURE.
A certain Mr. Price, of Boston, left a sum of money for a course of annual lectures, one of which is to be against "Romanism," and Dr. Harwood, the rector of Trinity church, New-Haven, having been selected as the lecturer for the current year, has favored us with the publication of his lecture on "Romanism," in the pages of the New-Englander, as well as in the form of a separate pamphlet. The dignified place which is held by the author of this lecture, as well as his personal character and influence, give a considerable weight to whatever he may publicly say on such a topic, in addition to the intrinsic claim it may have on the attention of both his partisans and opponents. On this account, and moreover on account of the tangible, well-exposed issue which distinguishes the production of the reverend doctor from most of the brochures of his polemical associates, we have thought it worth while to devote a little time to the discussion of its contents.
Dr. Harwood does not attempt a formal argument against the claims of the Roman Church to supremacy over all Christendom. He is addressing an audience with whom, as with himself, it is a foregone conclusion that these claims are baseless, and Romanism a fearful, dangerous superstition. There is a tone of dislike and fear running through the lecture with which the audience is expected to sympathize fully, as when something is spoken of whose very mention is sufficient to awaken the aversion of all the moral sensibilities without any need of showing reasons. Just as the mere mention of the words polytheism, Mohammedanism, Mormonism, call up those sentiments of the falsehood and evil of the things they represent, which are interwoven with the intellectual and moral constitution inherited from our ancestors, nurtured by education, and governing our judgments like a second nature, so the mere pronunciation of the terms Rome, pope, sacrifice of the mass, with their derivatives and the other phrases associated with them, are quite sufficient to carry away an average New-England audience in a tide of sympathy with any anti-Roman orator. It was not necessary, therefore, for Dr. Harwood to argue with an audience already convinced, in proof of the position that the Roman Church must be resisted and opposed. The question to be considered was how best to do it? What are the points to be attacked? is one division of the question; by what road, with what weapons are these points to be attacked? is the other. With a singular and very honorable manliness and directness, the lecturer puts aside all secondary issues and places himself openly in front of the fundamental dogmatic basis of the Roman Church, with the avowal that it is necessary to the victory of his cause to attack and subvert this central stronghold. He seeks to ascertain, like a topographical engineer who is laying out positions for a bombardment, the precise situation and extent of this central work, and the exact spot on which the heavy guns which are to play upon it must be planted. It remains yet to be seen whether his report will be accepted by the leaders of his side, and an attempt made to carry out the bold, perhaps somewhat hazardous, strategy which he recommends.
Aside from all preliminaries and accompaniments which serve to give rhetorical finish and effect to the lecture as a popular oration, its gist and pith consist in the statement that the two dogmas of the sacrifice of the mass and the papal supremacy form the constitutive principle of the Roman Church, which the masters of heavy polemics are recommended to step up and overthrow. We have no objection to this issue, and are perfectly willing to fight the whole campaign through on that line. If the doctor intends, however, to define precisely and scientifically that these two dogmas together constitute the differentia of the doctrine of the Roman Church, his definition is open to criticism. The dogma of the sacrifice of the mass is no part of the differentia which distinguishes the Roman Church from the Eastern Christians, or from a respectable party in the author's own communion. The true differentia marking the Catholic Church in the communion and under the headship of the Bishop of Rome, as a sole and singular organization without its like among all the corporate religious societies of the world, is what is called in theological language the juge magisterium ecclesiæ, the living, perpetual, infallible, supreme authority in spirituals exercised in constant and uninterrupted continuity, and keeping the body of the church in indefectible unity. This magistracy is focussed and capitalized in the headship of the primatial see of the world, the Roman Church, and the supremacy of its bishop. A Greek or an Anglo-Catholic may hold theoretically that this magisterium belongs rightfully to the church, and could be exercised in case the church were assembled in what each of them respectively would acknowledge to be an œcumenical council. Neither of them, however, can acknowledge the continuous and present exercise of this plenary authority, because both are obliged to maintain that the church is in a disunited, disorganized state. It is precisely because both refuse to acknowledge the papal supremacy, that they deny the church in communion with Rome to be the complete church in organized unity and its general councils to be œcumenical. It is precisely this supremacy which makes this church an organized unit, and places it in the condition to act with full and complete power. The supremacy of the pope may, therefore, stand for the differentia, and we are willing to accept it as such, with the explanation above given, that it includes also the unbroken unity, together with the plenary judicial and legislative power of the Catholic episcopate as a whole, including both the pope as supreme head, and the bishops as conjudices cum papa, or fellow-judges and rulers, with and under the pope, of the universal church.
This simplifies the issue, and reduces the controversy, as between the Roman Church on one side, and all professed Christians refusing to acknowledge her supremacy as "mother and mistress of churches" on the other, to one question only. A victory on this one question is for us complete and decisive, for it enables us to sweep the whole battle-field. If the supremacy we claim for the pope is established, the obligatory force of all the doctrines and laws proclaimed by him as head of the universal church is established also, without need of further argument, or possibility of appeal to any other tribunal on the earth or in heaven. If our antagonists could vanquish us, our cause would be a lost one; we should be brought down to a common level with the Greeks as a mere branch of the church, and the way would be open for those negotiations in view of the "reunion of Christendom" which to certain persons seem so desirable. There would still remain, however, a vast field of controversy before one holding what we understand to be Dr. Harwood's views could make his position good. The entire hierarchical system of the Eastern churches, maintained also in theory by such a powerful party in the doctor's own church, would remain to be refuted and overthrown. Suppose this to be done, and we will readily concede that the system of what is called the broad-church school, represented by Stanley, Robertson, the author of the book called Liber Librorum; to whom we think might be added the New-Haven divines, and the higher school of Unitarians, such as Dr. Bellows, Dr. Osgood, Mr. Ellis, Mr. Alger, and others; is the most rational and sensible of all the soi-disant Christian systems which would be left on the ground. Perhaps Dr. Harwood, looking on Greek Christianity and the amateur catholicity of his own brethren as without real significance, intended to find some doctrine which might stand for the entire hierarchical, sacramental system, and which, joined with the doctrine of papal supremacy, might with that make up the differentia of the Roman Church in respect to Protestantism. In this point of view, he has well chosen the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass. Our preceding strictures are merely critical, and we are willing to meet Dr. Harwood on the precise ground he has chosen for himself, the wager of battle being this: that our Lord Jesus Christ established the papal supremacy and the sacrifice of the mass, as essential parts of his religion. Since the doctor has only appeared, however, in the character of a scout, to clear the way for more heavily-armed combatants, and merely skirmishes a little in advance, we will skirmish in the same manner, without engaging more deeply in the controversy than simply to repel his attacks. If the champions he has called on come up, which we very much doubt, we hope they will go to work in earnest, and undertake to meet and answer in detail all the proofs and arguments adduced by our able writers, at least in English, in support of the papal supremacy and the eucharistic sacrifice. Unless they do this, they will not be entitled to any notice at our hands.
So far as Dr. Harwood merely describes the doctrine we hold respecting the papal supremacy, he is almost entirely correct, and so eloquent that the effect produced in his mind by its grandeur, in spite of his inward reluctance, is visible. Of argument against it there is hardly the semblance, a point we note not to the author's disadvantage, but merely as a reason for not arguing in its favor. One passing objection he does throw, as he goes by, at the title supreme pontiff or pontifex maximus. This word appears to alarm him, and no doubt alarmed all the excellent ladies and other worthy persons in his audience, who are easily alarmed by words. "He is regarded as the pontifex maximus of the whole church of Christ. Pontifex maximus! The very word brings up memories of the imperial city before it became Christian. Julius Cæsar was pontifex maximus—the office was held by all the Cæsars—it was held while the disciples of Jesus Christ, worshipping their Lord in the catacombs, or dying in the amphitheatre 'to make a Roman holiday,' associated the office with all cruelty and impiety." If this passage is any thing more than a rhetorical flourish, it means that the name and office of supreme pontiff are bad, unchristian things, because the heathen had them. We ought, then, to carry this principle out to its fullest extent. The heathen had an order of men specially devoted to religion, public prayers, holy days, temples, religious hymns, etc., therefore we should have none of these. The surplice which Dr. Harwood wears is derived through the Jews, from the ancient Egyptian priests; his prayer-book is full of observances derived from the Roman Church. He preaches sermons and observes a fast of forty days, like the Mohammedans, all of which is very wrong, and reminds us painfully of Pharaoh, and the fires of Smithfield, and the cruel persecutions of the Turks against the Christians. The Jews had a high priest appointed by Almighty God. Our Lord is a high-priest, pontifex maximus. Heathen perversions or travesties of divine things make no argument against the things themselves. Neither is there any reason why names, forms, observances, used by heathen, if they are good and suitable, should not be adopted by Christians, just as we appropriate heathen architecture, take possession of heathen temples, and employ heathen philosophy in the service of religion. We have no doubt that Moses imitated the civil and religious customs of the Egyptians to a very great extent in the prescriptions of his law. Parallelisms between the Catholic religion and various false religions may easily enough be pointed out. We laugh at such an argument as not worthy of being seriously refuted. The greater the number of analogies that can be pointed out, the stronger is the proof that the principles of our religion are derived from the origin of the race, universal, and in accordance with human nature. Rome was not all bad before it was converted. Whatever in it was good did not need to be abolished, but only sanctified. Our Lord drove out Jupiter, the angels and saints supplanted the imaginary divinities of Olympus, the successor of Peter took the place of the successor of Cæsar. The glorious temples of the gods became Christian churches, and Roman polity became an organizing power over all Christendom. In this was only fulfilled the prophecy of St. Paul, "The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly."[60] This kind of play upon words with pontifex maximus will, therefore, help Dr. Harwood very little unless he can disprove the existence of the thing they represent—a human priesthood with a supreme head over it, possessing power delegated by Jesus Christ.
The lecturer is not precisely accurate in what he says of the definition of the immaculate conception. The judgment of the Catholic bishops and doctors had been for ages manifested, and was taken anew in the most formal manner, before Pius IX. proclaimed his definition. Those few persons among the prelates and theologians who were opposed to the definition, did not merely submit outwardly by keeping silence, but inwardly by an interior submission of the mind, precisely as a good Christian would have submitted to St. Peter himself in a similar case. If Dr. Harwood admits the doctrinal infallibility of the New Testament, he can easily understand that, if the meaning of any passage in it about which he had previously doubted should be made clear to him, he would have to give his interior assent to it, even though he must change an opinion he had held all his life long. Precisely so with us. An infallible judgment makes known to us with the certainty of faith the true sense of the divine revelation, which we receive accordingly as equally certain and obligatory on the conscience with every other revealed truth. Whoever does not give this inward assent becomes a heretic, and therefore Pius IX., in his Bull Ineffabilis, pronounces that every one who does not believe the immaculate conception as a revealed truth has suffered shipwreck of the faith.
In his account of the Catholic doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass the author of the lecture is less successful, and misrepresents it seriously; not intentionally, or through wilful carelessness, but through a misunderstanding of Catholic phraseology. Because the church calls it the same sacrifice with the sacrifice of the cross, he appears to think that our Lord is believed to have redeemed the world by the oblation of himself at the institution of the eucharist, and to be continually repeating this act of redemption in the sacrifice offered daily on our altars. Dr. Seabury, the first Protestant bishop of Connecticut, did actually teach that our Lord offered himself in the eucharist as a sacrifice, and not on the cross. This strange notion of the founder of his own diocese, Dr. Harwood incorrectly ascribes to the Catholic Church.
"The sacrifice was made or instituted in the night in which he was betrayed; and, in the system of Romanism, this sacrifice is every thing. I do not see that the cross is necessary; for the stress falls upon the sacrifice of the altar, and the worshipper is directed to that sacrifice as vested with objective propitiatory virtue."
The church teaches that our Lord redeemed the world by his death and the shedding of his blood upon the cross. He did not redeem it by the oblation of himself in the Last Supper, nor does he do so by the sacrifice of the altar; the sacrifice of redemption having been offered once for all upon the cross, and not needing to be repeated. The church does not mean by "same sacrifice" that the oblation in the eucharist is a similar act of redemption, propitiatory in the divided sense, or merely as containing the body and blood of Christ, and presenting them before God. The sacrifice is the same, because the victim is the same, the priest is the same, and all the value or merit contained and applied in the sacrifice of the altar is derived from the bloody sacrifice of the cross. There is thus a moral unity binding together the innumerable acts of consecration and oblation which take place on the Christian altars with each other and with the sacrifice of the cross, in one whole, just as the innumerable acts of obedience performed by our Lord during his earthly life make one integral act of obedience with the final and consummating act of his oblation on Mount Calvary. No doubt the intrinsic excellence of the sacrifice of the eucharist is infinite, and therefore sufficient for the redemption of this world or a thousand others, if there were others needing redemption. The merit of the circumcision, the fasting, the prayer, the preaching, the poverty and humiliation, the labors and tears of our Blessed Lord was infinite, and fully adequate to the redemption of mankind, without the sacrifice of the cross. Every act of love to God the Father proceeding from the sacred heart of Jesus Christ in heaven is simply infinite in its intrinsic value. Yet no Catholic theologian maintains that the meritorious acts of our Lord performed while he was a wayfarer on the earth redeemed mankind apart from his death, or that he has merited any additional grace for men since his sacrifice was completed. The sacrifice which our Lord offered in the Last Supper did not, therefore, constitute that act of expiation to which, in the divine decree, the remission of original and actual sin was annexed; and much less is there any such distinct, expiatory merit in the sacrifice which he perpetually makes of himself in the eucharist, since his meritorious work has been consummated. He offered himself once for all as a bloody sacrifice upon the cross, meriting thereby an eternal redemption. At the Last Supper he offered up himself to the Father as the Lamb who was to be slain the next day, presenting by anticipation the merit which he would gain by his cruel and ignominious death, as an act of adoration, thanksgiving, expiation, and impetration in behalf of all those who were included either generally or specially in his intention. Doubtless, he frequently in prayer had presented these same merits to his Father; and from the time of Adam's sin these same merits had constituted the only ground on which pardon or grace had been conferred, thus verifying the appellation applied to our Lord in the Scripture of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." In the sacrifice now offered by the priests of the new law, Christ is presented before the Eternal Father as the Lamb who has been slain. And although, as a sacrifice, the eucharist is equally an oblation of the body and blood of the Lamb of God with the sacrifice of the cross, differing only in the manner of offering, yet as this manner of offering upon the cross by pain, blood-shedding, and death constituted the precise act which expiated sin and redeemed the world, the sacrificial nature of the eucharistic action which it has in common with the crucifixion does not derogate from the exclusive attribute belonging to the latter as the redemptive expiation or the sacrifice of ransom, blotting out the curse of the fall, and reopening the gates of heaven to our lost race. A sacrifice of expiation including all ages, all men, and all sins having been once offered, there is no need and no place for another, which is precisely what St. Paul proves in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Dr. Harwood fancies that we have a dread of that epistle. It is not long since we went through that epistle carefully with a theological class without being aware of any sentiments of repugnance to its doctrine arising in our minds. It is very true that the unlearned and unstable may wrest this, as they do the other epistles of St. Paul and the Scriptures generally, to a sense in contradiction to the Catholic faith. To one, however, who is sufficiently learned to understand the real scope and intent of the apostle, or sufficiently docile to receive the instruction of competent interpreters, it presents no difficulty. St. Paul is not speaking of the eucharist or of the Christian priesthood at all, but is confronting the priesthood and sacrifices of Jesus Christ in the work of redemption with the priesthood and sacrifices of the old law, as these were understood by unbelieving or heterodox Jews. The point to be established was, that Jesus Christ would never give up his priesthood to a successor, or offer up another sacrifice similar to the one offered on the cross. It needs no reasoning to show that Catholic priests do not pretend to be in the place of Jesus Christ, but simply his instruments. The perpetuity of his priesthood is therefore not in the slightest degree incompatible with ours, which is in a different line, but rather requires it. Neither is it necessary to prove that we do not pretend to offer a sacrifice which expiates sins or atones for persons not included in the sacrifice of the cross. The doctor misunderstands the phrase "propitiatory sacrifice." The church does not mean that a new sacrifice is offered for persons whose sins were unatoned for on the cross, or who have fallen a second time under the curse and need a new ransom. The word "propitiatory" merely denotes that in the sacrifice of the altar an application is made of the merits of Christ's death to individuals for the remission of temporal penalties due to the justice of God. The redemption was made on the cross; the application of the grace of remission is made in the sacrament of penance; the remission of temporal penalties, both for the living and the dead, is obtained through the sacrifice of the altar. All the efficacy of the divine eucharist, whether as a sacrifice or a sacrament, is derived from the merits of Jesus Christ, which were consummated in his death. It is, therefore, by the application of the merit of the sacrifice of the cross that the sacrifice of the mass becomes efficacious to salvation. The Lamb of God is presented before the Father with the merit acquired by his death upon Mount Calvary, and this presentation is an act of supreme adoration, of thanksgiving, of impetration, and of satisfaction for the debt due to the divine justice, made in a sensible, visible manner, with mystic rites and ceremonies; which is enough to constitute a sacrifice in the strict and proper sense, whatever difference of opinion there may be concerning the essence of the sacrificial act in the eucharist. Although, therefore, there are many priests and many sacrifices numerically, it is one act performed by one person which is exhibited and applied in all, so that there is truly but one sacrifice and one priest. The reverend doctor might have seen this for himself if he had reflected more carefully on the words of the Council of Trent which he has himself quoted, Cujus quidem oblationis cruentæ, inquam, fructus per hanc uberrime percipiuntur—"The fruits of which bloody oblation, indeed, are by this most abundantly partaken of."