“Made the eye blind, and closed the passages
Through which the ear converses with the heart.”
But this is not the only point concerning which we would refer persons curious about Catholic doctrines to Dr. Draper, and those who would like to become acquainted with Catholic tenets never promulgated by any council from Nice to the Vatican. On two occasions, speaking of Papal Infallibility, he distinctly avers that it is the same as omniscience! On page 352 he says: “Notwithstanding his infallibility, which implies omniscience, His Holiness did not foresee the issue of the Franco-Prussian war.” And again on page 361: “He cannot claim infallibility in religious affairs, and decline it in scientific. Infallibility embraces all things. If it holds good for theology, it necessarily holds good for science.” Here is Catholic doctrine à la Draper! Presumptuous reader, be not deluded by the belief that the Vatican Council expressly confines infallibility to purely doctrinal matters; it could not have done so! Does not Dr. Draper as explicitly affirm that the dogma of infallibility implies omniscience? His individual experience no doubt had much to do with his extension of the term; for, knowing himself to be a good chemist and physiologist, he doubted not that by the same title he was a sound philosopher and a keen-eyed observer of events. If it holds good in chemistry and physiology, it necessarily holds good in philosophy and history. It is a renewal of the old belief of the Stoics, as expounded by Horace, who says that the wise man is a capital shoemaker and barber, alone handsome and a king. But these are blemishes which assume even the appearance of bright spots shining out by contrast with the deeper darkness which they stud.
The radical error of the book is twofold. It first confounds with the Catholic Church a great number of singular subjects to which that universal predicate cannot be applied, loosely and vaguely referring to this incongruous chimera a great number of acts which cannot be imputed to the church at all in any proper sense. It next makes the mistake of applying the standard of estimation which is justly applicable only to the present time to epochs long past and in many respects diverse from it. For instance, the personal acts of prelates are referred to the church considered as an infallible tribunal. Only an ignoramus in theology needs to be informed that the infallible church is the body of the episcopate teaching or defining in union with the head, or the head of the episcopate teaching and defining, as the principal organ of the body, that which is explicitly or implicitly contained in the revealed deposit of faith. Administration of affairs, decisions of particular cases, private opinions and personal acts, even official acts which are not within the category above stated, do not pertain to the sphere of infallibility; therefore when Dr. Draper charges against the church acts which are worthy of censure, or which are by him so represented, and we detect in the case the absence of some one condition requisite to involve the church in the sense stated, we retort that he either knows not what he says or is guilty of wilful misrepresentation. Yet his book is an unbroken tissue of such charges. And not only are those charges improperly alleged, but they are for the most part substantially false.
At a time, for instance, when the placid influence of Christianity had not supplanted in men’s hearts the fierce passions which ages of paganism had nurtured there, a band of infuriated monks murdered and tore to pieces the celebrated Hypatia, in resentment of some real or fancied affront offered to S. Cyril The crime was indeed unpardonable, and perhaps S. Cyril was remiss in its punishment; but we might as well lay to the charge of the New York Academy of Medicine the revolting deeds perpetrated by individual members of the medical profession, as hold the church accountable for this crime. Both organizations have repeatedly expressed their abhorrence of what morality condemns, and it is only fair that the one as well as the other be judged by its authoritative teachings and practices. Yet Dr. Draper draws from his quiver on this occasion the sharpest of arrows to bury in the bosom of that church which could stain her escutcheon by this wanton attack on philosophy. “Hypatia and Cyril! Philosophy and bigotry! They cannot exist together.” Do not the melodramatic surroundings with which Draper’s graphic pen invests the murder of this woman readily suggest an episode in the history of a certain knight of rueful mien when he charged a flock of sheep, believing that he saw before him “the wealthy inhabitants of Mancha crowned with golden ears of corn; the ancient offspring of the Goths cased in iron; those who wanton in the lazy current of Pisverga, those who feed their numerous flocks in the ample plains where the Guadiana pursues its wandering course—in a word, half a world in arms”? He charges, and behold seven innocent sheep fall victims to his prowess. Flushed with this victory, and covetous of fresh laurels, our author whets his blade for another thrust at that most odious of doctrines—Papal Infallibility. The management of the attack will serve as a specimen of Dr. Draper’s mode of critical warfare; it will show how neatly he puts forward assertion for proof, and in what a spirit of calm and dignified philosophy he concludes the case against the church.
A compatriot of his, who had changed the homely name of Morgan for the more resonant one of Pelagius, feeling that the confines of the little isle which gave him birth were too narrow for a soul swelling with polemics, hied to Rome, where his theological fervor was speedily cooled by Pope Innocent I. Pelagius denied the Catholic doctrine of grace, asserting the sufficiency of nature to work out salvation. S. Augustine pointed out the errors of Pelagius and of his associate, Celestius, which were accordingly condemned by Pope Innocent. If we accept Dr. Draper as an authority in ecclesiastical history, a much-vexed question connected with this very intricate affair is readily solved, and we are taught to understand how indiscreet were the fathers of the Vatican Council in decreeing the infallibility of the pope. He says: “It happened that at this moment Innocent died, and his successor, Zosimus, annulled his judgment and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox. These contradictory decisions are still often referred to by the opponents of Papal Infallibility.”
Now, so far from this being the case, Zosimus, after a considerable time of charitable waiting, to give Celestius an opportunity of reconsidering his errors and being reconciled to the church, formally repeated the condemnation pronounced by his predecessor, and effectually stamped out Pelagianism as a formidable heresy. But since our weight and calibre are so much less than Dr. Draper’s as not to allow our assertion to pass for proof, we will dwell a moment on the historical details of the controversy. Before the death of Innocent, Celestius had entered a protest against his accuser, Paulinus, on the ground of misrepresentation, but did not follow up his protest by personally appearing at Rome. The succession of the kind-hearted Zosimus and the absence of Paulinus appeared to him a favorable opportunity for doing this, and he accordingly wrote to Zosimus for permission to present himself. Though the pope was engrossed at the time by the weighty cares of the universal church, his heart yearned to bring back the repentant Celestius to the fold of Christ, and he accorded to him a most patient hearing. Only a fragment of Celestius’ confession remains, but we have the testimony of three unsuspected witnesses, because determined anti-Pelagians, concerning the part taken in the matter by the pope. S. Augustine says: “The merciful pontiff, seeing at first Celestius carried away by the heat of passion and presumption, hoped to win him over by kindness, and forbore to fasten more firmly the bands placed on him by Innocent. He allowed him two months for deliberation.” Elsewhere S. Augustine says (Epist. Paulin., const. 693, Labbé, t. 2) that Celestius replied to the interrogatories of the pope in these terms: “I condemn in accordance with the sentence of your predecessor, Innocent of blessed memory.” Marius Mercator, who lived at the time of these occurrences, says that Celestius made the fairest promises and returned the most satisfactory answers, so that the pope was greatly prepossessed in his favor (Labbé, t. 2, coll. 1512). Zosimus at length saw through the devices of the wily Celestius, who, like all dangerous heretics, desired to maintain his errors while retaining communion with the church, and, in a letter written to the bishops of Africa, formally reiterated against Pelagius and his adherents the condemnation of the African Council. Only fragments of the letter remain, but we know that thereafter some of the most violent Pelagians submitted to the Holy See. With what imposing dignity Dr. Draper waves aside these facts, and coolly asserts that Zosimus annulled the judgment of his predecessor, and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox! But this is only a sample of similar flagrant misstatements in which the book abounds. For even immediately after, referring to Tertullian’s eloquent statement of the principles of Christianity, he says that it is marked by a complete absence of the doctrines of original sin, total depravity, predestination, grace, and atonement, and that therefore these doctrines had not been broached up to this time. Certainly not all of them, for the church does not teach the doctrine of total depravity; but the statement, being of the nature of a negative proof, possesses no value, and only shows on how slender a peg our author is ready to hang a damaging assertion against the church. Having thus triumphantly demonstrated that Tertullian is not the author of the doctrine of the fall of man, he recklessly lays it at the door of the illustrious Bishop of Hippo. He says: “It is to S. Augustine, a Carthaginian, that we are indebted for the precision of our views on these important points.” We wonder did Dr. Draper ever read these words of S. Paul to the Romans: “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned” (Epist. Rom. v. 12). Yet S. Paul lived before Tertullian or S. Augustine. Draper next sententiously adds: “The doctrine declared to be orthodox by ecclesiastical authority is overthrown by the unquestionable discoveries of modern science. Long before a human being had appeared upon the earth, millions of individuals—nay, more, thousands of species, and even genera—had died; those which remain with us are an insignificant fraction of the vast hosts that have passed away.” Admirably reasoned! A million or more megatheria and megalosauri floundered for a while in the marshes of an infant world, and died; therefore Adam was not the first man to die, for through him death did not enter into the world. Had S. Paul anticipated the honor of a dissection at the hands of so eminent a wielder of the scalpel, he no doubt would have stated in his Epistle that when he spoke of death entering into the world through the sin of one man, he meant, not death to frogs and snakes, or bats and mice, but death to human beings alone. He would thus have helped Dr. Draper to the avoidance of one exegetical error at least. Another assertion of illimitable reaches rapidly follows: “Astronomy, geology, geography, anthropology, chronology, and indeed all the various departments of human knowledge, were made to conform to the Book of Genesis”; that is to say, ecclesiastical authority prohibits us from seeking elsewhere than in the pages of Holy Writ such knowledge as is contained in Gray’s Anatomy or Draper’s Chemistry and Physiology. Where are your pièces justificatives for this monstrous assertion, Dr. Draper? Did not the church, in the heyday of her temporal power, warn Galileo not to invoke the authority of the Scriptures in support of his doctrine for the reason that they were not intended to serve as a guide in purely scientific matters? And here indeed is the true key to the conflict between that philosopher and the church. Has not the same sentiment, moreover, been explicitly affirmed by every commentator from S. Augustine himself down to Maldonatus and Cornelius à Lapide, when considering chapter x. verse 13 of the Book of Josue? Not a single document, extant or lost, can be referred to as justifying Draper’s extraordinary assertion that the Book of Genesis, “in a philosophical point of view, became the grand authority of patristic science.” Of course it is readily perceived that the term patristic science, as used by Dr. Draper, is not the science commonly known as patrology, but natural science, as understood and taught by the fathers. Chief among those whose officious intermeddling in scientific matters excites the spleen of Dr. Draper is, as before stated, S. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. “No one,” he says, “did more than this father to bring science and religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the Bible from its true office, a guide to purity of life, and placed it in the perilous position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an audacious tyranny over the mind of man.” The rash dogmatism of these words scarcely consists with the spirit Draper arrogates to himself—the spirit of calm impartiality. So far from having striven to make Scripture the arbiter of science, S. Augustine studied to bring both into harmony, and, with this end in view, put the most liberal interpretation on those passages of Holy Writ which might conflict with, as yet, unmade scientific discoveries. For this reason he hints at the possibility of the work of creation extending over indefinite periods of time, as may, he says, be maintained consistently with the meaning of the Syro-Chaldaic word which stands indifferently for day and indefinite duration. The saint’s chief anxiety is to uphold the integrity of the Book of Genesis against the numerous attacks of pagan philosophers and paganizing Christians. The necessity of doing this was paramount at the time, for the Jews and their doctrines were exceedingly obnoxious to Christian and Gentile; and since the church recognized the divine inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures, the task of vindicating their genuineness devolved on her theologians. But Dr. Draper overlooks this essential fact, and places S. Augustine in the totally false light of wantonly belittling science by making it square with the letter of the Bible. But it is not as a censor alone of S. Augustine’s opinions that Dr. Draper means to figure; he follows him into the domain of dogmatic theology, and, having there erected a tribunal, cites him to its bar. He quotes at length the African bishop’s views on the fundamental dogmas of the Trinity and creation, having modestly substituted Dr. Pusey’s translation for his own. The saint expresses his awe and reverence in face of the wondrous power and incomprehensible works of the Creator, and Dr. Draper calls him rhetorical and rhapsodical. No wonder. The mind becomes subdued to the shape in which it works; and since the vigorous years of Dr. Draper’s life were spent in the laboratory, investigating secondary causes and the properties of matter, it is not to be supposed that he can enter at once into close sympathy with souls which have fed on spiritual truths.
“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?”
But the crowding errors of the book warn us to hasten forward.
Having consigned S. Augustine to never-ending oblivion, our untiring athlete of the pen eloquently sketches step by step the progressive paganization of Christianity. The first thing to be done, he says, was to restore the worship of Isis by substituting for that numen the Blessed Virgin Mary. This substitution was accomplished by the Council of Ephesus, which declared Mary to be the Mother of God, and condemned the contradicting proposition of Nestorius. Is it proper to treat this niaiserie with irony or indignation? We will do neither, but will respectfully refer Dr. Draper either to Rohrbacher’s History of the Church, or Orsini’s Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, to convince him of the priority of this devotion to the times of S. Cyril and Nestorius. The matter is too elementary and well known to justify us in occupying more space with its consideration. Therefore, passing over frivolous charges of this sort, let us seize the underlying facts in this alleged paganization of Christianity. The church does not teach the doctrine of complete spiritual blindness, and is willing to admit on the part of pagans the knowledge of many religious truths in the natural order. Prominent among these is a belief in the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and a system of rewards and punishments in the future life. The propositions of De Lamennais, refusing to pure reason the power of establishing these truths, were formally condemned by Gregory XVI. In addition, it is part of theological teaching that certain portions of the primitive revelation made to the patriarchs flowed down through succeeding generations, corrupted, it is true, and sadly disfigured, yet substantially identical, and tinged the various systems of belief in vogue among the nations of the earth. It is almost unnecessary to point out the numberless analogies which exist between the Hebrew doctrines and the myths of Grecian and Roman polytheism. The unity of God was universally symbolized by the admission of a supreme being, to whom the other deities were subject. The fall of man, a flooded earth and a rescued ark find their fitting counterparts in the traditions of most races. Here, then, we find one source of possible agreement between Christianity and the pagan system without resorting to Dr. Draper’s ingenious process of gradual paganization. If, before the Christian revelation, human reason could have partially lifted the veil which hides another life, and if a defiled current of tradition could have borne on its bosom fragments of a primitive revelation, surely it is not necessary to suppose a compromise between Christianity and paganism by virtue of which the former finds itself in accord on certain points with the latter. But a still stronger reason for the alleged resemblances and analogies between the two systems may be found in the common nature of those who accepted them. There is no sentiment in the human heart more potent than veneration, especially as its objects ascend in the scale of greatness. Man’s first impulse is to bow the head before the grandeur of nature’s mighty spectacles, before the rushing cataract and the sweeping storm, and to adore the Being whose voice is heard in the tempest, who dwells in a canopy of clouds and rides on the wings of the wind. Filled with this sentiment, he builds temples, he offers sacrifices, eucharistic and propitiatory, he consecrates his faculties to the service of his God, and applauds those of his fellows who, yielding to a still higher reverential influence, devote themselves in a special manner to the promotion of the divine glory and honor.