We should cherish a kind feeling for all our fellows, and in doing this we should not forget our duty to point them to truth in word and example, to be ever faithful to truth.
There are two great fields of thought for the exercise of the Christian intellect of the present times. One is the corruptions of Roman Catholic religion, and the other is the corruptions of Protestant religions.
That both are great feeder-dams to infidelity and skepticism is demonstrated by the infidel productions of the day. The dogma of ecclesiastic authority set up in opposition to reason and scientific discovery is the infidel's devil, and a very poor devil at that. For, when the Pope has interfered to settle a question it has often happened that his decisions were wrong.
On March 5, 1616, the congregation of the Index published a decree condemning as “false, unscriptural and destructive of Catholic truth,” the opinion that the earth moves round the sun. It is denied by Roman theologians that Paul IV., who set the Index at work and agreed with its decisions, was responsible for this decree, but the preponderance of evidence is against them. It is known that this Pope presided in a congregation of the Inquisition on February 25, 1616, in which, after this same opinion, that the sun is the center of our universe, had been described as “absurd, philosophically false and formally heretical, because expressly contrary to holy scripture;” and the opinion that the earth is not the center of the universe, but moves, and that daily, “absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith;” Cardinal Bellamine was appointed to visit Galileo, the astronomer, and order him to give up these false opinions under pain of imprisonment for refusal. It was thus that the congregation of the Index took action and published its decree a week later.
In 1633 Galileo, having continued to propagate his views, was called on by the Inquisition to retract and abjure, and the formal notice to him to do so states expressly that the declaration of 1616 was made by the Pope himself, and that resistance to it was, therefore, heresy, contrary to the doctrine of [pg 220] the Catholic and Apostolic Church. On being brought to trial, Galileo made a formal abjuration, and on June 30th Pope Urban VIII. ordered the publication of the sentence, thereby, according to Roman ecclesiastical law, making Galileo's compulsory denial of the earth's motion binding on all Christians as a theological doctrine. Infidels have a vast deal to say about such an abominable manifestation of ecclesiastic tyranny and unscientific and unscriptural nonsense. All intelligent Roman Catholics of to-day reject the judgment of Popes Paul IV. and Urban VIII. as absurd, and scientifically and scripturally false. There is not so much as a hint at papal authority found in the three old creeds known as the Apostles', the Nicene and the Athanasian, nor in any ancient gloss upon them. Neither can we find in them any of the distinguishing special doctrines of the Church of Rome.
Christianity came from the hands of Christ and his apostles in all its perfections, and as long as infidels stop short of the New Testament itself, and short of Christ and his apostles, in their warfare, we may well believe that all their efforts to blot out Christianity will be vain. Protestants themselves have demurred as much as infidels against the errors of the Roman Catholic Church, and fully as much against the errors of each other as denominations. “Truth stands true to her God, man alone deviates.”
The greatest difficulty that Christianity ever encountered is the ignorance and imperfections of its own friends. Protestant errors are many and serious. But why should the genuine be discarded on account of the existence of the counterfeit? And why should we shut our eyes to the importance of the great work of establishing truth, to the destruction of all Catholic and Protestant errors of faith and practice by becoming the advocates of false charity through the adoption of “broad-gauge religion,” in a “broad-gauge church?” Infidels who, like Col. Ingersoll, assert that “no man can control his belief,” had better look in a glass and see themselves as others see them, before they strive to conquer a victory for the black [pg 221] demon of despair, by fastening the absurd philosophy of fatalism upon all the world. If men can not help their belief, who is to blame? Surely, neither Roman Catholics, nor Protestants, nor those who managed “thumbscrews” and “hot irons,” and other condemned instruments of the dark ages, nor yet those who now live to be the “butt” of Colonel Ingersoll's satire and ridicule. A kind feeling for all, and unfaithfulness to the truth—never!
Papal Authority In The Bygone.—The Infidel's Amusing Attitude.
The doctrine of papal infallibility amounts to this: that the decisions of the Pope on faith and morals, being divinely inspired and infallible, are, when placed upon record, so much more holy Scripture. This infallibility dogma has been a great source of mischief and of unbelief. It has accomplished no good, but a great deal of harm. Some Roman theologians claim that the Popes have only once, up to the present time, spoken with the formalities necessary to make their utterances “ex cathedra” and infallibly binding, and that was when Pius the Ninth, on December 8, 1854, decreed the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary; which, if true, belongs to the realm of unpractical speculation. It was denied as heresy by orthodox Catholics, including fourteen Popes, for a thousand years, and is contrary to the well-nigh “unanimous consent of the fathers.” See Dr. Pusey, Letter 1, to Newman, pp. 72-286. To use such an engine but once in all the centuries, and then to accomplish so little, aside from furnishing infidels with something to say, is much like constructing a vessel of twenty thousand tons capacity to carry one man across the Atlantic. There is such a thing as Parthenogenesis known in nature. The Vatican decrees declare that the Christian religion came perfect from God's hands; that it is not like a human science, such as medicine or mechanics, which can be improved or altered by the skill of man. In view of [pg 222] this conceded fact we have no kind of use for the decree of Pius the Ninth upon the “miraculous conception”—“Pope Pius decreed it.” Well, well, if Christianity really stood in need of such a decree it would not have been left off until December 8, 1854. It has been a bone for infidels to contend over from that time to the present. The New Testament is not responsible for it.