George Stanley Faber

“ O holy Mary, our sovereign queen, as God the Son has endowed thee with so much knowledge and charity that it enlightens all heaven; so, in the hour of death, illustrate and strengthen our souls with the knowledge of the true faith, that they may not be perverted by error or pernicious ignorance. ”

“ The doctrine of man's justification in all ages, through faith alone in the merits of Christ, and not by the works of the law whether ceremonial or moral, he strenuously asserts with the utmost fulness and unreserve and precision. ”

“ IV. Let the patient enquirer now judge for himself: whether the romish doctrine, that Punishments, either self-inflicted, or commanded by a priest, or sent in the course of God’s providence, can make satisfaction to the Father through Christ in our behalf, be the doctrine either of Scripture or of the early Church.
V. But, if no man can make satisfaction for his own sins: still less, according to the monstrous phantasy of Supererogation, can he make satisfaction for the sins of others. ”

“ As a specimen of his intolerably turgid and wearisome style, I give Dungal's exordium at full length. He evidently thought it a piece of very fine writing, fit to be placed in most advantageous contrast with the straight-forward simplicity of Claude. Nothing can be more amusing, than the complacency with which he speaks of his opponent. ”

“ But, against foolish men, we are constrained to propound foolish things. Return to the heart which you have left, ye wretched prevaricators: ye, who love vanity and are become vain; ye, who crucify afresh the Son of God and put him to open shame; ye, who in this manner, even by whole troops, have made the souls of miserable men the companions of demons, alienating them from their Creator through the nefarious sacrilege of images, and thus casting them down into perpetual damnation. ”

“ From the Romish doctrine of Transubstantiation, I shall pass on to the Romish doctrine of Purgatory.
I. Respecting a Purgatory, into which the souls of all, save those who are immediately conveyed to Hell, pass forthwith after death; in order that, by its fiery pains, they may be purified from the remainder of their corruption, and at the same time by personal suffering may make satisfaction to God for their hitherto unexpiated offences: the Church of Rome, speaking through her organ the Council of Trent, thus defines and pronounces. ”

“ In the sacrament of the Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is, truly and really and substantially, contained, under the species of those sensible objects: so that, immediately after consecration, the true body and the true blood of our Lord, together with his soul and divinity, exist under the species of bread and wine: for, by the very force of the words themselves, the blood exists under the species of the wine ”

“ The Work itself is a composition of beautiful Christian simplicity. From the superstitions of even the incomplete Popery of the ninth century, it is altogether free. And, throughout, with clearness and fidelity, it propounds the genuine doctrine of the Gospel.
So far as regards the claim of Rome, to the universal supremacy of Peter, and thence to the universal supremacy of his pretended successors the Latin Pontiffs, Claude maintains the equal authority of Peter and of Paul in their respective departments: Peter being at the head of the mis sion to the Jews ”

“ In submitting this matter to the plain and honest inquirer, it is obvious, that nothing more is necessary: than, first, to state any particular doctrine of the Roman Church; next, to bring forward either the silence or the declarations of Scripture; and, lastly, to adduce the testimony of the Fathers.
2. By the adoption of such a plan, without a grain of any extraordinary learning, and by the mere exercise of common sense, every reader will be enabled fully to judge for himself. ”

“ I, who hold the unity, and who preach the truth, am teaching no new sect. On the contrary, sects and schisms and superstitions and heresies, I have alway, so far as in me lies, crushed and opposed: and, through God's help, will never cease to crush and oppose. ”

“ They must also teach them: that the holy bodies of the Saints and Martyrs and others living with Christ are to be venerated by the faithful, through which many benefits are afforded from God to men; so that the affirmers, that veneration and honour are not due to the Relics of the Saints, or that these and other sacred monuments are uselessly honoured by the faithful, or that it is vain to celebrate the memories of the Saints for the purpose of obtaining their assistance, are wholly to be condemned, as the Church long since condemned and still condemns them. ”

“ We deem those the most ignorant: who are not ashamed, to address lifeless things, to petition the weak for health, to ask life from the dead, to pray for health from the needy. And, though some may allege, that these images are not gods but only their symbols and representations: yet even such persons, fancying that imitations of the Deity can be made by the hands of some mean artizan, are not a whit less ignorant and slavish and uninstructed. ”

“ Good Jonas however, himself, as we have seen, must be read cautiously, because he denies that any adoration ought to be paid to images. Thus, in the judgment of better instructed Romanists, does the castigator of Claude actually tremble on the very verge of heresy. On this curious and interesting topic Bossuet, with much sound judgment, is profoundly silent. Jonas, however, sorely enacting the Marplot, quotes, in favour of his dangerous and semi-heretical opinion, Origen and Augustine and Lactantius. ”

“ The madness in question, as holy Claude well knew, existed in Scripture and in the Primitive Church, long before any of the contending parties, either in the fifth century or in the ninth century, had made their appearance upon the face of this nether world. Hence we may perfectly understand the immeasureable wrath of Dungal, that Claude, to confound idolatry, should actually have dared to quote Scripture. ”

“ Speaking of a moral, not of a literal or substantial, change in the consecrated elements, as they themselves distinctly assure us in the way of explaining their own language, the old Fathers often say: that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. ”

“ The very vagueness of the allegation, which hovers between the asserted Nestorianism of his early friend Felix of Urgel and a pretended Arianism of which even his bitter enemy Dungal could discover no traces during his life, may well, even on the first blush, induce a full presumption that Claude was a favourer of neither heresy. ”

“ Yet NOT A SINGLE SYLLABLE is said in Scripture, either prophetic or declarative, respecting the divine appointment, and consequently the divine right, of the Papal Supremacy.
We NO WHERE read in Holy Writ: either that the Roman Church ought justly to be obeyed, as the mother and mistress of all other Churches; or that the Pope is, at once, the successor of the blessed Peter Prince of the Apostles, and the Vicar of Jesus Christ.
From whatever quarter the divines of Trent have made these discoveries: it is quite clear, that the Bible throws no light upon the present subject. ”

“ God, however, the father of mercies and the author of all consolation, has comforted us in all our afflictions: that, in like manner, we might be able to comfort those, who are weighed down with sorrow and affliction. ”

“ If, from the Written Word of God and from the Fathers of the three first ages, any Latin Divine can make out an historical case, for The alleged Apostolicity of the peculiarities of the Church of Rome, better than the failures of Mr. Berington and Bishop Trevern of Strasbourg: let him by all means come forward, whether he be Bishop or Priest or Deacon. The Bible and the Fathers of the three first centuries, whence alone any historical substantiation of the assertions made by the Romish Clergy can be deduced, are open to them as well as to ourselves. ”

“ From Thomas Aquinas, who was not only a mighty Schoolman but also a canonised Saint of the Roman Church, we may clearly hope to derive the very best and most accurate instruction as to the real tenets of his Communion. Now this writer, through the medium of a syllogism professedly framed upon an authorised Prayer in the Breviary, establishes the DUTY of worshipping the cross with the self-same adoration as that which is paid to the Deity.
We offer the supreme adoration of Latria to that Being, in whom we place our hope of salvation. ”

“ Now, most unluckily for this current explanation, the primitive theologians knew nothing of it: for, while the early Fathers, Justin and Tertullian and Cyprian and Origen and Athanasius and Jerome and Augustine and Chrysostom and Hilary, differ as to the true meaning of the text (some supposing the rock to be Peter personally and exclusively; some, to be Christ himself; and some, to be Peter’s confession of Christ’s divinity) ; NOT ONE of them interprets it, as the Romish Clergy would now interpret it. ”

“ Hence, in strict consistency, the sole change in the elements, produced by consecration, is said, by the same early writers, to be a MORAL and not a PHYSICAL change. For they pronounce it to be such a change, as is produced in the confirmatory chrism or in the stone of an altar-table or in the baptismal water; when, by consecration, they cease to be secular, and are devoted to sacred purposes: and, even yet more remarkably, they pronounce it to be such a change, as is produced in a man; when, by ordination, he ceases to be a laic, and becomes a clerk. ”

“ What becomes of the defined DOCTRINES, when the asserted FACTS themselves turn out to be mere shadowy non-entities?
Will a house continue to stand, when its foundations are removed? Can doctrines remain secure, when their professed basis of facts proves to be nothing better than the fabric of a vision? ”

“ If ye are disciples of the Gospels,—walk according to WHAT IS WRITTEN. But, if you choose to allege any other matters BEYOND WHAT IS WRITTEN: why do you contend against us, WHO WILL NEVER BE PERSUADED EITHER TO HEAR OR TO SPEAK A SINGLE SYLLABLE BEYOND GOD’S WRITTEN WORD? [36d]
(4.) These; namely, the canonical books of Scripture, from which the apocryphal books are carefully excluded by the accurate Father: These are the fountains of salvation; so that he, who thirsts, may drink from the oracles contained in them. ”

“ Thus, out of one of Froben’s indexes, they have directed the erasure of the following references: The use of images forbidden; The Eucharist no sacrifice, but the commemoration of a sacrifice; Works, although they do not justify, yet are necessary to salvation; Marriage is granted to all that will not contain; Venial sins damn; The dead Saints, after this life, cannot help us. ”

“ By some marvellous perversion of the moral sense, Sixtus Senensis, indeed, has even lauded Pope Pius V, because he had taken diligent care, that the writings of all catholic authors, and more especially the writings of the ancient Fathers, should be expurgated and emaculated: but the plain good sense of every upright and honourable man will deem such praise no very flattering compliment. ”

“ Christ, in the Supper, which, before his betrayal, he had celebrated with his disciples after the solemnisation of the ancient Passover, delivered to the same disciples the sacraments of his body and blood IN THE SUBSTANCE OF BREAD AND WINE:—and taught them; that they ought to pass, from things CARNAL to things SPIRITUAL, from things EARTHLY to things HEAVENLY, from IMAGES to TRUTH. [21b]
17. Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mentz, lived in the ninth century. ”

“ O holy Mary; our sovereign queen, as God the Father, by his omnipotence, has made thee most powerful; so assist us, at the hour of death, by defending p. 49us against all power that is contrary to thine. ”