John William Draper

“ The stumbling-block to the progress of Europe has been its dual system of government. So long as every nation had two sovereigns, a temporal one at home and a spiritual one in a foreign land—there being different temporal masters in different nations, but only one foreign master for all, the pontiff at Rome—how was it possible that history should present us with any thing more than a narrative of the strifes of these rival powers? ”

“ Though Guizot’s affirmation that the Church has always sided with despotism is only too true, it must be remembered that in the policy she follows there is much of political necessity. She is urged on by the pressure of nineteen centuries. But, if the irresistible indicates itself in her action, the inevitable manifests itself in her life. For it is with the papacy as with a man. It has passed through the struggles of infancy, it has displayed the energies of maturity, and, its work completed, it must sink into the feebleness and querulousness of old age. Its youth can never be renewed. ”

“ Catholicism insists that blind faith is superior to reason; that mysteries are of more importance than facts. She claims to be the sole interpreter of Nature and revelation, the supreme arbiter of knowledge; she summarily rejects all modern criticism of the Scriptures, and orders the Bible to be accepted in accordance with the views of the theologians of Trent; she openly avows her hatred of free institutions and constitutional systems, and declares that those are in damnable error who regard the reconciliation of the pope with modern civilization as either possible or desirable. ”

“ But never can reason be rendered capable of thoroughly understanding mysteries as it does those truths which form its proper object. For God’s mysteries, in their very nature, so far surpass the reach of created intellect, that, even when taught by revelation and received by faith, they remain covered by faith itself, as by a veil, and shrouded, as it were, in darkness as long as in this mortal life. ”

“ There can be no defense of those deliberate falsifications of history, that concealment of historical facts, of which the Church has so often taken advantage. In these things the end does not justify the means.
Then has it in truth come to this, that Roman Christianity and Science are recognized by their respective adherents as being absolutely incompatible; they cannot exist together; one must yield to the other; mankind must make its choice—it cannot have both. ”

“ One of the most striking and vet contradictory features of the Dogmatic Constitution is, the reluctant homage it pays to the intelligence of man. It presents a definition of the philosophical basis of Catholicism, but it veils from view the repulsive features of the vulgar faith. It sets forth the attributes of God, the Creator of all things, in words fitly designating its sublime conception, but it abstains from affirming that this most awful and eternal Being was born of an earthly mother, the wife of a Jewish carpenter, who has since become the queen of heaven. ”

“ Does not the growth of society resemble individual growth? Do not both exhibit to us phases of youth, of maturity, of decrepitude? To a person who has carefully considered the progressive civilization of groups of men in regions of the earth far apart, who has observed the identical forms under which that advancing civilization has manifested itself, is it not clear that the procedure is determined by law? ”

“ It is unlawful to appeal from his judgments to an Œcumenical Council, as if to an earthly arbiter superior to him. Powers such as these are consistent with arbitrary rule, but they are inconsistent with the government of the world by immutable law. Hence the Dogmatic Constitution plants itself firmly in behalf of incessant providential interventions; it will not for a moment admit that in natural things there is an irresistible sequence of events, or in the affairs of men an unavoidable course of acts. ”

“ The sentiment of these venerable Churches is well shown by the incident that, when, in 1867, the Nestorian Patriarch Simeon had been invited by the Chaldean Patriarch to return to Roman Catholic unity, he, in his reply, showed that there was no prospect for harmonious action between the East and the West: “You invite me to kiss humbly the slipper of the Bishop of Rome; but is he not, in every respect, a man like yourself—is his dignity superior to yours? We will never permit to be introduced into our holy temples of worship images and statues, which are nothing but abominable and impure idols. ”

“ Religion must relinquish that imperious, that domineering position which she has so long maintained against Science. There must be absolute freedom for thought. The ecclesiastic must learn to keep himself within the domain he has chosen, and cease to tyrannize over the philosopher, who, conscious of his own strength and the purity of his motives, will bear such interference no longer. ”

“ It is plain, therefore, that of professing Christians the vast majority are Catholic; and such is the authoritative demand of the papacy for supremacy, that, in any survey of the present religious condition of Christendom, regard must be mainly had to its acts. Its movements are guided by the highest intelligence and skill. Catholicism obeys the orders of one man, and has therefore a unity, a compactness, a power, which Protestant denominations do not possess. Moreover, it derives inestimable strength from the souvenirs of the great name of Rome. ”

“ Who shall say that divine revelation includes no mysteries, but that all the dogmas of faith may be understood and demonstrated by reason duly cultivated.
“Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine. ”

“ Not only is it impossible for faith and reason ever to contradict each other, but they rather afford each other mutual assistance. For right reason establishes the foundation of faith, and, by the aid of its light, cultivates the science of divine things; and faith, on the other hand, frees and preserves reason from errors, and enriches it with knowledge of many kinds. So far, then, is the Church from opposing the culture of human arts and sciences, that she rather aids and promotes it in many ways. ”

“ Claims such as these mean a revolt against modern civilization, an intention of destroying it, no matter at what social cost. To submit to them without resistance, men must be slaves indeed!
As to the issue of the coming conflict, can any one doubt? Whatever is resting on fiction and fraud will be overthrown. Institutions that organize impostures and spread delusions must show what right they have to exist. Faith must render an account of herself to Reason. Mysteries must give place to facts. ”

“ Even the pope himself, presuming that the whole world had forgotten all history, did not hesitate to say, “Let the German people understand that no other Church but that of Rome is the Church of freedom and progress.”
Meantime, among the clergy of Germany a party was organized to remonstrate against, and even resist, the papal usurpation. It protested against “a man being placed on the throne of God,” against a vice-God of any kind, nor would it yield its scientific convictions to ecclesiastical authority. Some did not hesitate to accuse the pope himself of being a heretic. ”

“ Whoever will reflect on this state of things will see how it is that those nations which have shaken off the dual form of government are those which have made the greatest advance. He will discern what is the cause of the paralysis which has befallen France. On one hand she wishes to be the leader of Europe, on the other she clings to a dead past. For the sake of propitiating her ignorant classes, she enters upon lines of policy which her intelligence must condemn. So evenly balanced are the two sovereignties under which she lives, that sometimes one, sometimes the other, prevails ”

“ The rejection of the divine authority of the Church to teach, and the subjection of all things belonging to religion to the judgment of each individual, have led to the production of many sects, and, as these differed and disputed with each other, all belief in Christ was overthrown in the minds of not a few, and the Holy Scriptures began to be counted as myths and fables. Christianity has been rejected, and the reign of mere Reason as they call it, or Nature, substituted ”

“ But, although faith be above reason, there never can be a real disagreement between them, since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has given man’s soul the light of reason, and God cannot deny himself, nor can one truth ever contradict another. Wherefore the empty shadow of such contradiction arises chiefly from this, that either the doctrines of faith are not understood and set forth as the Church really holds them, or that the vain devices and opinions of men are mistaken for the dictates of reason. ”

“ On the other hand, Science turns away from the incomprehensible, and rests herself on the maxim of Wiclif: “God forceth not a man to believe that which he cannot understand.” In the absence of an exhibition of satisfactory credentials on the part of her opponent, she considers whether there be in the history of the papacy, and in the biography of the popes, any thing that can adequately sustain a divine commission, any thing that can justify pontifical infallibility, or extort that unhesitating obedience which is due to the vice-God. ”

“ In Italy, Rome has passed into the hands of an excommunicated king. The sovereign pontiff, feigning that he is a prisoner, is fulminating from the Vatican his anathemas, and, in the midst of the most convincing proofs of his manifold errors, asserting his own infallibility. A Catholic archbishop with truth declares that the whole civil society of Europe seems to be withdrawing itself in its public life from Christianity. In England and America, religious persons perceive with dismay that the intellectual basis of faith has been undermined by the spirit of the age. ”

“ As to the origin of corporeal and spiritual things, the Dogmatic Constitution adds a solemn emphasis to its declarations, by anathematizing all those who bold the doctrine of emanation, or who believe that visible Nature is only a manifestation of the Divine Essence. In this its authors had a task of no ordinary difficulty before them. They must encounter those formidable ideas, whether old or new, which in our times are so strongly forcing themselves on thoughtful men. The doctrine of the conservation and correlation of Force yields as its logical issue the time-worn Oriental emanation theory ”

“ Religion and Science must both submit their claims and their dissensions to its arbitrament.
Against this the Vatican Council protests. It exalts faith to a superiority over reason; it says that they constitute two separate orders of knowledge, having respectively for their objects mysteries and facts. Faith deals with mysteries, reason with facts. Asserting the dominating superiority of faith, it tries to satisfy the reluctant mind with miracles and prophecies. ”

“ When Science is thus commanded to surrender her intellectual convictions, may she not ask the ecclesiastic to remember the past? The contest respecting the figure of the earth, and the location of heaven and hell, ended adversely to him. He affirmed that the earth is an extended plane, and that the sky is a firmament, the floor of heaven, through which again and again persons have been seen to ascend. ”

“ For the doctrine of faith revealed by God has not been proposed, like some philosophical discovery, to be made perfect by human ingenuity, but it has been delivered to the spouse of Christ as a divine deposit, to be faithfully guarded and unerringly set forth. Hence, all tenets of holy faith are to be explained always according to the sense and meaning of the Church ”

“ But the glory which Catholicism might gain from a conflict with material ideas is at the best only like that of other celestial meteors when they touch the atmosphere of the earth—transitory and useless. ”

“ Its principle is that all power is in the clergy, and that for laymen there is only the privilege of obedience. The republican forms under which the Churches existed in primitive Christianity have gradually merged into an absolute centralization, with a man as vice-God at its head. This Church asserts that the divine commission under which it acts comprises civil government; that it has a right to use the state for its own purposes, but that the state has no right to intermeddle with it; that even in Protestant countries it is not merely a coordinate government, but the sovereign power. ”

“ But, whatever may be the preparatory incidents of that great impending intellectual crisis which Christendom must soon inevitably witness, of this we may rest assured, that the silent secession from the public faith, which in so ominous a manner characterizes the present generation, will find at length political expression. It is not without significance that France reenforces the ultramontane tendencies of her lower population, by the promotion of pilgrimages, the perpetration of miracles, the exhibition of celestial apparitions. ”

“ That maxim is, the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures. It was the foundation of intellectual liberty. But, if a personal interpretation of the book of Revelation is permissible, how can it be denied in the case of the book of Nature? In the misunderstandings that have taken place, we must ever bear in mind the infirmities of men. The generations that immediately followed the Reformation may perhaps be excused for not comprehending the full significance of their cardinal principle, and for not on all occasions carrying it into effect. ”

“ The condition of the New World also satisfies us that both forms of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, have lost their expansive power; neither can pass beyond its long-established boundary-line—the Catholic republics remain Catholic, the Protestant Protestant. And among the latter the disposition to sectarian isolation is disappearing; persons of different denominations consort without hesitation together. They gather their current opinions from newspapers, not from the Church. ”