Doctor of Divinity

“ And he gave a long list of doctors who were not only Christians, but famous ones. I grant you, though, ministers and doctors are very apt to see differently in spiritual matters."
"That's it," said the Reverend Doctor; "you are apt to see 'Nature' where we see God, and appeal to 'Science' where we are contented with Revelation."
"We don't separate God and Nature, perhaps, as you do," the Doctor answered. "When we say that God is omnipresent and omnipotent and omniscient, we are a little more apt to mean it than your folks are. ”

“ But it behoves the Doctor, if he will be called a Doctor, to study the whole Process, how God has restored the Universal in Man, which is fully clear and manifest in the Person of Christ, from his Entrance into the Humanity, even to his Ascension, and sending of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ A doctor has in some sort a priesthood of his own. Admitted at all hours to the most secret intimacy of families, he knows, guesses, and is able to effect much. Like the priest, in short, he has the ear of the sick and the dying. ”

“ What is the difference between the doctor and the priest, except that one is for your body and one is for your soul? You say you are afraid of the priest; will you not be more ashamed of God, whose servant he is? ”

“ But the profession of medicine never could reach its full development until it became entirely separated from that of divinity. The spiritual guide, the consoler in affliction, the confessor who is admitted into the secrets of our souls, has his own noble sphere of duties; but the healer of men must confine himself solely to the revelations of God in nature, as he sees their miracles with his own eyes. ”

“ The doctor ascertains the sin which has been committed, and the particular god which has been offended and inflicted the disease. Then he makes an image of the offended god, which he hangs on a pole and which is shot by three or four persons in rapid succession. As the image falls the spirit of the god which is in the doctor, leaps out, and falling upon the spirit represented by the image, kills it. ”

“ Is it any objection to that faith to say, the age of miracles is past? If the mother, may call in a second physician, to suggest the cause and the cure, may she not call on God? What the doctor can do for a fellow-practitioner, cannot the Great Physician do? Though the doctor had often tried and thought, yet it was not till the last prayer and call on God, brought the remedy to his mind. ”

“ The doctor is revered as much, perhaps, as the superior gods themselves. The subordinate gods dwell in them and confer on them the power to suck out disease from the human body. If long without practice, it is said that the gods in them become restless, and subject them to much inconvenience. To pacify them it is represented that they sometimes obtain and drink considerable quantities of human blood. ”

“ The priest used to tell the doctor that he would have been the best of Christians if he had only known it, and the doctor used to assure him in return that he would have been the best of men if only his mind had never been distorted by the fables of the Church. ”

“ And the great recompense of which the Angelic Doctor speaks, will be given also to priests and pastors of souls who, within the bounds of prudence, which is to be their constant guide, shall employ the means presented to them by their holy ministry to make the religious state admired, sought after, and beloved. ”

“ But, when you see passing a modest and recollected solitary with mild and kindly look, envy the lot of that man, imitate his wisdom, and long to resemble the just man. 'Ask,' says the Lord, 'and you shall receive.' These are the real goods, the goods that save and last forever." [6] From these words of the holy doctor, we can easily infer that it is good to beg of God a religious vocation. And if the religious state is the surest means of salvation for him who solicits the grace, God will certainly hear his prayer, provided it fails in none of the conditions which he requires. ”

“ A holy peace has taken the place of the melancholy expression of his countenance; and he hails with delight every fresh symptom of dissolution. He said yesterday, "God has granted me delightful views of heaven, and the honor and glory of the Saviour, who is the chief among ten thousand, and the one altogether lovely. Oh," he exclaimed in a rapture, "Eternity will be too short to praise him who has redeemed my guilty soul."
This morning he is much revived, and asked the Doctor to pray that he might be ready and waiting, but not be impatient for the coming of the bridegroom. ”

“ We shall follow the Master's command, and make nothingness of sin, sickness, and death, as fast as we can; nor do we care how this be done, so that it is done. Our essential point is, that Life cannot die, and God is not the author of sickness; therefore we cannot agree with Mr. ——, that there is nothing but God to doctor; neither shall we call that darkness which restores that essential and lost element of Christianity, namely, the apostolic healing, and is “the light that shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” ”

“ Some people finally became intelligent enough to trust their bodies to the doctors, and remained ignorant enough to leave the care of their souls with the priests. Among civilized people the theological theory has been cast aside, and the miraculous, the supernatural, no longer has a place in medicine. In Catholic countries the peasants are still cured by images, prayers, holy water and the bones of saints, but when the priests are sick they send for a physician, and now even the Pope, God's agent, gives his sacred body to the care of a doctor. ”

“ The professions should be cordial allies, but the church-going, Bible-reading physician ought to know a great deal more of the subjects included under the general name of theology than the clergyman can be expected to know of medicine. To say, as has been said not long since, that a young divinity student is as competent to deal with the latter as an old physician is to meddle with the former, suggests the idea that wisdom is not an heirloom in the family of the one who says it. ”

“ But if our physician Christ, God, having rescued us from our desires, regulates our flesh with His own wise and temperate rule, it is evident that He guards it from sins because it possesses a hope of salvation, as physicians do not suffer men whom they hope to save to indulge in what pleasures they please. ”

“ I understand the Doctor as teaching three states or conditions wherein man may stand; that of nature, by the unaided light of reason, which in its inmost tends Godward, did not the flesh hinder; that of grace; and a higher stage yet, above grace, where means and medium are as it were superseded, and God works immediately within the transformed soul. For what God doeth that He is. Yet that in this higher state, as in the second, man hath no merit; he is nothing and God all. ”

“ When therefore the Doctor calls upon young divines to have more grace and sense than to be driven from thoughts of advancing themselves by preferments and rich marriages, he would do well to consider, how little short this is of calling them to break their very baptismal vow, of renouncing the pomps and vanities of the world. ”

“ If this is a general truth, with what special force must it not apply to the ministers of a religion the paramount and ceaseless aim of which is to make men holy, so that at times it has almost seemed as though the Church were indifferent as to whether they are learned or beautiful or strong? She pronounces no man a doctor unless he be also a saint ”

“ Monsignor, listen to me. In these cases the doctor always gives his advice. You see even the sacraments have their mental side; and on this mental side the doctor speaks. But the whole decision rests entirely with the patient and his confessor; or they can call in an expert priest-doctor. Only a priest can possibly decide finally the relations between the grace of the sacraments and their reactionary effect upon the mind. A lay doctor only recommends. ”

“ In sacrifice and self-forgetfulness, in his care most for those who most need him, in the way he identifies himself with his patient, bearing with, because understanding, his weakness and petulance and fears, and seeking all the while only to heal and help and save him, there is no more Christlike character or calling in the modern world than the Doctor. ”

“ She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the second doctor declared. "Thou hast said well," quoth she to the Caliph, "O Commander of the Faithful, he hath questioned me, till he is weary, and now I will ask of him two questions. If he answer them both, it is well; and if not, I will take his clothes and he shall wend in peace." Quoth the doctor, "Ask me what thou wilt," and she said, "What sayest thou religion is?" Answered he, "Religion is confession of Faith with the tongue and conviction with the heart and correspondent action with the members. ”

“ There is scarce a reader amongst this number of people, whether he be layman or clergyman, but will find this effect from the Doctor’s instructions; he will begin to take fresh comfort in his state, to think himself happy for having had no aspirings after high improvements in piety; he will not only be content with his corruptions, but be fixed and hardened against all inward and outward calls to a solid piety; he will approve of the deadness and insensibility of his own heart, and acquiesce in it, as his just security, from the sin and folly and danger of being righteous over-much. ”

“ The holy Doctor admits, then, like so many others who share his opinions, that sometimes Divine Justice assigns a special place of purification to certain souls, and even permits them to appear either to instruct the living or to procure for the departed the suffrages of which they stand in need; sometimes also for other motives worthy of the wisdom and mercy of God. ”

“ It must be evident to you even now that many of the clergy and intelligent laymen are steadily drifting in one of two directions; either to a distinct recognition of the Supreme Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, of the holiness and Divinity of the Sacred Scriptures and of the life of charity or of obedience to the Divine Commandments as the only way of salvation; or to an ignoring the existence of a personal God, and of course of all revelation from God. There is no middle ground. ”

“ The doctor is now what the monk once was, with this additional advantage, that from the nature of his studies and the research of his art, he reads more deeply in the human heart, and penetrates into its most inmost recesses. ”

“ Certain theologians, and certain theosophists, as men who fancy themselves inspired sometimes affect to be called, had approached so nearly to the Doctor's hypothesis of progressive life, and propensities continued in the ascending scale, that he appealed to them as authorities for its support. ”

“ There the great Physician will heal the soul, and the body, too. There the heavens will converse with the sons of earth, and pour down the rich treasures of wisdom to feast the hungry, longing soul. There the Lord has commanded the blessing, even life forever more. There, in the Lord's mountain, will He take away the veil that is over all flesh, and wipe away the tears of the sorrowful, and impart a fullness of life and everlasting joy. ”

“ The priest effects cures in behalf of the Church and in the name of God by means of prayer, the laying on of hands, exorcism, relics and consecrated natural means, especially water, salt and oil. In doing this he acts as the visible delegate of an [Pg 69] unseen higher physician, the saint ordained of God to be the healer of the sickness. For every affliction has its physician among the ranks of the saints. ”

“ For a while the “physician’s art,” according to Democritus, “heals the diseases of the body; wisdom frees the soul from passion.” But the good Instructor, the Wisdom, the Word of the Father, who made man, cares for the whole nature of His creature; the all-sufficient Physician of humanity, the Saviour, heals both body and soul. ”

“ Our Doctors of Divinity tell us that we ought to sacrifice our reason to God; but what motives can we have for sacrificing our reason to a being who gives us but useless gifts, which He does not intend that we should make use of? What confidence can we place in a God who, according to our Doctors themselves, is wicked enough to harden hearts, to strike us with blindness, to place snares in our way, to lead us into temptation? Finally, how can we place confidence in the ministers of this God, who, in order to guide us more conveniently, command us to close our eyes? ”

“ He denied the existence of a God, ridiculed the idea of a Saviour, was an irreligious and bad member of the community, and died in the commission of an habitual and deadly sin; and it is my firm conviction that such as he cannot enter into the kingdom of God!" [Footnote: A fact.]
'The Doctor was greatly censured by the neighbouring clergy for boldly declaring what he felt to be the truth; but it produced an electrical effect upon those present, and the son of the deceased, who was fast following in his father's steps, became a sincere and practical Christian. ”

“ The great Physician of souls is ready to heal thy disease; he is the prompt Deliverer, not of thee alone, but of all who are in bondage to sin. These are his words,—his sweet and life-giving lips pronounced them,—"They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." ”

“ More than half of the Doctors of Divinity were of humble origin, the sons of small gentry or country clergy, or even of a lower grade. Many of these, constant to the loves of their youth, brought ladies of inferior manners to grace what appeared to them so dignified a station. ”

“ The medicine-man of the savages is, in truth, the predecessor of the modern physician, and also, in a certain sense, of the modern priest. He not only ministers to the individual whom he restores to health by means of his counter-magic, but he can himself directly practise magic. Since he has power over demons, he can exorcise them from the body ”