Protestant church

“ From the Reformation till the latter part of the last century, we are told, the Protestant Church dwelt chiefly on the human side of Christ, and since that time many works have been written to show how the two—perfect Deity and perfect manhood—were united in His character. ”

“ Members of a Protestant church might dispute among themselves to the point of blows, but they never thought of interfering with the members of any other church, except the Catholic, against which they could all cheerfully join. ”

“ Oftentimes the service is gone through with, and nothing in it but an out-and-out performance; no life, no spirit, no power. Protestants often speak disparagingly of the ritualistic services gone through with by the Roman Catholic church, but if you come right down to it you will find about as much spirit and power in the one as the other. The result is that scores and hundreds of men, and women, and children are being gathered into the Protestant church who have not an ounce of Christian experience. ”

“ Protestants, on the other hand, hold that the minister is not a priest, but a teacher; his function is not the performance of ceremonies, but the inculcation of truth. The truly Protestant churches appeal chiefly to the mind rather than to the senses, they rely upon ideas rather than ceremonies, because they know that only by the intelligent apprehension of truth can the spiritual life be really nourished and developed. In a Romish church the central thing is the altar. In a Protestant church the central thing is the pulpit. ”

“ We hear constant complaints that Popery is on the increase. How can it be otherwise? Where and when was union not a source of strength, and division of weakness? The Protestant High Church is like a brilliant meteor shooting through the air in splendour and brightness; but constantly detaching from its own body some vital elements of its own existence. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, is like a snow-ball rolling along the ground, with apparent humility, a dense and cohesive mass, alike tenacious of that which it possesses, and attractive of that which falls in its way. ”

“ The most learned and pious members of the Protestant church, anxious to establish their claims to true descent from the ancient glorious church of England, and influenced by a portion of Catholic spirit, seem determined upon rivaling the Catholics themselves in this respect. Many of their new churches, and restoration of old ones, attest the sincerity of their feelings, and the great success of their earnest labours, notwithstanding the many difficulties they have to contend against. ”

“ It is characteristic of Protestantism, as of humanism in general, that it lays its chief emphasis upon the intelligence. If we go to church to [pg 186] practice the presence of God, must we not first know who and what this God is whose presence with us we are there asked to realize? So most Protestant services are more informative than inspirational. Their attendants are assembled to hear about God rather to taste and see that the Lord is good. ”

“ If the essence of the true Church is only to be found in the domain of the mind, or if it even remains a mere ideal, where is the guarantee that the mantle of the sacramental organization covers that silent, invisible congregation of spirits in which alone the Protestant looks for the essence of the true Church? ”

“ The Reformed churches comprehend the whole Protestant churches in Europe and America, whether Lutheran, Calvinistic, Independent, Quaker, Baptist, or any other denomination who dissent from the church of Rome. ”

“ That the Protestant church has endured thus far, that its ideals are still dominant, that its preachers’ voices are still heard in the tumults of our Babels, is direct evidence that somewhere her foundations rest upon bed-rock and that the Christian faith and practice, as she understands{312} them, are essential in the solution of the problems of our civilization. ”

“ No service in a Protestant church is permitted, and the Protestant must promise that all children born of the union shall be baptised and brought up in the Catholic faith. There is no written contract, and the promise may, of course, be broken, but if the Catholic is a party to it he is guilty of mortal sin. ”

“ They come from countries in which neither Church nor State has attempted to lift them out of ignorance and its attendant superstition; and whenever the churches in whose bosoms these people have starved in the Old World do not make amends here in the New, the Protestant church is called upon to lift them into a better knowledge of the nature of religion and into a better conception of human relations, both for her own sake and for the sake of the communities which she wishes to serve. ”

“ The other sects lack the quality of self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which Catholics hold sacred ”

“ The Protestant world has been, from its infancy, in the sixteenth century, in thorough accord with the Catholic Church, in keeping "holy," not Saturday, but Sunday. The discussion of the grounds that led to this unanimity of sentiment and practice of over 300 years, must help toward placing Protestantism on a solid basis in this particular, should the arguments in favor of its position overcome those furnished by the Israelites and Adventists, the Bible, the sole recognized teacher of both litigants, being the umpire and witness. ”

“ And this was the chief corner stone of Protestant theology; the point at which the Roman Catholic church and the Protestant church was most widely separated. The Catholic church, recognizing the operation of God's grace upon man, and also the power of will in man, came to the reasonable conclusion that man had it within their power to be obedient to the commandments of God, and that obedience united with the grace of God was the means of obtaining salvation; that man worked out his salvation both by faith and works. ”

“ Conformably to our promise in our last issue, we proceed to unmask one of the most flagrant errors and most unpardonable inconsistencies of the Biblical rule of faith. Lest, however, we be misunderstood, we deem it necessary to premise that Protestantism recognizes no rule of faith, no teacher, save the "infallible Bible." As the Catholic yields his judgment in spiritual matters implicitly, and with the unreserved confidence, to the voice of his church, so, too, the Protestant recognizes no teacher but the Bible. ”

“ Besides, this people already look to the Church as the hope of their race. Thinking colored men almost uniformly admit that the Protestant Episcopal Church with its quiet, chaste dignity and decorous solemnity, its instructive and elevating ritual, its bright chanting and joyous hymning, is eminently fitted to correct the peculiar faults of worship—the rank exuberance and often ludicrous demonstrativeness of their people. ”

“ They create, as with the Protestant clergy, a stronger feeling of mutual sympathy, a greater community of ideas and sentiments; while they also tend to diminish pastoral authority, and to check the reverential respect involuntarily shown to those who, from noble and lofty motives, make the sacrifice of the purest joys granted to mankind. ”

“ When the church seemed to be departing from its spiritual dignity and defiling its ceremonial by the superstitions and the prodigies of heathenism, or when its pontiffs seemed to have adopted all the vices of secular princes and to have exchanged totally the church for the world, there were rarely wanting advocates of a purer Christian order, advocates whose denunciations might rival in vehemence those of a modern protestant. ”

“ There is no denying the fact. The variations of Protestantism, even during the lives of the reformers, the multiplication of Protestant sects, all appealing alike to the sacred text, and the experience of three hundred and more years, render it indubitable. Hard pressed by their Catholic opponents, Protestants were driven to the sad alternative of either condemning their separation from the Church and returning to her communion, or of giving up dogmatic religion as unessential and falling back on interior feeling or sentiment. ”

“ They are part and parcel of the one Catholic faith, and belong to Catholics only. Protestants can rightfully claim as Protestant only those things wherein they differ from the Church, which the Church denies, and which they assert; that is, what is peculiarly or distinctively Protestant. We cannot allow them to claim as theirs what is and always has been ours; we willingly accord them their own, but not one whit more. All which they profess to hold in common with us is ours, not theirs. ”

“ For the worse the lives of these people are, the more combatively devoted are they to the Catholic Church. Of course, we believe that Protestantism is better than Roman Catholicism; but since the reaching of these people with Protestant missions is not possible, we come to you and ask you whether you, who have done so much for the enlightenment of the Catholic Church through its literature, will not lift up your powerful voice to plead with the church to use her almost unlimited influence for the regeneration of her people. ”

“ Real Protestants have always built rooms for their worship, or walled up the old churches, when they have fallen into their possession, into four or five distinct spaces, as in Scotland. But the separated church of England, though Protestant in position, in name, and in practice, has retained so much of the old traditions in her service, and is linked by so many ties to older and better times, that she naturally turns back to them with affection and reverence, and seeks, as far as her maimed rites and fettered position will admit, to restore the departed glory of the sanctuary. ”

“ It is not my purpose to frame a general indictment against persons and movements, but rather to suggest certain ways and means of possible recovery, and in general I shall try to confine myself to that form of organized religion to which I personally adhere, that is to say, the Anglican or Episcopal Church, partly because of my better knowledge of its conditions, and partly because whatever is said may in most cases be equally well applied to the Protestant denominations. ”

“ The Evangelicals of the last century represented one side, but only one side, of our Church's teaching. With the spirituality and fervency of her liturgy and the 'Gospel' character of all her formularies, they were far more in harmony than the so-called 'orthodox' of their day. But they did not, to say the least of it, bring into prominence what are now called, and what would have been called in the seventeenth century, the 'Catholic' features of the English Church. They simply regarded her as one of many 'Protestant' communions. ”

“ We may remark that what makes the attraction of a church is always what is consonant in it to the method and secret and temper of Jesus, and productive, therefore, of the saving results which flow from these. The attraction of the Catholic Church is unity, of the Protestant sects, conscience, of the Church of England, abuses reformed but unity saved. ”

“ It is simply a Catholic doctrine retained by the Reformers from the church, which taught it nearly fourteen hundred years before Protestantism was born. The able and learned professor, we are sorry to observe, forgets that the church is some centuries older than the oldest Protestant sect, that the founders of Protestantism had all been reared in her communion, and separated from her. Protestants have undeniably no historical connection with our Lord and his apostles, save through the Catholic Church, or the church in communion with the See of Rome. ”

“ S. O. asserts that Protestants believe precisely what the Catholic Church teaches about Christ; but let it be remembered that they do not believe those truths because the Catholic Church teaches them; if they believe them, it is because they choose to believe them. Our faith in Christ is absolute and divine; that of Protestants is all human. But our would-be theologian probably never understood the difference between divine and human faith, or he would have made the distinction that we make, and then he could not have said what he says of Catholic and Protestant faith in Christ. ”

“ Why, you Protestants don't believe in purgatory. If she is not in heaven she must be in hell. It's a pretty son who would send his mother to hell!" Such an answer will surprise no Catholic; it may astonish a Protestant. ”

“ This gives us the length of the Protestant age.”—Biblical Trace of the Church, p. 143.
In the few years prior to 1880 A.D., there was a great declension in the spirituality of Protestantism. Who can deny this fact? Quite a number of the leading denominations held revivals, where was witnessed [pg 463] the power of the Holy Spirit. People were genuinely converted. They loved and worshiped God in quite a degree of simplicity and equality. The ministry was of a humbler class and more devoted to its charges. In the decade preceding 1880 there was a great change. ”

“ Whilst the Protestant world evinces so profound an interest in these Catholic productions, we feel that the Catholics of the country should have within their reach arguments unanswerable by the opponents of our religion, placing it in an impregnable position, whilst they expose the utterly indefensible condition to which they have reduced Protestantism. ”

“ Statesmen, as well as theologians, often felt the need of strengthening the whole Protestant body by an organised harmony among its several members, something akin to that which gives the Roman Catholic Church so imposing an aspect of general unity. ”

“ This we know; but on account of this error, they are not guilty before God; and then again he partly denies this assertion by saying that willful, obstinate, truth-rejecting Protestants are guilty.” What a consolation for Protestants to learn these infallible oracles from S. O., to be assured by him that the words of Christ, “I know you not whence you are, all ye workers of iniquity," will be addressed, not to Protestants, but only to Catholics; to learn from him for certain that “no man will be condemned on account of his ignorance, neither Protestant, nor heathen, nor Catholic either." ”