Protestant theology

“ The Protestant churches have completed one full and rounded period of their existence. The age of theology in which they played a conspicuous part has passed away, never to return. The world has entered into the full swing of the age of science and practical achievement. What the work, the usefulness, and the destiny of the Protestant churches shall henceforth be will depend entirely upon their own vision, their common sense, and their adaptability to a new order of things. ”

“ Protestant polemic theology makes the following use of this view. Over against the magnificent historical manifestation of the Catholic Church, the torn and rent condition of the Protestant religious community presents a striking contrast. The proximate conclusion that the true Church can only be found within the circle of Catholicism, they seek now to anticipate on the Protestant side by the observation that already from the outset one makes a false start who would wish to recognize the true Church by her form of historical manifestation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We know great bodies move slow, and the great body of Protestants will not come to a full conviction of this to-day nor to-morrow; but they are tending to it, and can hardly fail, in the natural course of things, one day to reach it. Having reached it, we think the sincere and earnest Protestants, who love and study the Bible and mean to be Christians, will be gathered into the Catholic fold, and the others most likely, other things remaining as they are, will follow their Protestant spirit into naturalism, and give up Christian baptism and Christian faith altogether. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If popery judges men in meats, protestantism does the same in drinks and in the sabbath; they both judge men in holy-days and movable feasts; and though protestantism repudiates the worshipping of angels, it proclaims in its fasts, preparations, concerts etc., a voluntary humility, and celebration of "saints and martyrs," renowned in legendary tales for "the pride that apes humility." Let the reader search the Scriptures from beginning to end, and he will nowhere find such systems of faith and worship as those comprehended in the papal and protestant systems. ”

“ Our space will prevent our telling of the adding of tradition to the Scripture, and of the rejection of much of the Word of God. Catholicism and Protestantism largely deny the doctrine of holiness. Some of the Protestant teachers teach holiness to a degree, but very few, or none of them, teach true Bible holiness. ”

“ Protestantism is a mixture of faith and reason agreeing pretty badly together, it must be confessed. The Protestant takes the Bible for a book, every word of which is inspired of God. He interprets it in his own fashion, and proves out of it every doctrine he requires to found a new sect. ”

“ Catholics may have more than Protestants, but in no case have they or can they have less. By what rule or standard, then, do Protestants judge the Catholic understanding of the Scriptures to be false and the Protestant understanding to be true? Private judgment is no rule, and, if it were, Catholics have private judgment as well as Protestants; they have, too, reason, Biblical, historical, and all other sorts of learning, as well as they, and, at least, in as eminent a degree. By what rule or standard of judgment, then, is Protestantism to be pronounced more Biblical than is Catholicity? ”

“ One is brought suddenly face to face with the tremendous difference which exists between the Protestant and the Catholic conception of what a church is and what it is for. To the one it is a place where men meet for mutual support and instruction, for united worship; to the other it is a place where men meet God. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here, then, in the third decade of the sixteenth century, when the leaders of the Reformation were using all their powers of dialectic to formulate in new scholastic phrase the sound creed for Protestant Christendom, and while the fierce and decisive battle was being waged over the new form in which the Eucharist must be celebrated, there appeared a little group of men who proposed that Christianity should be conceived and practised as a way of living—nothing more nor less. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An example of this occurs in the case of the word person, the loss of the theological meaning of which among Protestants has confused, if not obliterated, the doctrine of the Trinity. In Protestantism, the belief of the people lives chiefly by a tradition propagated through no recognized theological channel; a tradition which, consequently, daily grows more feeble and less definite; which is continually becoming more and more corrupted, more low, and earthly, and anthropomorphous. Look at the common Protestant idea of the happiness of the blessed. ”

“ In so far as they hold Christian truth or positive faith at all, they hold it on the authority of the Catholic rule, which they reject; and when deprived of what they stole from us, and to which they have no right, they have nothing to prevent them from running into pure rationalism on the [Pg 503] one hand, or into mysticism and transcendentalism on the other. The germs of both were in the original Protestant movement, and may be easily detected even in our Princeton professor. ”

“ In the first place, by reflecting upon them we shall find no difficulty in accounting for the marked difference in tone and character between Catholic and Protestant controversy, by which no attentive observer can have failed to be struck. Taking for granted the existence of God and the divinity of Christ, as admitted by the earlier Protestant sects, the logical position of the church is unassailable, which, as we have already stated, is generally conceded by impartial non-Christian thinkers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In that section of the world in which Christianity is the prevailing and accepted form of religious belief, the temporal might of those nations professing one great form of the Christian creed, the Roman Catholic, has undoubtedly waned in comparison with that of the nations professing what is generally called the Protestant faith. There are many varieties of non-Roman Catholic Christianity, but Protestantism is a label sufficiently comprehensive and sufficiently well understood for our purposes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Protestantism must fully accept the Bible as the ultimate and only standard of faith and practice, or it must be broken between the upper millstone of Roman Catholicism and the nether millstone of irreligious rationalism. ”

“ And this produces a system and an order, a definite method of procedure in the spiritual life, which, assisted by the ascetical and mystical theology so minutely cultivated, abundantly directs enthusiasm and represses fanaticism. And we do not doubt that if Protestantism, with its doctrine of private judgment and private direction, had been the form of Christianity existing in the middle ages, Christianity would have sunk into a condition of which paganism and the Gnostic heresies alone afford a parallel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Everywhere the Protestant spirit, the Protestant tendency, is to remove farther and farther from Catholicity, to eliminate more and more of Catholic dogma, Catholic tradition, Catholic precepts, and to approach nearer and nearer to no-churchism, to the rejection of all authority in spiritual matters, and the reduction of the whole supernatural order to the natural. Faith in the Protestant mind is only a probable opinion, sometimes fanatically held indeed, and enforced by power, but none the less a mere opinion for that. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Through this conciliatory method, an understanding of the Catholic truth can be much more easily and effectually imparted to the unprejudiced Protestant mind than by a rough polemical method. This end is most essentially served by the distinction between the essence and the manifestation of Catholicism.
Protestant piety makes a great boast of its deep spirituality. The modern ideal theory of the Church owes a great share of its popularity to its aptitude of application in this direction. ”

“ The organic existence is an accident arising from substantial doctrinal affinity. And, judging by their own experience and observations, Protestants almost invariably conclude that we became converts to Catholicity as a logical result of our faith in individual Catholic doctrines; and that a so-called Protestant, who holds any or all of these distinctive dogmas, is not a Protestant in reality, and has no right or title to the name. ”

“ The right of private judgment in reference to the interpretation of the Scriptures is the principle of Protestantism that especially distinguishes it from Roman Catholicism. Protestant churches are divided into numerous branches, with wide differences of doctrine and forms of worship, but all agree in the assertion of independence from the Roman see. ”

“ That the Bible ought, on Protestant principles, to be a plain book, interpreting itself to every person of ordinary sense, or who has enough sense to be a moral agent, we concede, and Protestants should actually derive their doctrines from it. But nobody knows better than our author that neither is a fact. ”

“ While the Catholic form of the doctrine gives to 'works' a place not less important than faith in justification, the Protestant exalts 'faith' to the position of priority as more in harmony with the mystery of the atoning sacrifice of Christ as expounded by St. ”

“ 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. ”