Canonist

“ Is not our Holy Father, the Pope, your judge?”
“I will say nothing else to you. I have a good Master, that is God; it is to Him I look in everything and to none other.”
“If you will not believe in the Church, if you will not believe that Article of the Creed, ‘the Church, One, Holy, Catholic,’ you will be declared a heretic and, by other judges, punished with the pains of fire.” ”

“ Can′onry, the benefice of a canon.—Canon of the mass, that part of the mass which begins after the 'Sanctus' with the prayer 'Te igitur,' and ends just before the 'Paternoster;' Canon residentiary, a canon obliged to reside at a cathedral and take a share in the duty; Honorary canon, one having the titular rank of canon in a cathedral, but without duties or emoluments; Minor canon, a cleric in orders, attached to a cathedral, his duty being to assist the canons in singing divine service. ”

“ How contrary is this doctrine to the Catholic dogma of the full power divinely given to the sovereign Pontiff by our Lord Jesus Christ, to guide, to supervise, and govern the universal church, no one can fail to see and understand clearly and evidently. Amid so great a diversity of depraved opinions, we, remembering our apostolic duty, and solicitous before all things for our most holy religion, for sound doctrine, for the salvation of the souls confided to us, and for the welfare of human society itself, have considered the moment opportune to raise anew our apostolic voice. ”

“ You travel throughout all the earth and mingle with the various sects who claim to be the descendants of the Apostles, and you will look in vain for any claims to such authority. But come among the Latter-day Saints, who claim to be the original Church restored to the earth again, who claim to have the authority of the Apostleship—the same Apostleship that was exercised by Peter, James, John and the other Apostles, and you will find the authority to bind and loose on earth and it will be bound or loosed in heaven, claimed and exercised in their midst. ”

“ Thus the youth, after having given satisfaction respecting his faith, was dismissed with a solemn benediction. This custom is frequently mentioned by the ancient writers. Leo, the pope, says, “If any one be converted from heresy, let him not be baptized again; but let the influence of the Spirit, which he wanted among the heretics, be communicated to him by the imposition of the hands of the bishop.” Here our adversaries will exclaim that any ceremony, by which the Holy Spirit is conferred, is properly denominated a sacrament. ”

“ Every clergyman takes an oath of canonical obedience to his bishop when he is instituted to a benefice, or licensed to a cure.
CANONISATION. (See Beatification, and Saints.) A ceremony in the Romish Church, by which persons deceased are ranked in the catalogue of saints. It succeeds beatification. When a person is to be canonised, the pope holds four consistories. In the first, he causes the petition of those who request the canonisation to be examined by three auditors of the rota, and directs the cardinals to revise all the necessary instruments. ”

“ The question is, Will we sustain the Kingdom of God or will we not? Will we sustain the priesthood of God or will we not? This power of which I have been speaking, or more properly, this antagonistic class in our midst, flatter themselves with the idea that when it comes to the test this people will desert their leaders and cleave to something else. This is an illusory hope. The Latter-day Saints know too well the source of their blessings. We have obtained a knowledge from God respecting this work; we know that it is of more value to us than all the earth besides. ”

“ For what more can we have or desire?” He points to the catechism which he has preached “clearly and with power,” to his exposition of the Commandments, of the Our Father and the Creed; in his writings they would find explained “Holy Baptism, the [474] Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord, the keys, the ban, and absolution. We have been instructed definitely how each one is to understand his own state and calling and behave himself; whether he be a cleric or a layman, or of high or low estate. ”

“ On the contrary, Christ is the head and all true Christians make up the body. Nor are the pope and the cardinals the only successors of Peter and the Apostles. All bishops and priests are their successors. ”

“ Those supreme pontiffs, who stand in the place of Christ, if they should try to imitate his life, that is his poverty, his toil, his teaching, his cross, and his scorn of this world, or if they should think of the meaning of 'pope,' that is 'father,' or even of 'most holy,' what position in the world could be more dreadful? ”

“ For neither may we address ourselves to Almighty God, but only by Christ. In the same manner, therefore, let the laity make known all their desires to the bishop by the deacon, and accordingly let them act as he shall direct them. For there was no holy thing offered or done in the temple formerly without the priest. “For the priest’s lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth,” as the prophet somewhere says, “for he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty.” ”

“ This spiritual insight springing from the light of faith is the secret source of Catholic life, the inward principle which prompts the obedience of Catholics to the divine authority of the holy church, and from which is born the consciousness of the soul’s filiation with God, whence flow that perfect love and liberty which always accompany this divine Sonship. ”

“ Again, the Pope, who, as the head and mouth-piece of the Catholic Church, administers its discipline and issues orders to which every Catholic, under pain of sin, must yield obedience, has positively declared, "that the faithful should be excited to the reading of the Holy Scriptures: for these are the most abundant sources which ought to be left open to every one, to draw from them purity of morals and of doctrine;" ”

“ How, then, could God the Father admit one into his Kingdom, who has always refused to do his will, - who, instead of learning to do the will of God, the full doctrine of Christ, through the Catholic Church, was himself his own teacher, his own lawgiver, his own judge, in all religious matters! ”

“ He cannot himself come here and exercise his power in his own person, because it was forbidden him, and his angels who rebelled with him, in consequence of their great transgression, that they should have tabernacles of flesh. This was their punishment, that they should not have tabernacles of flesh. But from the day he entered into the serpent in the garden of Eden to the present he has sought, through the agency of man or beast, the lives of those who have held the Priesthood. In this way he has sought to exercise his power and authority among men. ”

“ Here is plainly pointed out to us as a people the future glory that God has in store for all those who receive and magnify the Priesthood. They are to receive the Father's Kingdom, and if they receive the Father's Kingdom, they are to receive all that the Father hath, for all that he hath will be given unto them. ”

“ It seems to me that none but Catholics believe in heaven, the eternal home of the saints after death, because they alone appear to understand what a saint is, as the church has proved herself to be the only power which has been able to train and canonize one. ”

“ What ground have you for saying that I ought to cast away the universal and ancient faith of the Catholic Church? he has only the answer ready: “For it is written”; and forthwith he produces a thousand testimonies, a thousand examples, a thousand authorities from the Law, from the Psalms, from the Apostles, from the prophets, by means of which, interpreted on a new and wrong principle, the unhappy soul is precipitated from the height of Catholic truth to the lowest abyss of heresy. Then with the accompanying promises, the heretics are wont marvellously to beguile the incautious. ”

“ As soon as the power of Home was once more upon the ascendant in Europe, the popes naturally appropriated to themselves the important privilege of canonization. None but martyrs were at first admitted into the category of saints, but in course of time the privilege was extended to some of those pious men who, without having sealed their testimony with their blood, had evinced the sincerity of their belief by the purity of their practice. ”

“ Catholicism perpetually appears the caricature of a great concept. Take for another example the methods of canonisation, by which he or she who dies “in the odour of piety” may pass, in the course of centuries, from the degree of venerable servant of God to the apogee of blessed saintship. ”

“ Christendom rent asunder, divided into sects and parties, the name of Jesus derided and sneered at, and the pure Gospel lost because of the propagation, for centuries, by so-called Christian ministers, of the soul-destroying and damnable heresy that God cannot or will not speak to man again from the heavens; that God will not reveal his will, send his angels, or exercise his power in the affairs of earth as much as he did in ancient days. ”

“ It is only in exceptional cases that the Church gives a public approbation to an individual Theologian, and this is done by canonization or by the still further honour of conferring on him the title of Doctor of the Church. When we speak of an Approved Author, we mean one who is held in general esteem on account of his learning and the Catholic spirit of his teaching. ”

“ Our knowledge of the inspiration and divine authority of the Scriptures as we have them—distinguished, that is, from the numerous other gospels, acts, epistles, apocalypses, and other pretended sacred writings, more or less current among and accepted by the sectaries of the early Christian ages—depends entirely on the decision of the Catholic Church, made after the death of the apostles. ”

“ Within the Catholic Church, in the mystery of the Lord's body and blood, nothing greater is done by a good priest, nothing less by an evil priest, because it is not by the merits of the consecrator that the sacrament is accomplished, but by the Creator's word, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. ”

“ As for the unction by a pope or a bishop, tonsure, ordination, consecration, and clothes differing from those of laymen-all this may make a hypocrite or an anointed puppet, but never a Christian or a spiritual man. Thus we are all consecrated as priests by baptism, as St. Peter says: "Ye are a royal priesthood, a holy nation" (1 Peter ii. 9) ”

“ The preacher continues:
"'Is IT HONEST to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or of the Lord Jesus Christ? You have the answer. You know the place which God claims for himself the 'honor which He will not give to another.' You have heard from the very words of the Roman Catholics themselves the place to which they exalt the spirits of departed men and women." ”

“ Canonization is the solemn and definitive act by which the pope decrees the plenitude of public honours. Beatification consists in permitting a cultus, the manifestations of which are restricted, and is merely a step towards canonization. ”

“ We live on the threshold of a new era; the work that God has established in our day shall never be given to another people. The priesthood which God has restored, the authority by which men can ad-minister in the ordinances of God—that priesthood shall never be taken from the earth. ”

“ The method we have pointed out or the Catholic rule produces the conviction of the truth of the church and what she teaches, and shows it to be one’s duty to seek, if he has it not, the grace that inclines the will, illumines the understanding, and regenerates the soul. ”

“ So that he regards his Church as a FACT borne witness to on all hands; a sure and stable REALITY. Over and above all which, there is an Internal evidence also of Catholic Truth, which the humble and obedient surely possess at length. (John vii. 17.) For the Catholic Church teaches that the Baptismal grace of Regeneration, if watered by prayer and holy teaching, will at length expand into a certainty of persuasion of Her sacred institutes, (Prov. iv. 18; 2 Tim. i. 12.) which heresy will labour vainly to destroy. ”

“ The Church Dignitary.—A canon is a person who possesses a prebend, or revenue allotted for the performance of divine service in a cathedral or collegiate church. Though the institute of canons as it at present exists does not go back beyond the 11th century it has a long history behind it. ”

“ One must go to the Catholic historians, especially the French, to know the details of the lives of those saints whom the Catholic Church has canonized. Of nothing is Protestant ecclesiastical history more barren than the heroism, sufferings, and struggles of those great characters who adorned the fourth and fifth centuries, as if the early ages of the Church have no interest except to Catholics. ”

“ How does the Church canonize a saint? Let us suppose some good man dies, and all his neighbors talk about his holy fife, how much he did for the poor, how he prayed, fasted, and mortified himself. All these accounts of his life are collected and sent to Rome, to the Holy Father or to the cardinals appointed by him to examine such statements. ”

“ So, without the divine authority of the Roman Catholic Church, we can hold no revealed truth on divine authority; if we hold any Catholic truths, we believe them only on human authority; and such belief is no divine faith. Acts of divine faith, therefore, consist in believing firmly what God tells us through the divine authority of his Church. ”

“ For on all sides he is styled “the staunchest upholder of evangelical doctrine,” “the patron and protector of apostolic doctrine;” and “that bishop of divine faith, full of wisdom and of zeal enkindled by the Holy Spirit.” ”