Ecumenism

“ Let us pray for the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church which is spread from one end of the earth to the other; that God would preserve and keep it unshaken, and free from the waves of this life, until the end of the world, as founded upon a rock; and for the holy parish in this place, that the Lord of the whole world may vouchsafe us without failure to follow after His heavenly hope, and without ceasing to pay Him the debt of our prayer. Let us pray for every episcopacy which is under the whole heaven, of those that rightly divide the word of Thy truth. ”

“ In pursuance of this accommodating doctrine, they dissected the Catholic faith till they reduced it to a mere skeleton; they lopped off the reality of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the divine Christian sacrifice offered in the Mass, confession of sins, most of the sacraments, penitential exercises, several of the canonical books of Scripture, the invocation of saints, celibacy, most of the General Councils of the Church, and all present Church authority; they perverted the nature of justification, asserting that faith alone suffices to justify man ”

“ But the great majority of the clergy are so saturated with the spirit of Ecclesiasticism, so wedded to the religion of the past, that their conversion seems almost hopeless. The moral sense of the average priest has been perverted. It is actually laid down in our Articles that “before justification”—i.e., for those who have not accepted the orthodox doctrine of the Atonement—“good works have the nature of sin.” And even after “justification,” good works continue to be regarded as of less importance than orthodoxy. ”

“ What has been believed by all the faithful at all times and everywhere, is truly Catholic doctrine. Any doctrines that are either wholly or at least very much opposed to the faith of the holy Fathers of the Church, are novel teach­ings, which are to be avoided. The article of faith reads not, “Out of the soul of the Church there is no salvation;” it reads, “Out of the Church (consisting of Body and Soul) there is positively no salvation for any one. ”

“ If, indeed, we could look into the mind of the majority of good Christians, p. 34and see the shape which doctrines there take, we should often find the greatest amount of heresy of the intellect co-existing with orthodoxy of heart. A statement thus drawn out at length in a Creed is the Church’s intellectual exposition, as far as it goes, of the Doctrine professed. The million may not know this; but the Church tells them—“If you hold the true doctrine, this is what, consciously or not, you are holding.” The Athanasian Creed is a statement of that truth which dwells in every Christian heart. ”

“ As we look around the ecclesiastical horizon, we find agitation and controversy on all sides. In one denomination, it is the question of the salvation of the heathen; in another, that of the virgin birth of Christ and the apostolic succession; in a third, it is the invasion of doubt as to the eternal torment of the wicked; in a fourth, the evidential value of the miracles; in a fifth, the grand questions included under the higher criticism of the Scriptures and the relative authority of reason and the Bible. ”

“ We show how all that can be learned from the New Testament by itself is in harmony with what the church proclaims herself to be, and declares true Christianity to consist in; and we show the Scripture presupposes, provides for, and points toward the church. If we take all those passages which relate to the divine eucharist, and place beside them the traditional teaching and practice of the church, we see them at once lit up with meaning and irradiating our minds with the true and Catholic doctrine. ”

“ But we go further, and assert that the practice of confession is the assumption of a sacerdotal power which was the very first point attacked by the reformation, and which is really the central point of the Catholic system. Once admit the great power of absolution, and you receive at the same time logically the doctrine of priesthood as it is held by the Church. This doctrine does not and cannot stand alone; it brings with it the church in her unity, and the necessary safeguards which divine wisdom has thrown around the exercise of so great a gift. Who has the power to forgive sins? ”

“ DOCTRINAL BASIS OR CREED. Whereas it is the duty of the followers of Christ to profess his [sic] religion before the world (Matt. x. 32) , not only by their holy walk and conversation, but also by "walking in the apostles' doctrines" (1 Cor. xiv. 32) , and bearing testimony "to the faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) , Christians have, from the earlier ages, avowed some brief summary of their doctrines or a Confession of their faith. Such confessions, also called symbols, were the so-called Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, &c., of the first four centuries after Christ. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These waverers, these men who lack force of character, whose hearts are charged with diluted Catholicism, know and believe, and by listening to sermons and religious instructions can completely convince themselves, that the Catholic Church is divine in her origin, holy in her founder, infallible in her doctrines, apostolic in her organization, glorious and wonderful in her saints. ”

“ Our adversaries grant us,—they cannot do otherwise,—that the Roman Church was at one time holy, Catholic, Apostolic, at the time when it deserved these eulogiums from St. Paul: Your faith is spoken of in the whole world. Without ceasing I make a commemoration of you. I know that when I come to you, I shall come in the abundance of the blessing of Christ. All the Churches of Christ salute you. ”

“ Need I remind you of all the other inventions by which you have deceived the people; making them believe that you have found them in the Scriptures; and that they have, moreover, the suffrage of a constant tradition within the Church? The people having now learnt to read, take the Bible in their hands, and look for your doctrines in it. Where, they ask, is the precept for auricular confession, of which the Church of Rome makes an express command, and has declared it a sacrament? Not a word of it can be found in the gospel, nor the slightest allusion to it in the letters of the apostles. ”

“ Origen, in the preface to his work De Principiis, states the principle of the Apostolate in the Church in the following pregnant terms: “There being many who fancy that they think the things of Christ, and some of them think differently from those who have gone before, let there be preserved the ecclesiastical teaching which, transmitted by the order of succession from the Apostles, remains even to the present day in the churches: that alone is to be believed to be truth which in nothing differs from the ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.” ”

“ I ask, then, what do all Protestants, save those called Unitarians, believe about Jesus Christ? They believe precisely what the Catholic Church teaches, namely, that He is true God and true man, the Person of the Word of God incarnate, conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary; that He is the Messiah, the Redeemer; that by His infinite merits alone is the salvation of mankind possible or obtainable. ”

“ If the Catholic Church is to lead all men to eternal salvation, and has, for that purpose, received from Christ her doctrine, her means of grace, and her powers, [2] what, for his part, is every one obliged to do? ”

“ It is the misery of doctrinal Church standards that they necessarily rule so much of a man's thinking. We, outside the Episcopal Church care but very subordinately about the harmony of a clergyman's views with his Church Articles; we care very much about the harmony of his teachings concerning atonement and original sin with Divine revelation and the eternal truth of things. ”

“ Who come to the conclusion that there is one God of the patriarchs, another God of the Jews, and a third of the Christian? Not the Catholic Church or her doctors, but the Protestant sects with their Colensos, their Essayists and Reviewers, and flippant commentators. The Catholic Church finds no difficulties or contradictions in the text of Scripture in any portion that relates to doctrine or morals. Her interpretation is uniform and harmonious from the first page of Genesis to the last words of the Apocalypse. ”

“ And let any one, who is led by the past custom of the Church, and by the subsequent authority of a general Council, and by so many powerful proofs from holy Scripture, and by much evidence from Cyprian himself, and by the clear reasoning of truth, to understand that the baptism of Christ, consecrated in the words of the gospel, cannot be perverted by the error of any man on earth,—let such an one understand, that they who then thought otherwise, but yet preserved their charity, can be saved by the same bond of unity. ”

“ The Episcopal form of worship was to be made compulsory, and that amongst persons who hated and abhorred it, looked upon it as something emanating more or less directly from the Evil One, and who clung all the more closely to their own barer forms of worship and narrow purity of doctrine for the very opposition they had to encounter. ”

“ We include in "ecclesiastical history" the life of the most insignificant bishop or the most wicked of popes, not the life of the wisest of philosophers or the most Christian of kings. But such a limitation is as untenable in fact as it is untrue in theory. The very stones of the spiritual temple cry out against such a profanation of the rock from which they were hewn. If the Christian religion be a matter not of mint, anise, and cummin, but of justice, mercy, and truth ”

“ It was the instinctive perception of this function of authority which made the Church insist so much on the principle 'credo ut intelligam.' The Creed represents the catholic judgment, the highest knowledge of God and the spiritual life granted to man by the Divine Revelation. Let a man put himself to school in the Church with reverence and godly fear, and his own judgment will become enlightened. ”

“ Therefore, we should not contend in regard to the reality of the incumbency whether any one, whoever he may be, living with us is the head of a particular holy church but, on the ground of his works, we ought assume that, if he is a superior, ruling over a particular holy church, then he is the superior in that particular church, and this ought to be assumed of the Roman pontiff, unless his works gainsay it, for the Saviour said: "Beware of false prophets which come unto you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they are ravening wolves. ”

“ They feel this; they feel that Catholicity is the assertion of Catholic truth, and therefore that the Church differs from them, not simply in degree, as more or less, but in kind, and directly contradicts their whole order of thought. ”

“ Let the truly faithful clergy, those who believe all without question or distinction, do their duty to the Articles of religion of their Church (the Creeds, as I have pointed out, are neutral) , and they will shut out from their Communion nearly all the intelligent piety and learning which lend it whatever dignity it still retains. Granted the canon in its integrity, and the existence of a personal Devil, and the doctrine of eternal punishment cannot be fairly disputed. Without multiplying texts, I may refer to Revelation, chap. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The worship of the Saints has done harm, not only in the case of the false reverence of the market place, but whenever it has led men to turn from the source of the saint's power to the accidentals of his life and character, and to imitate the man, rather than to get into touch with his spirit. But the words of the old Creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," express a great reality. ”

“ Yet we are told that these words do not mean anything which could forbid the elevation and adoration of the Holy Eucharist, or the private celebration of the sacrifice of the Mass.
We are moreover informed that these articles are of no authority, although confessedly they are the only creed which the Protestant Episcopal Church possesses. So, when men can thus seriously argue, and quietly look each other in the face, we despair of finding any words which cannot be misinterpreted. ”