Establishment of religion

“ As fast as religion passes into life,—as the spiritual nature of man begins to be recognized as the ground of legislation and society, and not merely in the miracle of sainthood,—the apparatus and imagery of the Church, its dogmas and ceremonies, grow superfluous, as what they stand for is itself present. ”

“ To the withered traditional church yielding dry catechisms, he let in nature again, and the worshiper, escaping from the vestry of verbs and texts, is surprised to find himself a party to the whole of his religion. His religion thinks for him, and is of universal application. He turns it on every side; it fits every part of life, interprets and dignifies every circumstance. ”

“ Differences of Church, albeit in each the same word, God, is spoken, have built a dividing wall between two throbbing hearts. I often ask myself uneasily: is religion indeed a blessing to mankind? Religion, which is meant to save us from our sins, how many sins are committed in thy name? ”

“ And although the favor of the God, as forfeited or gained, is still an essential feature of the story, and theology plays a vital part therein, yet the acts to which this sort of religion prompts are personal not ritual acts, the individual transacts the business by himself alone, and the ecclesiastical organization, with its priests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place. ”

“ Those who listen to New Church instructions will find, at any rate, that so far from involving a mere farrago of mystical and visionary crudities, they do actually inculcate the necessity of a practical and life-pervading religion, and that our doctrines are not, as the impression often is, a peculiar mode of dispensing with all religion—a sort of quitclaim to all genuine devotion and piety. ”

“ Suppose you get the Christians now together and fetch them up here, and ask them to tell us which is the pure religion; take, say a dozen of the leading sects, and let each one tell us which is the pure religion of Jesus Christ, and they would get up such a quarrel, such a confusion, such a hubbub, that it would be impossible to tell anything about it. ”

“ This preëminence of the object of Christian missions—namely, the formation of heroic, apostolic, and therefore Christian characters—has a wide practical importance. In these days—when there is so much temptation to dwell on the scaffolding, the apparatus, the organization of religion, as though it were religion itself—it is doubly necessary to bear in mind what true Religion is, wherein lies the essential superiority of Christianity to all the other forms of religion on the surface of the earth. ”

“ There was, thus, abroad at the opening of the Reformation a deep yearning among serious people for a religion of inward experience, a religion based not on proof-texts nor on external authority of any kind, but on the native capacity of the soul to seek, to find and to enjoy the living God who is the Root and Sap of every twig and branch of the great tree of life. ”

“ And this, my brethren, is the first character by which the religion of Christians is at once distinguished from superstitions and sects. It is the most ancient religion in the world. The first men, before an impious worship was carved out of divinities of wood and of stone, worshipped the same God whom we adore, raised up altars, and offered sacrifices to him, expected from his liberality the reward of their virtue, and from his justice, the punishment of their disobedience. The history of the birth of this religion, is the history of the birth of the world itself. ”

“ For indeed, what probability, what possibility rather, (speaking after the manner of men) is there that Christianity, Scriptural Christianity, should be again the religion of this place? That all orders of men among us should speak and live as men filled with the Holy Ghost? ”

“ They are an integral, if not an essential, part of the ceremonial, the pomp and power of an outward religion, that carnal perversion of the true idea of the Christian Church, and the legitimate consequence of beginning in the spirit and seeking to be made perfect in the flesh. ”

“ The new religion, as it has ever since been called, embodied all the precepts of the ancient faith, recognized the ancient mode of worship giving it a new sanction of the Great Spirit, and also comprehend such new doctrines as came in aptly, to lengthen out and enlarge the original system without impairing it. ”

“ As to Catholicism, the records of Councils, the invectives of the Church, show us that, from the beginning, the secondary religion in point of time, the religion of the Church, laboured vainly to suppress, and had in part to tolerate, the primary religion of childish superstitions. ”

“ It is, indeed, a consideration, creditable, in some measure, to those who admit it, and tending also to prove that christianity is calculated and designed to be an universal religion, that intelligent men of different countries and sects unite in receiving all the essential and practical doctrines of revelation. ”

“ Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. In the more personal branch of religion it is on the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the centre of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness. ”

“ And in that place, religion, religious system, its claim to overpower one, presented itself in a way of which even the least serious by nature could not be unaware. Their great church, its customs and traditions, formed an element in that esprit de corps into which the boyish mind throws itself so readily. ”

“ In the world, and in society, religion is a tabooed subject—it is only kept for Sundays and for churches. I believe your clergy know no more of the real doctrines of Christianity, those deep and mystical truths underlying the teachings of Christ, than the child at his mother’s knee. ”

“ Religion, considered in relation to society, which is either general or particular, may also be divided into two kinds: the religion of man, and that of the citizen. The first, which has neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is confined to the purely internal cult of the supreme God and the eternal obligations of morality, is the religion of the Gospel pure and simple, the true theism, what may be called natural divine right or law. ”

“ It presents us with the evolution and propagation of Christianity in its present central abodes; with the great march of civilization, and the gathering within the pale of that mighty agency for elevating human nature, and beneath the gentle yoke of the only true and beneficent religion, of the last rebellious recusants among the European family of nations. ”

“ The dogmas, the ceremonies, the morals, and the virtues, prescribed by every Religion, are visibly calculated only to extend the power or augment the emoluments of the founders and ministers of these Religions. ”

“ After this long and circuitous digression we may direct our attention now on the specific nature of Christianity as an historical religion, and consider what organization Jesus Christ gave redeemed humanity in the universal church, how he embodied the absolute, universal religion, what means he adopted for achieving the work of the moral regeneration and eternal salvation of mankind. ”

“ But since the Reformation personal religion has been increasingly outside the Catholic Church, while the religion which has remained Catholic has been increasingly a matter of institutions and politics and historic continuity. ”

“ The development of the system of Christian doctrine must become a necessity when Christianity meeting with pagan culture in the form of science is called upon to defend her claim to be the universal religion. ”

“ In keeping with this fact it is found that in those countries where the greatest changes and modifications of government and occupation have occurred, there have the religions undergone the greatest modification to fit the new order of things. If it were the religion that determined the matter, civilization and morals would be immovable, and legislation would revolve around, the guidance of the Church. ”

“ Did the servants of Christ know what it is to live in Reformed Churches with unreformed spirits, under strict order with loose hearts, how formes of Religion breed but formes of Godlinesse, how men by Church-discipline, learne their Church-postures, and there rest; they would pray as hard for purity of heart, as purity of Ordinances. ”

“ Even with a view to the ascendancy which a more simple and purified religion may ultimately obtain under an improved and free constitution, it is better that a religious feeling of some sort should exist. ”

“ Finally, Modern Theology has taken up the work of both of the foregoing epochs by defending the fundamental dogmas of Religion against modern agnostics and heretics, and at the same time carefully attending to the development of doctrine within the Church. ”

“ True religion, the highest religion, is possible beyond the walls of churches and convents. The so-called secular employments of business and politics, of home and school, may be conducted in a spirit of lofty consecration to the Eternal, and so carried on, may, in their way, minister to the highest welfare of humanity. ”

“ Such being the facts, which cannot be successfully refuted, we must believe that the Christian religion, instead of being of Divine authenticity, as popularly claimed, is purely and entirely of human origin, and that all its teachings relative to a future state are but priestly inventions, concocted for the purpose of enslaving the ignorant masses. ”

“ And whereas it hath been the good will and pleasure of Almighty God, to grant unto this nation a glorious and blessed reformation of the true Christian religion, from the errors, idolatry, and superstition of popery and prelacy, and there withall to bless us with the power and purity of heavenly doctrine, worship, discipline, and government in the Church of God, according to His will revealed in the Holy Scriptures ”

“ On the other hand, the exclusive point of view of the external authority of the church, without a corresponding comprehension of the nature of the operations of the Holy Spirit within the heart of every one of the faithful, would make the practice of religion a pure formalism, and would render obedience servile, and the action of the church sterile. ”

“ The conception of religion as a divine institution, of the church as a living organism, as a teaching and governing body, as the kingdom of God, placed in the world as the medium of divine grace and of the divine government in human affairs, is really entertained by no class of Protestants, but disdainfully rejected by all as spiritual despotism, Romish usurpation, or Popish superstition. ”

“ Its sacraments will be great works of reform, institutions for the comfort and the culture of men. Let us have a church in which religion, goodness towards men and piety towards God, shall be the main thing; let us have a degree of that suited to the growth and demands of this age. In the middle ages, men had erroneous conceptions of religion, no doubt ”

“ All the world knows and honours Him, and civilised nations have built themselves upon the religion He founded. A great Church calls itself by His name, and a mighty kingdom, known as Christendom, owes allegiance to His faith. ”

“ Notwithstanding departures from the ideal the services of the Church often represent voluntary worship; such worship, however, has been the rule in all religions from the earliest times to the present day and does not in itself distinguish Christianity from any other religion. ”

“ For in excluding everything extraneous to the actual subject-individual, and requiring religion to be self-evident and necessarily true, it excludes as superfluous and irrelevant, history, tradition, authority, revelation, as ordinarily conceived of, ecclesiastical ordinance, priestly ministration, mediatorial function, vicarious satisfaction, and even the operation of Deity as subsisting without and apart from the man, all of which are essential elements in the accepted conception of religion. ”

“ We may suppose a state religiously constituted—that is to say, wherein the gospel and Christianity are not only the rule of life and the religion of individuals, but, besides, the foundation of legislation, the worship adopted in the manifestations of public piety ”

“ No facts are insignificant which bring to an issue the general value of local religion—or the assumption of any particular [140] Church to direct the conscience of the world—or the amount of liberty within such a Church left on questions which concern the faith and practice of thousands of its members. ”

“ Were we truly reasonable human beings, we should perhaps provide openly and as a matter of course within the Christian frame widely different types of ceremonial religion, suited to different levels of mind and different developments of the religious consciousness. To some extent this is already done: traditionalism and liberalism, sacramentalism, revivalism, quietism, have each their existing cults. ”

“ If the Christian religion be a matter, not of mint, anise, and cummin, but of justice, mercy, and truth; if the Christian religion be not a priestly caste, or a monastic order, or a little sect, or a handful of opinions, but the whole congregation of faithful men dispersed throughout the world; if the very word which of old represented the chosen "people" is now to be found in the "laity" ”

“ In an age which settled back upon the Scriptures as the only basis of authority in religious faith and practice, they boldly challenged that course as a dangerous return to a lower form of religion than that to which Christ had called men and as only legalism and scribism in a new dress. ”

“ XXI. The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically, that the Religion of the Catholic Church is the only true Religion. (Apostolic Letters Multiplices inter, 10th June, 1851.)
XXII. The obligation which binds Catholic teachers and authors applies only to those things, which are proposed for universal belief as dogmas of the faith, by the infallible judgment of the Church. ”