Holy nation

“ And if there ever was a nation bound by every tie of duty and gratitude to serve Him faithfully, it is the people of this land. For what is that nation or people in all the world whom God has honoured and blessed like us? He has given to us the knowledge of His glorious Gospel, and committed unto us His Holy Word. He has laden us with temporal blessings in such abundance, as to go beyond and prevent our desires. ”

“ Have mercy, O Father of the spirits of all flesh, on all mankind. Convert all Jews, Turks and Heathens to thy truth. Bless the Catholic church; heal its breaches, and establish it in truth and peace. Preserve and defend all Christian princes, especially our sovereign and his family. Be merciful to this nation; bless the clergy with soundness of doctrine and purity of life; the council with wisdom, the magistrates with integrity and zeal, and the people with loyalty. Bless the universities with learning and holiness, that they may afford a constant supply of men fit and able to do thee service. ”

“ They who have so great a reverence for human government, who respect in the nation an ultimate irresponsible power, ought, [pg 135] if they were consistent, when they acknowledge Christ as having come in the flesh, to acknowledge His government in the kingdom which He has set up. All that his country is to the patriot, the Church is to the Christian, but in so much higher a degree, as the object for which Christ came is above the needs and cares of this present life. ”

“ They constitute a nation—not a republic, but a kingdom—so we read: “Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood; and he made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father; to him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever” (Rev. 1:6, 7) . “And madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests” (Rev. 5:10) .
A nation or kingdom of priests is equal to a nation or kingdom without priests. And so the whole Church of God is his lot, heritage, “clergy,” or priesthood. As a kingdom, not of this world, though in the world. ”

“ And that the nations of those which are saved and redeemed to God by the blood of Christ, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation, will be made kings and priests unto God, to reign forever on the earth. ”

“ God himself seemed exiled from the face of nature. Ministers of the religion of peace! let a complete oblivion veil over your dissensions, your misfortunes, your faults. Let the religion which unites you bind you by indissoluble cords to the interests of your country. Citizens of the Protestant faith! the law has equally extended its solicitude to your interests. Let the morality, so pure, so holy, so brotherly, which you profess, unite you all in love to your country and respect for its laws ”

“ And so it shall be given to the same generation not only to have restored a nation, but to have done what is yet greater, yet more sublime—an act of which the influence is incalculable, and which is to have reconciled the papacy with the civil power, to have made peace between Church and State, between the spirit of religion and the great principles of liberty. ”

“ The triumphant assertion of the spiritual significance of nationality in the latter part of the nineteenth century has made it further apparent that the forces working for religion, and especially for its Protestant forms, were stronger than the forces in opposition. The nation enters the arena of the controversy as a spiritual force, assuming as a first principle the existence of God and His supernatural government of the world. ”

“ Let us seek that every nation may experience, as we do, the blessings of religion, of peace, of a humble submission to a good government. Let us give them the Bible, which is, I may say, the corner-stone of all that we can boast as a nation; and then they may be as wise, as happy, as pious, as useful, as we are. O let the cries and tears of the heathen, let their wants and misery, let their ignorance and sin, come up before you! ”

“ But you, the rejected of nations, yourself reject all nations and forbid your sacraments to those who are not bom of your household. You are the Chosen People, whose religion is the nation and whose nationhood is religion. ”

“ Heavenly Father, in your Word you have given us a vision of that holy City to which the nations of the world bring their glory: Behold and visit, we pray, the cities of the earth. Renew the ties of mutual regard which form our civic life. Send us honest and able leaders. Enable us to eliminate poverty, prejudice, and oppression, that peace may prevail with righteousness, and justice with order, and that men and women from different cultures and with differing talents may find with one another the fulfillment of their humanity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. ”

“ Is the world, then, come to this!—that social diplomatists should sever the State from the Church, or domineer over Christian society? Is nature to separate from grace, and set up a dynasty for itself? No, no; Quis separabit? The holy alliance of Church and State constitutes the union of the soul and body—the life and vigor of Christian society! ”

“ Now if men were to engage in religion as in politics, commerce, arts; if the absolute religion, the Christianity of Christ, were applied to life with all the might of this age, as the Christianity of the church was then applied, what a result should we not behold! We should build up a great state with unity in the nation, and freedom in the people ”

“ When a king or noble visited some church, it was held that the visitor paid a high compliment to the clergy if he freed a slave or a captive before their altar. The national character of the Church deeply affected the life of the State. Its unity in a large measure gave unity to the people, and created the nation. ”

“ There will be a kingdom on the earth that will be controlled upon the same basis, in part, as that of the Government of the United States; and it will govern and protect in their rights the various classes of men, irrespective of their different modes of worship; for the law must go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and the Lord Jesus will govern every nation and kingdom upon the earth. ”

“ Extend, I humbly beseech thee, thy mercy to all men, and let them become thy faithful servants. Let all Christians live up to the holy religion they profess; especially these sinful nations. Be intreated for us, good Lord; be glorified by our reformation, and not by our destruction. Turn thou us, and so shall we be turned: O be favourable to thy people; give us grace to put a period to our provocations, and do thou put a period to our punishment. Defend our church from schism, heresy, and sacrilege, and the king from all treasons and conspiracies. ”

“ The Gospel is offered without money and without price to all flesh, and the testimony that we bear to the world is that Jesus died for all, and that through the shedding of his blood, salvation may come unto all men who will believe and yield obedience unto the requirements of his Gospel. The government which is inaugurated and established among men by the preaching of the Gospel, and the administration of its holy ordinances, is a government of peace, love and goodwill to men, prompting those who receive it to do good unto all, but especially unto the household of faith. ”

“ The time had at length arrived, when, far from the jarring scenes of Europe's strife, a nation was to come into existence, earnest in its love of human liberty, and vigorous in the execution of its purposes—a nation, which should accomplish some of the mightiest achievements of the human race; and where, under the benign influences of its political institutions, and in the Lord's due time, the gospel should be again revealed and the Kingdom of God set up among the children of men. ”

“ We believe the time to have arrived when the eternal principles of justice, mercy, and love, as exemplified in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ should be embodied in the Constitution of our nation, and applied in concrete form to every function of our Government. ”

“ Pious and suitable divines were at length selected, and sent to the mother country, to receive that authority which, it is understood, can only be transmitted directly from one to the other, and thus obtain, in order to reserve, that unity in their churches which properly belonged to a people of the same nation. ”

“ The religious minded among our people feel that in the territory committed to us there is a high and solemn trust, a national trust. We are taught that in some sense the world itself is a field, and every Christian nation acknowledges a certain responsibility for the moral condition of the globe. But [Pg 211] how much nearer does it come when it is one's own country! And the church of America is coming to feel more and more that God gave us this country not merely for material aggrandizement, but for a glorious triumph of the church of Christ. ”

“ We are assembled here from different nations, having a variety of prejudices, different kinds of education, having imbibed different feelings, notions, and ideas; and we have now come together to learn to bend our minds, to yield our opinions, and not to follow our own notions, not to cling to our peculiar whims and caprices, but to bow to the holy Priesthood, which is the rule of God upon the earth. ”

“ A Cause which all the governments and peoples of the world, with all their powers and armies, cannot promulgate and spread, one Holy Soul can promote without help or support! Can this be done by human power? No, in the name of God! For example, Christ, alone and solitary, upraised the standard of peace and righteousness, a work which all the victorious governments with all their hosts are unable to accomplish. ”

“ And because freedom and holiness and democracy are the ideals for which every Christian nation ought to strive—​and this the nations know, in their secret hearts, as well as you and I know it, dear Schoolmate—​because their ideals and ours are really the same, we have, in those ideals, the basis and groundwork, and starting point for an international brotherhood of nations ”

“ And what must the world think of the religion of a nation that consecrates churches, ordains ministers of the gospel, and sends abroad missionaries of the cross, while, in the mean time, it encourages and upholds a vice which is daily inflicting misery and death upon more than four millions of heathen? ”

“ Our most gentle Sovereign, the champion of orthodoxy, and opponent of evil doctrine, being reverentially led by this divinely uttered doctrine of peace, and having convened this our holy and Ecumenical assembly, has united the judgment of the whole Church. ”

“ The nation, often confusedly and with stammering accents, but still on the whole consistently, has borne the same witness as the Church, that as God is living and reigning there must be a law, the expression of his will, at the foundation of all human society, which priests, kings, rulers, people must discover, acknowledge, obey. ”

“ We pray also for all our brethren and fellow-citizens throughout the United States, that they may be blessed in the knowledge, and sanctified in the performance of Thy Holy Will. Preserve us in unity, and in that peace which the world cannot give. ”

“ It is the endeavour to build the Church on a basis of authority, whether external to the nation, as the Pope, in the ages in which Christendom was conceived of as a visible kingdom, or internal to the nation, as is necessary when the nation rises to the consciousness of individuality, and the assertion of the independence of the national life. ”

“ The Church which allowed itself to become little more than the organ of national religion has failed. The hope of the future lies in a truly international Church, which shall fully respect the rights of nations and recognise the spiritual function of the State, thereby obtaining the right to direct the national States along the path which leads to the Kingdom of God. ”

“ Moreover, the Bible recognizes the importance of national relations in the position it assigns to nations in the historic and prophetic development of the plan for man's redemption. Before the advent of our Saviour, God was in covenant with a nation. ”

“ The Bible, then, strongly insists upon the nation as existing by divine appointment, and it looks forward, not to the abolition of national distinctions, but to the inclusion of all nations in the family of nations. So it was well that nationality should insist upon itself within the sphere of religion in the movement that we call the Reformation. ”

“ But the Christian spirit of his government is evinced by that lofty idea which filled up the whole of his active life—by his conception of the relations of church and state, and of the utility of science for the civilization of nations—by his project of an universal empire destined to embrace and protect all civilized nations—the noble fabric of modern Christendom, of which he laid the first foundation-stone, and which reveals his enlarged views, comprehending alike his own age and succeeding times. ”

“ Who knows but that the nation now in process of forming in the bosom of our republic, from the various races of Europe, with ampler natural capacities quickened into greater activity by the political character of its institutions, is destined, in the order of events, to give to Christianity an expression more adequate and more in accordance with its universal spirit and divine origin? The church of Christ has no reverses in the movement of her [Pg 487] divine mission, and she has turned to account each race according to its gifts in the Old World from her beginning. ”

“ And since all our realm is to be admonished to imitate the example of the imperial city, we have directed everywhere our princely commands, so great is our desire to restore the peace of the Catholic faith to our commonwealth, to gain for my subjects the divine protection. For those whom the same realm contains, the same worship enlightens, what greater blessing can they have than to venerate with one mind laws of no human origin, but proceeding from the Divine Spirit? ”