"Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing."
Dear heart! and is it thus thou didst lamentHis absence for a day? How differentThy grief from mine! Absent from Him for years,I sorrowed not: and only found my tearsIn finding Him. Then, to my bitter cost,I knew the priceless treasure I had lost!
{458}
Christmas comes but once a year;'Tis come at last, O glorious day!Let every cross that mortals bearBe for the moment flung away."Yes," says the cricket from his holeBeside the flame-lit kitchen hearth,"It is a time for every soulTo give himself to joy and mirth,""Christmas comes but once a year,"Returns the timid pantry mouse."The cat has told me not to fear;To-night I'll scamper through the house."So, blow ye winds, and you, Jack Frost,Come in the dark and do your worst;How wild soe'er the night may be,It shall not stir my Christmas Tree.Then let us dance and laugh and sing,And form in all one happy ring;The Yule log never burned so bright.Hurrah! hurrah! 'tis Christmas night.It is a time to seek the poor,And bid them welcome round our door;The alms we give, to Christ are given.And hung on Christmas Trees in heaven.The Christmas Tree is evergreen:The hand of time may change the scene,The child a gray-haired man may be,But memory keeps the Christmas Tree.W.S., Jr.
{459}
[Footnote 144: Trials of a Mind in its Progress to Catholicism, etc. By L. Stillman Ives, LL.D. Boston. 1865.The Path which led a Protestant Lawyer to the Catholic Church. By Peter H. Burnett. New York and Cincinnati: Benziger Brothers. 1866The Convert; or, Leaves from my Experience. By O. A. Brownson. New York. 1857.Apologia pro Vita Sua: being a Reply, etc. By John Henry Newman, D.D. New York. 1865.]
It is a fact, to which the Catholic heart cannot recur without emotions of the deepest gratitude, that Christ's holy church is ever gathering some of the select out of the mad waves of heresy and schism around us into the safety of her maternal bosom. It is a fact, too, which every conscientious and thoughtful Protestant must view with feelings of disquietude and insecurity, that men of unimpeachable piety and learning are thus ever leaving the external wilderness where they have walked with him, and seek and find true refuge in the Catholic ark of God.
The number of these converts it seems almost impossible to estimate. There can be but little doubt, however, that it far exceeds the reckonings of the denominations out of which they come, and equally surpasses our own most sanguine calculations. Reliable statistics show us that within the last fifty years no less than forty-one clergymen of the American Episcopal Church alone have laid down the honors and emoluments they there enjoyed, and have espoused poverty and insignificance with the Catholic faith. [Footnote 145] Many of these were men of eminence in their former sphere of action, and one, at least, held the highest and most responsible position which his co-religionists could bestow upon him. Some of them have risen since their conversion to posts of ecclesiastical dignity and power. Others have died and rest with God. All of them, with but few exceptions, have remained faithful, and have endorsed, in life and in death, the wisdom and sincerity of that step which brought them, after many wanderings, into the apostolic fold.
[Footnote 145: See Church Review, July, 1860, p. 254. There have been several conversions from the Episcopal clergy since that date.]
How far the clerical ranks of other sects of Protestants in the United States have been invaded by God's converting grace, no data that we can command are able to determine. Our personal recollections of their various ministers, who at one time and another have laid down their own will for the will of Christ, lead us to the belief that the number from each will fall little short of that contributed by the denomination to which we first referred. And as for laymen, they have come to us from every known religious name and creed, and full as often from no name and creed at all, until the throng has swelled from hundreds into tens of thousands, and gone beyond the possibility of our enumeration or discovery. [Footnote 146]
[Footnote 146: Judging from the statistics of the past few years in the dioceses of New York, the number of converts in the United States must exceed 30,000.—Ed. C.W.]
Moreover, this work is on the increase. Year by year, almost, the church is doubling on herself in these triumphs of her toil. Where individuals once tremblingly isolated themselves from old associations, and cut the vital cord of earthly friendships and familiarities by submitting to her guidance, now families and communities fly together to her arms for safety; while those upon whose personal decisions her labors and the grace of God seemed to make no impression, have ceased to persecute and almost ceased to ban those who have followed{460}her, and recognize conversion from Protestantism to Catholicity as a change equally legitimate and rational with conversion from idolatry to God. Nay, more: the very brain of Protestant America itself is sloughing off the narrow coils of illogical and degrading error which three hundred years of folly and of falsehood had woven round it under the name of Christian doctrine; and, in spite of its self-conceived antagonism between "Rome or Reason," is drinking in long draughts of Catholic theology, and pouring out broadcast over this great hemisphere the fundamental tenets of the Roman faith as the indisputable truths of human reason and divine philosophy.
The tide of popular prejudice thus turning, and the way thus opened to the American intellect by the instrumentality of those who claim to be her adversaries, it is no arrogation of prophetic foresight to predict that the progress of the church in this country must, in the future, be rapid beyond all precedent, and that the age may not be far distant when this vast "Continent of Mary" shall, with one heart and under one name, obey the Holy Spouse of Mary's Son.
When such realities are around us and such possibilities before us, the study of those mental and moral changes in the individual by which all has been done that is done, and by which also all that shall be done must be accomplished, cannot be uninteresting or unprofitable. No religious subject of so much practical importance to non-Catholics is, probably, so little understood among them; and of none have more false definitions been given or more inaccurate theories been entertained. Even Catholics themselves have generally failed in their attempts to realize the logical processes through which the Protestant mind must, consciously or unconsciously, find its way before it can receive Catholic truth with the dear, living faith of a Catholic heart. It is to correct these errors and to scatter these difficulties, as well as to justify seeming inconsistencies, and above all, to assist, if possible, the wavering minds of some who long for a light which they know not how or where to find, that we devote these pages to a discussion of those changes in the human soul which make up the actual conversion from Protestantism to the Catholic Church.
The materials for this discussion are both abundant and satisfactory The first of the four works upon our list is from the pen of Dr. Ives, who was for more than twenty years the Protestant Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of North-Carolina, and one of the acknowledged leaders of the High church party in the United States. It is a concise and luminous rehearsal of the reasons which led him to abandon his exalted ecclesiastical station for that of a mere layman in the Catholic church, and presents a vivid picture of the "trials" and perplexities which extreme Tractarians must inevitably undergo, when the incompatibility of their position with their principles is once fully apprehended. The second is a voluminous and formal treatise on the rules of evidence as applicable to revelation, and on those fundamental axioms which underlie all legislation, human or divine. It is, obviously, what the title-page professes, the work of a legal mind which views the whole question of religion as open two, and able to abide the most thorough tests of reason and philosophy, and brings the great issues which it raises, in every case, to actual demonstration for denial. The writer, now a Catholic, was formerly a member of the so-called "Disciples;" a sect which lies on the outskirts of Christianity, and from which to Catholicity the path must have been almost as long and devious as that from infidelity itself. The author of the third is Dr. Brownson, one of the mostpositiveof modern men; whose range of doctrinal experience has reached from Deism to an ultramontane Catholicism, and who in every phase of his religious life, has{461}been a living power, dealing with realities, and stripping all imaginations and delusions from the realities with which he dealt. The last is Dr. Newman's, than whom no one knows better, none can describe so well, thatVia Dolorosawhich all converts tread? To these, if we would, the works of Manning, Wilberforce, and others might be added, each a reflection of the changes which the inner lives of their writers underwent in the great struggle after ultimate, unquestionable truth; while, beyond even these, the inexhaustible volume of experience remains; a volume in which the dark things of these books find an infallible interpreter, and on whose hidden leaves the hand of God has written the same history of which these human pages are the reflection and the shade.
It is not an unreasonable hope, that, out of such materials, we may be able to construct an accurate definition of that work of grace which, in the convert's memory, has overshadowed and embraces all other gifts of God.
Before proceeding, however, with our examination of that change, by which alone the word "conversion" can be properly defined, it will be necessary to consider and refute those definitions of it which are false. Conversion is a transformation in itself so simple, yet involving so many and such vast collateral changes in the inner and exterior man—it is at once so definite in its own nature, and yet as widely and, in point of time, so intimately knit together with its antecedents and its consequences, that a clear view of it apart from these is almost impossible, until, by a process of negation, it is separated from its surroundings, and stands out alone, defined as well by what did isnotas by what itis. And this is, above all, important, when we desire to present this subject to the understandings of non-Catholics. The lines between their religious bodies are so faintly drawn, and depend so much upon the social and political circumstances by which the members of those bodies are controlled, that conversion from one denomination to another is not regarded as reaching to the very marrow of the spiritual being, or compassing the salvation or destruction of the soul. Such changes are often matters of taste or policy or friendship; sometimes of personal pride and pique, and sometimes, but more rarely, of actual principle; though even this principle never rests upon higher ground than individual points of faith or systems of ecclesiastical organization. It thus seems almost impossible that, left to their own definitions of that to which we give the technical name "conversion," persons outside the church could ever arrive at an appreciation of its extent and power. And this is especially true in this country, where the Catholic Church externally occupies the position of a sect among sects; the most numerous, perhaps, certainly the most prosperous and aggressive of them all, but in their view ranking as but one of many forms of Christianity, and but one of many branches of Christ's earthly fold. No care that we can take can be superfluous, no precision we can use can be in vain when we attempt to define the position of the church on any question which interests our age, or to delineate the relations which she occupies to that great chaos of religions in the midst of which she dwells. At the risk, therefore, of consuming time unnecessarily for some, we feel it none the less our duty to leave upon the minds of others no doubt upon this subject which we can remove, and no obscurity around it which it is in our power to thrust away.
(1.) First, then, the adoption of the articles of the Catholic faith into the individual's creed is not conversion.
The idea of conversion entertained by nine-tenths of Protestants is precisely that which we have here denied. It has hardly ever been our lot to meet one, either in print or conversation, whose arguments and reasonings with{462}us did not presuppose this definition to be true. It is very natural, for the reasons before mentioned, that this should be so. From Unitarian to Methodist, from Methodist to Anglican, is but a journey from one set of doctrines to another. The same grand underlying features of Christianity remain. 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. Of how much petty persecution this mistake has been the cause, and how many parishes and pastors it has kept in perpetual commotion during the past thirty years, hundreds of the unfortunate victims can remember.
Yet no definition of conversion could be more totally erroneous. Belief in Catholic doctrines is often chronologically precedent to a real conversion; but it is not always so. It certainly operates as a powerful antagonist of prejudice, and determines the interest and sympathies of the believer toward the church. Candor, humility, and earnestness being equal, such a believer is far more likely to become a Catholic than another who does not believe. But, for all that, such faith does not result in conversion as its necessary, scarcely as its probable, consequence. We have in our memory, just now, a clergyman who has for years openly professed his firm belief in transubstantiation, purgatory, and other equally extreme Catholic articles of faith. He goes into our churches, and adores the holy eucharist upon our altars. He venerates the Mother of our Lord, and supplicates God's mercy on the faithful dead. In all these he is perfectly sincere, and of the truth of what he believes, and of the piety of what he does, he is as well convinced as any Protestant can ever be. Still he is not a Catholic, and we are almost satisfied he never will become one. Years have found him and left him as we find him now, and other years will probably work no change upon him in the nature of conversion. Nearly the same maybe said of Dr. Pusey. His symbolism in many, if not in most, particulars is Catholic. His tastes and sympathies are Catholic. Those who have been his nearest and dearest friends are Catholics. If similarity of doctrine were all that constitutes conversion, the venerable father of Tractarianism would long ere this have found the rest we tremble now lest he should never find. But his life rolls away, and years and honors multiply upon his head; yet who can say that he is nearer than in the distant and more hopeful days, when his, now our, "beloved" struggled and prayed with him for the light of God? The reasons for this are perfectly apparent to us, and will be reached and dealt with by-and-bye. At present it suffices, by these statements and illustrations, to have made it clear that belief in Catholic doctrine is not conversion to the Catholic Church. No, not if a man can tell over on his fingers, one by one, the definitions of the councils and the traditions of the fathers, and pronounce acredoover every one of them, is he necessarily a Catholic, nor must he have passed through that vital transformation without which there never has been and never can be a true conversion.
(2.) Second: the adoption of our extreme ritualism in worship is not conversion.
There is but one denomination of Protestants among whom this false definition is likely to obtain. That one is the Episcopal; and by large numbers of its members (if we may judge their opinions from their words), it is actually believed that a fondness for rites and ceremonies is evidence of Catholicity. Some years ago the church of the Holy Innocents, and the{463}Madison Street mission chapel of New York, and the church of St. James the Less, Philadelphia, were, by this class of persons, uniformly regarded and denounced as Romanizing; as the church of St. Albans in this city and some others are to-day. Candles and flowers upon the altar, crosses and paintings on the walls, the bowed head at the name of Jesus, the cassock-skirted coat, and other innumerable minutiae, are to these people indubitable evidence of Popery, and have often served, as they do now, for a sufficient cause of congregational disunion and parochial decline. It would seem foolish, in a discussion like the present, to notice an error so shallow and so reasonless as this, were it not for the magnitude of its results, and were it not, also, that so many of these very ritualists themselves imagine that, in mimicking Catholic forms and ceremonies, they have secured in Anglicanism all that the Catholic Church can give.
But ritualism is not Catholicism: nor is Catholicism so vitally connected with ritualism that it may not exist in the entire fulness of its powers and graces independent of external magnificence and show. St. Antony in his desert, St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar, were as true Catholics as St. Ambrose in his basilica, or St. Leo on his throne. Even the public worship of the church, when stripped to its essentials, is almost devoid of any outward sign or sound that can properly be characterized as ceremonial. And the same priest who stands today before the gorgeous altar of a metropolitan cathedral amid clouds of incense, will start to-morrow on a year's missionary journey through the wilderness, with all the "pomp and circumstance of Romanism" contained within the narrow limits of his carpet-bag. Ritualism is a means used by the church to accomplish certain ends; and so used, because the example of the divinely instituted Jewish church, and her own ages of experience, have convinced her that by it those ends can most surely be attained. But it is no more an essential element of her being than royal robes are of the being of a king; and the weak caricature of her stately ceremonial, in which some Protestant experimentalists indulge, converts them into Catholics as little as the tinsel crown and sceptre of the stage gives royal birth and power to the actor in a play.
(3.) Third: union with the visible body of the Catholic Church is not conversion.
This is the definition which most of those who are born Catholics would give. Unconscious, as they happily are, of the religious state of mind in which pure Protestantism rears its children, it is difficult for them to imagine that a man can be, or can become, nominally Catholic for any other reason than the simple one that binds them to their faith; and this habitude of thought leads them inevitably to confound the outward consequence of an internal change with that internal change itself.
They also are in error. External union with the church is the best possibleprimâ facieevidence of conversion, but it alone is not conversion. That men have came into the body of the Catholic Church from motives of business, or of politics, or of family sympathy there can be no doubt. But in these cases there was no real conversion. The deep, radical changes which so thoroughly unmake and then remake the spiritual man, never could have taken place in such souls as these. Their outward act was perfect, their visible communion with us was all we could demand; but in their inmost heart they were as much Protestants as ever; and, when they went, acted on the same principles as when they came. Such examples are not numerous, it is true; but still they are sufficient to demonstrate that "joining the church" is not conversion, and to deny the minor premise of those who argue the church's incapacity to satisfy our nature from the fact that these have tried her and found her wanting.{464}When one man can be cited who, in his soul of souls, has undergone the work of grace which we now pass on to consider, and who, in calmness and in piety, and not in rashnessor in mortal sin, has voluntarily apostatized, and who, in life and in death, has adhered to his apostasy, and has died in the confident and humble hope of heaven; then, and not till then, can such an argument be worth our while to meet.
The change we call "conversion" thus residing neither in the transfer of ecclesiastical relations to the church, nor in the growth of ritualism into the external conduct, nor yet even in the adoption of Catholic doctrine as the individual's creed, must have its sphere of action in regions deeper and more fundamental than we have yet explored. The church of God looks with the eyes of God upon the souls of men. "Give me thine heart," is her, is his demand, confident that if this be given all else is also gained. The change she seeks in those whom God would make her children is a change, not of opinion, not of tastes, not of behavior, but ofheart and will; a change which reaches to the citadel of life, and thoroughly and permanently converts the man. With nothing less than this can she be satisfied. On nothing less than this can she securely build.
And this change is conversion.
Protestantism, so far forth as it is a religious system, is based upon two principles, from which have been developed all its influence and power, and to which may be traced the numerous and immeasurable evils whereof for many ages it has been a fruitful source. The first of these is: That the church, founded by our Lord, is aninvisiblechurch, to which every man who believes he is saved by Christ isby that sole beliefunited, whatever else his creed and religious observance may be. The second is: That every man, by his own reason working on the text of Scripture, is able to, and must determine for himself what his religious faith and moral code shall be. The inevitable consequence of the first principle is—that the doctrine and moral law of one man, so long as they embrace the Saviourship of Christ in any sense whatever, are matters in which his brother Christian can have no concern. The inevitable consequence of the second is—that the self-eliminated creed and rule of observance of each Christian are as correct and reliable as those of any or even of all others, and will be the only standard of his judgment at the bar of God.
This first principle and its logical deductions have resulted in simple religious individualism. "The communion of saints," in that sense in which St. Paul describes it, as a Christian society, whose members mutually depend upon each other, think the same things, believe the same things, speak the same things, preserving the unity of the Spirit as well as the bond of peace, has been rendered practically impossible; while for it has been substituted an ideal "Christian union" which consists either in the abnegation of all distinctive doctrines as mere human opinions, or in the toleration of them all as different methods of expressing the same religious truth. And even this "union" which might be possible if pride and self-will were eradicated from the heart of man, has become so far from a reality, that the very theories on which it is based have sected and bisected the original divisions of Protestant Christianity, until from five they have become five hundred, with every prospect of a similar multisection to the end of time.
This principle has done more. It has entered the bodies of the sects themselves, and repelled member from member, minister from flock. It has destroyed, in the collective sect, all sense of responsibility for the faith and conduct of its members; and, in the members, all sense of responsibility for their personal belief and morals to the sect at large. It has overturned{465}every tribunal established for the preservation of Christian discipline, and has abrogated "church authority" as wholly incompatible with purity of conscience and religious freedom. It has reduced the conditions of admission to the ecclesiastical fellowship to "the minimum of Christianity" and has abolished "terms of communion" and "professions of faith" as utterly subversive of denominational integrity. [Footnote 147] In this way it has made each man not onlyde jure, butde factoa spiritual autocrat, and has erected him into an isolated, independent religious body, depriving the sect of all real organic life, and degrading it from a church with head and members to a mere aggregation of discordant particles.
[Footnote 147:VideNew Englander for July, 1866, pages 477 to 487 et seq.]
The individual, being thus debarred of all external aid, is thrown upon his own resources for religious guidance. There is no living man upon the earth from whom he can receive an an authoritative enunciation of eternal truths. There is no set of men upon whose teachings he can rely as more perfect for more ultimately certain than his own. The common mouth of Christendom utters no voice that puts to rest the questions of his soul. All stand, like him, upon one level plain of human fallibility; a fallibility which no diffusion, however universal, can ever make infallible. All, whether singly or collectively interrogated, can answer his appeal for light only by giving their own human judgments in exchange for his.
And hence arises the necessity for that second principle on which, as well as on the first, the foundations of Protestant Christianity were laid; a principle which recognizes the intrinsic individualism that the first produces, and perfects it by removing from man every hope but one. That one hope is the Bible; a dead and speechless book; a body whose spirit hides itself in the interminable labyrinth of languishes long since unspoken; a star which gathers its reflected rays through paraphrases and translations as chromatic as the intellects that framed them or the pens that wrote them down.
"The Bible, and the Bible only," has been the banner-cry of Protestantism from the dawn of its existence. The first work of Luther, after his apostasy, was the publication of such parts of the New Testament as he considered best suited to his purposes; and the great aim of his successors, in all countries and in all ages, has been to flood the world with copies of the Scriptures, in such guise and such proportions as should soonest and most surely undermine the principles of church authority, and establish their version of the Bible as the sole acknowledged teacher of the truth of God. From the beginning, also, as a part of the same work, they have denied that God has furnished to mankind other interpreters of his revelation than the unaided intellect of man, and have declared the private judgment of the individual to be his all-sufficient and his only guide to the true meaning of the written law. It will not, therefore, nay, it cannot be disputed, that every man to whom the name of Protestant belongs, depends entirely for his knowledge of the truth which God commands him to believe, and of the laws which God commands him to obey, upon what he can learn, unled by note or comment, from that collective translation of ancient books to which he gives the name "[Greek text]," or "The Bible."
Now, were it certain that the Bible contained the entire canon of holy scripture, with every book and paragraph complete; were it certain that that Scripture was in every syllable the utterance of God; were it certain that no error in translation had modulated the clear voice which spoke from heaven; were it certain that no pride of self-opinion, no prejudice of early education, no ignorance of the true meaning and construction of the language, were able to distort the{466}spiritual vision; then might this principle, to some extent, subserve the purposes which Protestants allege it to fulfil. But, while no evidence, by them admissible, can determine beyond cavil the completeness of their canon, while divine inspiration remains a fact beyond the power of human testimony to establish; while that confusion of tongues which the centuries of barbarian incursion wrought has rendered more or less questionable all translations from ancient Greek or Hebrew to a modern dialect; while human pride and prejudice have lost none of their hold upon the heart of man; it is not in our nature to believe that God has left us to such a guidance as this principle asserts, and still holds us responsible for the truth of our opinions and the purity of our conduct at the peril of our eternal damnation. And thus each of these principles practically affirms and corroborates the other, and both unite to overthrow all definite revealed religion, and to prostrate at the feet of human reason thedictaof the everlasting God.
The state of heart and will which these principles engender no lengthened paragraphs are needed to describe. Previous to the age of discretion, the Protestant child, in spite of these principles, is compelled to recognize, in religion, an authority external to himself. His parents, his masters, his catechisms are, in his sight, equally with the Bible, the teachers of divine truth; and, by their aid and influence, he arrives at maturity with certain more or less distinctly formed notions of Christian doctrine, and with certain rules of life grained into his character by the long course of years. At this period he is emancipated, in theory, from all external direction, and placed under the sole guidance of his reason and the Bible. That sacred book he opens. It has no voice to him of its own. Its pages offer to him the same words as to all men before him; but those words contain no meaning independent of the meaning that he gives them. It places before him the formal statement of all doctrine; but teaches him, as absolutely and infallibly true, no one specific dogma which, whether consistent with his present views or not, he must receive. That which interprets, not that which is interpreted, is ever the real teacher; and, in his case, his privates judgment, trained and biassed by the prejudices and conclusions of a lifetime, utters the only voice and defines the only doctrine which it is possible for him to hear or to receive. The Scripture does not teach him new and otherwise undiscoverable truth. It rather confirms and expresses the truth, which is already accepted and declared. The oracle, whose utterance is the indisputable law, speaks from the depths of his interior being. The Bible is a mere "phrase-book," in which it finds the words and symbols fitted to convey its thought. The divine authority dwells in theman, not in thevolume. He holds the sacred book before the mirror of his reason. The image it presents, however imperfect or deformed, becomes to him the truth of the Eternal Word. He casts the pure wheat of God between the millstones of his human judgment and his human loves. The grist they grind is all the bread he has whereon to feed his soul. It is not difficult to see that, by the process of investigation, every man must become the worshipper of a God who is as truly his own handiwork as is the brazen idol of the Hindoo or the living Buddha of Sha-Ssa.
Some of the better class of Protestant minds have perceived this. A few of the most fearless have declared it, and received, in consequence, the name of "infidels" from their less logical and less consistent brethren. "Belief," says Mr. Emerson, "consists in the acceptance of the affirmations of the soul; unbelief in their denial." The English language might be exhausted and no better definition given of Protestant belief than this. When once the soul—that is, the reason,{467}the affections, and the will—when once thesoulaffirms; when once those affirmations areexpressed in Scripture phraseology, no Protestant can venture to pronounce them ultimately untrue without destroying the hold principle on which his own faith has been built. That many have done so is only evidence that the grace of God within them rebels against this degradation of a Gospel which the Eternal Son died in order to inaugurate, and which his church has battled earth and hell for fifty generations in order to preserve.
The office which the heart and will perform in this religious work is simply one ofchoice. The element of submission to divine authority is only so far exercised as consists in the acceptance of Scripture phrases as the vehicle of individual conclusions. To no extent is theformal, detailed ideaindebted for existence to other than the intellect, the affections, the will of the believer. Hechooseshis dogma for his precept according to the dictates of his reason; receiving this, denying that, on the sole ground of their consistency with preconceived ideas; and, anon, discarding old faiths and adopting new as time and circumstances operate upon his heart and mind. And it is nothing singular to see him wandering from Tractarianism down to Unitarianism—from Calvinism to Universalism—and back again, stopping perchance at Methodism or Congregationalism on the way; clinging to his Bible all the while, triumphantly pointing to this paragraph as proving that he is right at last, and as triumphantly declaring the reverse when a few steps forward have landed him upon the other side. All this and more—unless, indeed, his inner life lays at the door of his professions the charge of conscious falsehood, and underneath his soul is bent the arm of an authority whose very existence his theory has totally denied.
No truer definition, no better example ofheresythan such a spectacle affords, has any age of Christianity presented. "[Greek text]" meant "choice." The grand distinction between the heretic and the Christian resides in this: that the one chooses doctrine to suit himself, the other receives doctrine on the authority of God. That Protestantism is choice—nay, that it logicallycompelschoice to every individual in it, cannot admit a question. It is, therefore, heresy; not, perhaps, in the most odious sense of the word, but still in that strict etymological signification which is the best clue to the appropriate application of the name. Like all other heretics, of whatever sect, the Protestant relies upon himself. He is his own Bible-maker, his own doctrine-monger, his own law-giver. Faith and theology and moral law are only the result of his own private judgment and divine command, moulded and digested into one confused and contradicting mass of good and evil.
It is to his deliverance from this spiritual state that the nameconversionalone properly belongs.
Catholicity, on the other hand, is also based upon two principles, which are the logical postulates of its existence, and whose necessary developments will account for the immeasurable contrast which its severe and holy tranquillity presents to the seething and tumultuous incoherency around it. The first of these is this: that the truths with which alone revealed religion deals, are in their natureabovehuman reason, and though nevercontradictingit, cannot by it be estimated, comprehended, or discerned, but rest upon the sole veracity of a revealing God. The second is: that God has chosen and appointed, as the medium of this unerring revelation, a visible, organized society, founded by Jesus Christ, presided over by the Holy Ghost, perpetuated through all ages by his own impregnable decree; and that this society is the Catholic Church. The inevitable consequence of the first principle is: that revealed truth, as such, is ultimately and infallibly true, and whether or not consistent{468}with private judgment, prejudice, and present conviction, must be received and heartily believed. The inevitable consequence of the second is: that whatever the church teaches as revealed truth, is so revealed, is therefore ultimately true, and must be rested on implicitly as the infallible utterance of God.
The result of this first principle has been that the wonderful, and often ludicrous, admixture of divine and human truth, which may be found in the religion of many Protestants, is utterly impossible to Catholics. With all the questions of natural religion, as distinguished from revealed; with all the theorems of science and of art; with the dark mysteries of nature and the still darker mysteries of man; nay, even with those inferences from divine truth which make up systems of theology, reason is competent to deal. It may pierce the glittering nebulae of the Milky Way; it may fathom the recesses of the ocean and cleave the crystal bowels of the world; it may climb the dizzy heights of intellectual philosophy; it may conquer the vast problems of political and social happiness. But here its journey ends. When it stands beside that boundless sea which rolls between the finite and the infinite, it finds no bark to bear it outward. Of all that lies beyond, its eye, its ear, its touch remains insensible. It can but sit down on the hither shore and wait for light—the light of revelation. [Footnote 148]
[Footnote 148: The able writer of this article certainly does not intend to deny the competence of reason to judge of the evidence of revelation, or to judge that any proposition evidently contradictory to reason cannot be a revealed truth.—Ed. Catholic World.]
Reason is limited from above. Revelation is limited from below. In the mysteries of God, in the supernatural, and in questions offaith, her voice is law: and where it is law, it is absolute, unconditional, indisputable. Free as the thought of God is man's thought everywhere but there. There he must put his shoes from off his feet and listen and obey. The ground he treads is holy. The voice he hears is that which spoke of old out of the burning bush. He cannot gainsay God.
And thus it is that, practically, Catholics are so free in all matters except those pertaining to religion. The line is drawn so clearly and so definitely between whatisand whatis notof faith, that not in one mind in ten thousand is there ever the slightest doubt as to what must be received and what may be disputed. The consolation given by this simple maxim: "If God has not revealed it, I need not believe it; but if God has declared it, whether or not I understand it, it is surely true."—when once incorporated into the guiding principles of the heart, as in the case of every true Catholic it entirely is, repays the soul for those dark hours of Protestant doubting and perplexity, by contrast with which it can alone be truly valued.
The result of the second of these principles has been the perfect unity of Catholics in doctrine and in morals. The voice of the church is the voice of God. She is a living teacher. She does not hide her truths in languages whose meaning sages only can unfold. She speaks to every manin his own vernacular, and proposes to him not only theformularies, butthe exact ideaswhich make up the Christian faith. She is not confined to general statements, under whose vague phraseology notions the most opposite may be concealed. She enters into all the infinite details which every proposition of divine truth embraces, and prints it in the same unvarying form upon the souls of men. With the millions who are gone before she has thus labored. With the millions who are yet alive she is thus laboring to-day. And all, in their submission to her teaching, have found that perfect concord of doctrine which the gospel promised to the faithful flock of Christ, and testify to the eternal wisdom of that God who placed his church upon the earth to set at naught the foolishness of man.
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In a religion such as this there can be no room forchoice. To the church heresy is evermore a name of execration and of horror. The heart and will of her disciples have but one exercise, and that is submission. Unconditionally, unquestioningly, unprotestingly, they bow before her voice and echo its decrees. Reason is quiescent. Where it cannot comprehend, it passes by. Faith grasps the mystery and lays it on the heart to be its law for ever. The soul has but one inquiry for every dogma, for every precept: "Teacher of God, what hast thou spoken?" The teacher answers and the soul obeys.
Such is Catholicity. It is the antithesis of Protestantism. Whatever similarity may exist in certain of their doctrines, in their ultimate, essential natures they are simple opposites. The void between them is as vast as that through which the First-born of the morning fell; the dividing lines as sharp and as precipitate as the high cliffs which bound the tides of Acheron. That "via media," along which the easy traveller may walk secure, rejoicing in the sunlight of both earth and heaven, is a fond, foolish dream. The church knows but two modes of existence in reference to herself, submission and rebellion; and even reason teaches that her judgment, on this point, is unimpeachable.
Through all that weary journey which lies between these nether worlds of spiritual being the convert's feet must tread. When God's grace finds him, he is a Protestant—perhaps so pure and logical as to be standing on the shores of rationalism and looking at his own soul as his source of light—perhaps so inconsistent and so self-deceived as to acknowledge an authority which his fundamental Protestantism denies. But whether from the external Saharas of Christian scepticism, or whether from beneath the shadow of the truth itself, the path he follows leads him to one goal, the goal of unconditional submission. Conversion may come to him through the successive adoption of Catholic dogmas, through fondness for external rites and forms, through personal friendship and familiarity, through any of those myriad ways by which God leads the steps of his elect toward heaven; but, when it comes, it is the same change for each, for every one—the abnegation of all choice and self-affirmation, and the complete subjection of the heart and will to the obedience of faith. Then, and then only, is the work ended and conversion made complete. What the church teaches is, from that hour, the faith of that Christian heart. What the church commands is the law of that Christian will. Doubt and hesitation and self-following are of the days gone by, and his devotion to the church, as God's teacher, is only rivalled by his love for her as the home of God's elect. The waters of the deluge roar and dash around his mighty ark of safety, and men and women, as they clamber up the rugged mountains of their own devices, laugh at him for his ignorance and folly; but he abides in peace, when the dark waves have overtopped them and engulfed them, and will live to offer sacrifice on Ararat when the days of divine searching have passed by.
The utter falsehood of those definitions of conversion which we have denied, becomes apparent from this description of what conversion is. There is no inherent impossibility that a pure Protestant, exercising to the fullest extent the right of private judgment, should arrive at doctrines identical with those which the church teaches, and should, as a result of this identity, accept even her formularies as expressive of his faith. The mystery of the Trinity, than which no mystery is greater, is thus received by the majority of Protestants; and there is nothing in the doctrines of Transubstantiation. Purgatory, and the like, which is unreachable by the same process of scriptural investigation, unaided by the conscious teachings of the{470}church. There can be no doubt that men have, by this method, approximated closely to Catholic doctrine, who yet were wholly actuated by Protestant principles, and never dreamed of submitting heart and will and reason to the dictation of any authority whatever.
These men apparently hang over the church, ready to drop like ripe fruit into her open bosom. Nevertheless, whatever of her symbolism they may cherish, they cherish, not because it ishers, but because it istheir own. It is not truth whichshehas taught them;theyhave discovered it themselves. It brings them no nearer to her in heart. It does not subject theirwillto hers. On the contrary; it often begets in them an arrogance of her divine security, as if their similarity to her constituted them her equals in the authority of God. Such men are not with the church, whatever proximity they seem to have. Their boast of Catholicity deceives many, and most frequently themselves, but can delude none who realize to what humility her true children must descend, and how unquestioningly, when God speaks, man must hear. The prayers of the faithful are more needed for such souls than for any others, that God would send them the disposition, as well as the light of faith.
Of the various corollaries which might be drawn from this demonstration of the real nature of conversion, there is but one which time and space allow us to notice. That one is this: That the whole question between Catholics and Protestants is one of fact and not primarily of doctrine; and can, like any other fact, be investigated and proved by human evidence. On one side, it is asserted that faith and morals are of comparative indifference to salvation, and that no source of divine light exists on earth higher than that of scripture, interpreted and judged by reason. On the other side, it is claimed that whatever God has revealed must be received without question or contradiction, and that the organized society known as the Catholic Church is the mouthpiece and medium of that revelation. This covers the whole point in issue. If, as a matter of fact, the first assertion is correct, Protestants are secure in their acceptance or denial of any or of all articles of specific Christian doctrine. If the second is true, the teachings of the Catholic Church must be received implicitly, under peril of disobedience to God. The question of the truth of particular dogmas, or of the obligation of certain codes of law, is entirely foreign to this issue. If the church is right, transubstantiation, the immaculate conception, the seven sacraments, are matters not to bediscussedorproven, but to bebelieved. If she is wrong, they are simply of no consequence whatever. Any investigation which escapes this only real point in controversy will be in vain. Inquiry must begin here and end here, or else result in making men either bad Catholics or stronger Protestants than ever.
This "question of questions" is to be answered by logical demonstration based on certain facts. As a historical work, the Bible is a sufficient witness of the visible and audible facts which it records; and the miracles of of Christ therein related establish his personal divine commission and the entire reliability of the declarations which he made. As historical works also, the writings of his immediate disciples are a sufficient witness of their understanding of his teachings, and of the actions which, in pursuance of that understanding, they performed. If Christ stated that doctrines and precepts arenotconditions of salvation, and placed in the hands of man the book known as the Bible, with the assurance that he could safely follow whatever interpretation thereof his human judgment might give, and if, as so directed, his disciples didnotinsist on specific creeds and laws, anddidreceive and circulate the Bible as the only organ of revealed truth, then that fact can be ascertained. If, on{471}the other hand, Christ revealed a certain system of doctrine, and established certain laws of conduct; if he founded a church and conferred on her the authority to teach and the right to be obeyed; and if his followers recognized such an institution, and uniformly submitted to its authority as divine, then this, as a fact, can, in its turn, be proved.
To a fair, candid, and complete investigation of this question, in the light of history, the Catholic Church invites all Protestants throughout the world; confident that, by the good help of God's grace, this simple examination, properly conducted, would lead the many hundred jarring sects of Christendom into a Catholic unity of spirit and into the bond of a true gospel peace.