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ALUMNI LIBRARY,
I THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, |
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* PRINCETON, N. J.
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TRAVELS
OF AN
IRISH GEJTTLEMAX
IN
SEARCH OF A RELIGION.
-£©Q-
WITH
$,otes mrtf Xllustvatfous,
BY THE
EDITOR OF " CAPTAIN ROCK'S MEMOIRS.' 5
t^Itflatolplifa:
CAREY, L.EA & BLANCHARD.
1833.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Soliloquy up two pair of stairs.— Motives forembracing Protestantism.
— Providential accident. — Anti-popery Catechism, — Broadside of
Epithets.— Final resolution Page 13
CHAPTER II.
Sir Godfrey Kneller and St. Peter.— Varieties of Protestantism.— Re-
solved to choose the best.— Adieu to Popish abominations - 16
CHAPTER III.
Begin with the First Century— Pope St. Clement.— St. Ignatius.—
Real Presence.— Heresy of the Docetae. — Tradition.— Relics of
Saints 13
CHAPTER IV.
Visions of Hermas.— Weekly Fasting.— Good Works.— Rector of Bal-
lymudragget.— Rector no Faster.— Comparison between the Rector
and Hermas 22
CHAPTER V.
Second Century.— St. Justin the Martyr. — Transubstantiation.— St.
Irenaeus.— Papal Supremacy.— Sacrifice of the Mass. — Unwritten
Tradition.— Old Man of the Sea • -25
CHAPTER VI.
Making the sign of the Cross.— Tertullian. — Veneration of Images. —
Prayers for the Dead. — Determination to find Protestantism some-
where - 30
CHAPTER VII.
fireat dearth of Protestantism— Try Third and Fourth Centuries.— St.
Cyprian.— Origen.— Primacy of St. Peter and the Pope.— St. Jerome.
— List of Popish abominations 33
CHAPTER VIII.
Invocation of the Virgin.— Gospel of the Infancy, &c— Louis XL—
Bonaventura.— St. Ambrose, St. Basil, and Doctor Doyle - - 41
CHAPTER IX.
Prayers for the Dead.— Purgatory.— Penitential Discipline— Confes-
sion.— Origen.— St. Ambrose.— Apostrophe to the Shade of Father
OH * * 44
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
The Fucharist.— A glimpse of Protestantism.— Type, Figure, Sign, &c.
— (Jlimpse lost again.— St. Cyril of Jerusalem. — St. Cyprian— St. Je-
rom.— St. Chrysostom.— Tertullian .... - 48
CHAPTER XI.
Discipline of the Secret.— Concealment of the doctrine of the Real
Presence.— St. Paul. — St. Clement of Alexandria. — Apostolical Con-
stitutions. — System of secrecy, when most observed - • 53
CHAPTER XII.
Doctrine of the Trinity. — St. Justin. — Irenseus. — Apparent heterodoxy
of the Fathers of the Thirl Century. — Accounted for by the Disci-
pline of the Secret.— Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, &c. ♦ - 56
CHAPTER XIII.
Doctrine of the Incarnation.— Importance attached to it by Christ
himself.— John vi.— Ignatius.— Connexion between the Incarnation
and the Real Presence. — Concealment of the latter doctrine by the
Fathers.— Proofs of this concealment 63
CHAPTER XIV.
Concealment of the Doctrine of the Eucharist.— Proofs.— Calumnies
on the Christians. — Protestant view of this Sacrament — not that
taken by the early Christians 68
CHAPTER XV.
Concealment of the Eucharist— most strict in Third Century.— St. Cy-
prian — his timidity — favourite Saint of the Protestants. — Alleged
proofs against Transubstantiation. — Theodoret. — Gelasius. — Belie-
vers in the Catholic Doctrine of the Eucharist, Erasmus, Pascal, Sir
Thomas More, Fenelon, Leibnitz, &c. 72
CHAPTER XVI.
Relaxation of the Discipline of the Secret, on the subject of the Trinity.
— Doctrine of the Real Presence still concealed. — The Eucharists
of the Heretics.— The Artoturites, Hydroparastalos, &c— St. Au-
gustin a strict observer of the Secret. —Similar fate of Transubstan-
tiation and the Trinity 78
CHAPTER XVII.
Fathers of the Fourth Century.— Proofs of their doctrine respecting
the Eucharist.— Ancient Liturgies 84
CHAPTER XVIII.
Visit to T d Street Chapel. — Antiquity of the observances of the
Mass. — Lights, Incense, Holy Water, &c— Craw-thumpers. — St. Au-
gustin a Craw-thumper. — Imitations of Paganism in the early
Church . 92
CHAPTER XIX.
Ruminations.— Unity of the Catholic Church.— History of St. Peter's
Chair. — Means of preserving Unity, — Irenseus.— Hilary. — Indefecti-
bility of the one Church , 97
CHAPTER XX.
A Dream.— Scene, a Catholic Church— Time, the third Century.— An-
gel of Hermas.— High Mass.— Scene shifts to Ballymudragget.— Rec-
tor's Sermon.— Amen Chorus . . . . . . .101
VI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXI.
Search after Protestantism suspended. — Despair of finding it sreiong
the Orthodox.— Resolve to try the Heretics.— Dead Sea of Learninir-
— Balance of Agreeableness between Fathers and Heretics . 106
CHAPTER XXII.
The Capharnaites the first Protestants.— Discourse of our Saviour at
Capernaum— its true import.— Confirmatory of the Catholic doctrine
of the Eucharist 109
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Doceta\ the earliest heretics.— Denial of the Real Presence.— Si-
mon Magus and his Mistress. — Simon a Protestant. — Delight at the
discovery. — The Ebonites. — The Elcesaites .... 114
CHAPTER XXIV.
Scriptural learning of the Gnostics— their theories.— Account of the
system of the Valentinians. — Celestial Family.— Sophia— her daugh-
ter.— Birth of the Demiurge. — Bardesanes 119
CHAPTER XXV.
The Gnostics, believers in Two Gods.— The Creator and the Unknown
Father.— Their charges against the Jehovah of the Jews.— Marcion
— his Antitheses.— Apelles.— Belief in Two Saviours. — Hatred of
the Jewish Code.— Ophites. — Marriage of Jesus with Sophia Acha-
moth P23
CHAPTER XXVI.
Catalogue of Heresies. — The Marcosians, Melchisedecians, Montanists,
&c. — Why noticed. — Clemens Alexandrinus inclined to Gnosticism
— Tertullian, a Montanist.— St. Augustin, a Manichaean . . 130
CHAPTER XXVII.
Discovery, at last, of Protestantism among the Gnostics. — Simon Ma-
gus the author of Calvinism.— Calvinistic doctrines held by the Va-
lentinians, Basilidians, Manichaeans, &c 134
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Another search for Protestantism among the orthodox as unsuccessful
as the former.— Fathers the very reverse of Calvinists.— Proofs of
St. Ignatius, St. Justin, &c. — Acknowledged by Protestants them-
selves . 138
CHAPTER XXIX.
Return to Heretics.— Find Protestantism in ab\ndance.— Novatians
Agnoetas, Donatists, &c. — Aerius, the first Presbyterian. — Accusa-
tions of Idolatry against the Catholics. — Brought forward by the
Pagans, as now by the Protestants.— Conclusion of the Chapter 142
CHAPTER XXX.
Brief recapitulation. — Secret out, at last.— Love affair. — Walks by the
river.— 1 ' Knowing the Lord."— Cupid and Calvin . . .148
CHAPTER XXXI.
Rector of Ballymudragget.— New form of shovel.— Tender scene in the
shrubbery. — Moment of bewilderment. — Catholic Emancipation Bill
carried.— Correspondence with Miss * * 152
CONTENTS. Vli
CHAPTER XXXII.
Miss * * 's knowledge of the Fathers. — Translation of her Album from
St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory, St. Jerome.— Tender love-
poem from St. Basil 155
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Difficulties of my present position. — Lord Farnham's Protestants. —
Ballinasloe Christians.— Pious letter from Miss * *.— Suggests that I
should go to Germany.— Resolution to take her advice . . 161
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Apostolic antiquity of the Catholic doctrines allowed by Pro-
testants themselves.— Proofs: — from the writings of the Reformers,
Luther, Melancthon, &c— from later Protestants, Casaubon, Scaliger,
&c. — from Socinus and Gibbon ....*.. J65
CHAPTER XXXV.
French Calvinists.— The Fathers held in contempt by the English
Oalvinists.— Policy of the Church of EnglandDi vines.— Bishop Jewel.
—Dr. Waterland 171
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Pretended reverence of the English divines for the Fathers unmasked.
— Dr. Whitby's attack on the Fathers: followed by Middleton. —
Early Christians proved by Middleton to have been Papists. — Re-
flections. — Departure for Hamburgh 175
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Hamburgh. — Hagedorn. — Klopstock and his wife Meta. — Miss Anna
Maria a Schurman, and her lover Labadie. — Account of them for
the Tract Society. — Forwarded through the hands of Miss * * 180
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Blasphemous doctrine of Labadie — held also by Luther, Beza, &c. —
Reflections. — Choice of University. — Gottingen : — Introduced to
Professor Scratchenbach.— Commence a course of lectures on Pro-
testantism . . . . . . . .185
CHAPTER XXXIX.
First Lecture of Professor Scratchenbach. — Heathen philosophers. —
Rationalism among the Heretics. — Marcion, Arius, Nestorius, &c.
all Rationalists.— The Dark Ages. — Revival of Learning.— Luther
191
CHAPTER XL.
Reflections on the Professor's Lecture.— Commence Second Lecture. —
Luther.— His qualifications for the office of Reformer . . 199
CHAPTER XLI.
Lecture continued. — Doctrines of Luther. — Consubstantiation. — Jus-
tification by Faith alone.— Slavery of the Will.— Ubiquity of Christ's
body OQ3
CHAPTER XLII.
Lecture continued.— Doctrines of Calvin and Zwingli compared with
those of Luther.— Luther's intolerance— how far entitled to be called
a Rationalist.— Summary of his character, as a Reformer . 210
Vlii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XLII1.
Lecture continued.— the Reformer Zwingli— superior to all the othefs
— his doctrine on the Lord's Supper and Baptism — original author of
Rationalism — followed by Socinus — Analogy between Transubstan-
tiation and the Trinity . . . . . 217
CHAPTER XLIV,
Lecture continued.— Anti-Trinitarian doctrines among the Reform-
ers. — Valentinus Gentilis. — Socinianism — its weak points. — Pro-
gress of Anti-Trinitarianism— the Holy Spirit, not a Person, but an
Attribute ........ 222
CHAPTER XLV.
Lecture continued.^-Effects of the rationalizing mode of interpretation
as exhibited in Germany.— Contrasts between past and present state
of Protestantism. — Inspiration of the Scriptures rejected. — Authenti-
city of books of the Old and New Testament questioned, &c. &c. 229
CHAPTER XLVI.
Reflections.— Letter from Miss * * .—Marriages of the Reformers. —
CEcolampadius. — Bucer.— Calvin and his Ideletta. — Luther and his
Catherine de Bore.— Their Marriage Supper.— Hypocrisy of the Refor-
mers. — Challenge at the Black Bear.— The War of the Sacrament 239
CHAPTER XLVII.
blasphemies of the Rationalists. — Sources of infidelity in Germany.—
Absurdity of some of the Lutheran doctrines.— Impiety of those of
Calvin.— Contempt for the authority of the Fathers. — Doctor Dam-
man.— Decline of Calvinism ..... 249
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Rise of infidel opinions in Europe, soon after the Synod of Dort.—
Lord Herbert, Hobbes, Spinoza.— Beginnings of Rationalism among
Calvinists. — Bekker, Peyrere, Meyer. — Lutheran Church continued
free from infidelity much longer than the Calvinist . . 258
CHAPTER XLIX.
Return to England.— Inquiry into the history of English Protestant-
ism. — Its close similarity to the history of German Protestantism. —
Selfishness and hypocrisy of the first Reformers in both countries.—
Variations of creed. — Persecutions and burnings. — Recantations of
Cranmer, Latimer, &c. — Effects of the Reformation in demoralizing
the people.— Proofs from German and English writers . . 203
CHAPTER L.
Parallel between the Protestantism of Germany and of England con-
tinued. — Infidel writers. — Sceptical English Divines — South, Sher-
lock, and Burnett. — Extraordinary work of the latter. — Socinianism
of Hoadly, Balguy, Hey, &c— Closing stage of the Parallel.— Tes-
timonies to the increasing irreligion of England . . 278
CHAPTER LI.
Return to Ireland.— Visit to Townsend Street Chapel.— Uncertainty
and unsafety of the Scriptures, as a sole rule of Faith:— Proofs. —
Authority of the Church.— Faith or Reason.— Catholic or Deist.— Fi-
nal resolution . 289
Notes 299
TRAVELS
OF
AN IRISH GENTLEMAN
IN
SEARCH OF A RELIGION.
CHAPTER I.
Soliloquy up two pair of stairs.— Motives for embracing Protestantism,
—Providential accident. — Anti-popery Catechism. — Broadside of
Epithets. — Final resolution.
It was on the evening of the 16th day of ApriI T 1829, —
the very day on which the memorable news reached
Dublin of the Royal Assent having been given to the
Catholic Relief Bill, — that, as I was sitting alone in my
chambers, up two pair of stairs, Trinity College, being
myself one of the everlasting "Seven Millions" thus
liberated, I started suddenly, after a few moments' reverie,
from my chair, and taking a stride across the room, as if
to make trial of a pair of emancipated legs, exclaimed,
" Thank God ! I may now, if I like, turn Protestant."
The reader will see, at once, in this short speech, the
entire course of my thoughts at that moment of exulta-
tion. I found myself free, not only from the penalties
attached to being a Catholic, but from the point of ho-
nour which had till then debarred me from being any
thing else. Not that I had, indeed, ever much paused to
consider in what the faith I professed differed from others.
I was as yet young, — but just entered into my twenty-
first year. The relations of my creed with this world
had been of too stirring a nature to leave me much thought
( 14 )
to bestow on its concernments with the next ; nor was I
yet so much of the degenerate Greek in my tastes as to
sit discussing what was the precise colour of the light of
Mount Thabor when that " light of life," liberty was it-
self to be struggled for.
I had, therefore, little other notion of Protestants than
as a set of gentlemanlike heretics, somewhat scanty in
creed, but in all things else rich and prosperous, and
governing Ireland, according to their will and pleasure,
by right of some certain Thirty-nine Articles, of which I
had not yet clearly ascertained whether they were Ar-
ticles of War or of Religion.
The Roman Catholics, on the other hand, though myself
one of them, I could not help regarding as a race of ob-
solete and obstinate religionists, robbed of every thing
but (what was, perhaps, least worth preserving) their
Creed, and justifying the charge brought against them of
being unfit for freedom* by having so long and so unre-
sistingly submitted to be slaves. In short, I felt — as
many other high-spirited young Papists must have felt
before me — that I had been not only enslaved, but de-
graded by belonging to such a race; and though, had ad-
versity still frowned on our faith, I would have clung to
it to the last, and died fighting for Transubstantiation
and the Pope with the best, I was not sorry to be saved
the doubtful glory of such martyrdom; and much as I re-
joiced at the release of my fellow-sufferers from thraldom,
rejoiced still more at the prospect of my own release from
them.
While such was the state of my feelings with respect
to the political bearings of my creed, I saw no reason, on
regarding it in a religious point of view, to feel much
more satisfied with it. The dark pictures I had seen so
invariably drawn, in Protestant pamphlets and sermons,
of the religious tenets of Popery, had sunk mortifyingly
into my mind; and when I heard eminent, learned, and,
in the repute of the world, estimable men representing
the faith which I had had the misfortune to inherit as a
system of damnable idolatry, whose doctrines had not
merely the tendency, but the prepense design, to en-
courage imposture, perjury, assassination, and all other
monstrous crimes, I was already prepared, by the opinions
which I had myself formed of my brother Papists, to be
but too willing a recipient of such accusations against
( 15 )
them from others. Though, as man and as citizen, I
rose indignantly against these charges, yet as Catholic I
quailed inwardly under the fear that they were but too
true.
In this state of mind it was that I had long looked for-
ward to the great measure of Emancipation, both as the
closing of that old, bitter, and hereditary contest in which
the spiritual part of the question had been made subordi-
nate to the temporal, and, more particularly, as a release
for myself from that scrupulous point of honour which
had hitherto kept me wedded, " for better, for worse/' to
Popery.
The reader has now been put in full*possession of the
meaning of that abrupt exclamation which, as I have said,
burst from me on the evening of the 16th of April, in my
room up two pair of stairs, Trinity College, — " Thank
God ! I may now, if I like, turn Protestant." No sooner
had this pithy sentence broke from my lips, than I re-
sumed my seat and plunged again into reverie. The
college clock was, I recollect, striking eight, at the time
this absorption of my thinking faculties commenced, and
the same orthodox clock had tolled the tenth hour before
the question shall I, or shall I not, turn Protestant 7" was
in any fair train for decision. Even then, it was owing
very much to an accident, which some good people would
call providential, that Popery did not — for that evening,
at least — maintain her ground. On the shelf of the book-
case near me lay a few stray pamphlets, towards which,
in the midst of my meditations, I, almost unconsciously,
put forth my hand, and taking the first that presented it-
self, found that I had got hold of a small tract, in the
form of a Catechism, against Popery, published near a
century ago, and called "A Protestant's Resolution,
showing his Reasons why he will not be a Papist, &c.
&c" On opening the leaves of this tract, the first sen-
tences that met my eyes were as follow : —
" Q. — What was there in the Romish Religion that
occasioned Protestants to separate themselves from it]
" A. — In that it was a superstitious, idolatrous, damn-
able, bloody, traitorous, blind, blasphemous religion."
This broadside of epithets at once settled the whole
matter. What gentleman, indeed, thought I, could abide
to remain longer in a faith to which, with any show of
justice, such hard and indigestible terms could be applied]
( 16 )
Accordingly, up sprung I, for the second time, from my
now uneasy chair, and brandishing aloft my clenched
hand, as if in defiance of the Abomination of the Seven
Hills, exclaimed, as I again paced about my chamber, —
with something of the ascendency strut already per-
ceptible, — " I will be a Protestant."
*>*$©»*♦"»-
CHAPTER II.
Sir Godfrey Kneller and St. Peter.— Varieties of Protestantism.— Re-
solved to choose the best.— Adieu to Popish abominations.
I was now pretty much in the situation of Sir Godfrey
Kneller, in the strange dream attributed to him, when
having arrived, as he thought, at the entrance of heaven,
he found St. Peter there, in his capacity of gate-keeper,
inquiring the name and the religion of the different can-
didates for admission that presented themselves, and, still
as each gave his answer, directing them to the seats al-
lotted to their respective creeds. " And pray, sir," said
the Saint, addressing Sir Godfrey in his turn, "what
religion may you be of!" — " Why, truly, sir," said Sir
Godfrey, " I am of no religion." — " Oh, then, sir," replied
St. Peter, " you will be so good as to go in and take your
seat where you please."
In much the same independent state of creed did I find
myself at this crisis, — having before me the whole varie-
gated field of Protestantism, with power to choose on
what part of its wide surface I should settle. But though
thus free, and with " a charter like the wind, to blow
where'er I pleased," — my position on, the whole, was
hardly what could be called comfortable. It was like
that of a transmigrating spirit in the critical interval be-
tween its leaving one body and taking possession of an-
other ; or rathe/ like a certain ill-translated work, of
which some wit has remarked that it had been taken
out of one language without being put into any other.
Though as ignorant, at that time of my life, on all
matters of religion, as any young gentleman brought up
( 17 )
at a University — even when meant for holy orders —
could well be, I had, by nature, very strong devotional
feelings, and from childhood had knelt nightly to my
prayers with a degree of trust in God's mercy and grace
at which a professor of the Five Points would have been
not a little scandalized. It was, therefore, with perfect
conscientiousness and sincerity that I now addressed my-
self to the task of choosing a new religion; and having
made up my mind that Protestantism was to be the
creed of my choice, resolved also that it should be Pro-
testantism of the best and most approved description.
But how was this to be managed 1 In a sermon which I
once heard preached by a Fellow of our University, there
was an observation put strongly by the preacher which I
now called to mind for my guidance in the inquiry I was
about to institute. k< In like manner (said the preacher)
as streams are always clearest near their source, so the
first ages of Christianity will be found to have been the
purest." Taking this obvious position for granted, the
deduction was of course evident that to the doctrines and
practice of the early ages of the Church I must have re-
course to find the true doctrines and practice of Protes-
tantism: — the changes which afterwards took place, as
well in the tenets as the observances of Christians, having
been, as the preacher told us, the cause of " that corrupt
system of religion which has been entailed on the world
under the odious name of Popery." To ascend, therefore,
at once to that Aurora of our faith, and imbue myself
thoroughly with the opinions and doctrines of those upon
whom its light first shone, was, I could not doubt, the sole
effectual mode of attaining the great object I had in view,
— that of making myself a Protestant according to the
purest and most orthodox pattern.
To the classical branch of the course taught in our
University, I had devoted a good deal of attention. My
acquaintance, therefore, with Latin and Greek, was suf-
ficiently familiar to imbolden me to enter on the study of
the Fathers in their own languages; while, besides the
access which I was allowed, as graduate, to the library
of our College, I had, also, through another channel, all
the best editions of those holy writers placed at my com-
mand. Of the Scriptures, my knowledge had, hitherto,
been scanty ; but the plan I now adopted was, to make
2*
( 18 )
my study of the sacred volume concurrent with this in-
quiry into the writings of its first expounders; so that
the text and the comment might, by such juxta-position,
shed light on each other.
Behold me, then, with a zeal, whose sincerity, at least,
deserved some success, sitting down, dictionary in hand,
to my task of self conversion ; having secured one great
step towards the adoption of a new creed in the feeling
little short of contempt with which I looked back upon
the old one. Bidding a glad, and, as I trusted, eternal
adieu to the long catalogue of Popish abominations, to
wit: Transubstantiation, Relics, Fasting, Purgatory, In-
vocation of Saints, &c., &c, — I opened my mind, a wil-
ling initiate, to those enlightening truths, which were
now, from a purer quarter of the heavens, to dawn upon
me.
CHAPTER III.
Begin with the First Century— Pope St. Clement.— St. Ignatius.—
Ileal Presence.— Heresy of the Doceta?.— Tradition.— Relics of
Saints.
There is among those who consider the Catholic
Church to have, in the course of time, fallen from its
first purity, a considerable difference of opinion as to the
period at which this apostacy commenced ; some writers
having been disposed to extend the golden period of the
Church to as late a period as the seventh or eighth cen-
tury,* while, by others, her virgin era is confined within
* One of those who allow the "beaux jours de l'Egliee" (as he
calls them) to have extended so far, was the celebrated Huguenot mi-
nister, Claude,— celebrated, among other things, for the signal defeat
which he sustained from the learned authors of the Perpetuity de la
Foi. Of this great champion of Protestantism, so lauded in his day,
it is curious to see what was the private opinion entertained by one
who lived in his society, and is known not to have been unfriendly to
his sect or its cause :— M Cet homme-la (says Longuerue) etoit bon a
gouverner chez Madame la Marechale de Schomberg, ou il reL'noit
souverainement ; mais il n'etoit point savant. Parlez-moi, pour lo
savoir, d'Aubertin, de Daille, de Blondel."
According to the Book of Homilies, "the Christian Religion was,
nnto thfj time of Constantine (A. D. 3524) most puie and indeed
golden."
( io )
Far less liberal limits.* My great object, however, being,
as much as possible, " integras accedere fontes," I saw
that the higher up, near the very source, I began my re-
searches, the better, and, accordingly, with the writings
of those five holy men who are distinguished by the title
of Apostolical Fathers, as having all of them conversed
with the Apostles or their disciples, I now commenced
my studies.
Great, then, w r as my surprise, — not unaccompanied, I
own, by a slight twinge of remorse, — when, in the per-
son of one of these simple, apostolical writers, I found
that I had popped upon a Pope — an actual Pope ! — being
the third Bishop, after St. Peter, of that very Church of
Rome which I was now about to desert for her modern
rival. This primitive occupant of the See of Rome was
St. Clement, one of those fellow -labourers of St. Paul,
whose " names are written in the Book of Life ;" and it
was by St. Peter himself, as Tertullian tells us, that he
had been ordained to be his successor. This proof of the
antiquity and apostolical source of the Papal authority
startled me not a little. " A Pope ! and ordained by St.
Peter 1" exclaimed I, as I commenced reading the vo-
lume : " now, l by St. Peter's Church, and Peter too,'
this much surpriseth me." There was, however, still
enough of the Papist lingering in my heart to make me
turn over the pages of Pope St. Clement with peculiar
respect ; and I could not but see that, even in those sim-
ple, unpolemic times, when the actual exercise of autho-
rity could be so little called for, the jurisdiction of the
See of Peter was fully acknowledged.
A schism, or, as St. Clement himself describes it, " a
foul and unholy sedition,"! having broken out in the
Church of Corinth, an appeal was made to the Church
of Rome for its interference and advice, and the Epistle
which this Holy Father addressed to the Corinthians in
answer, is confessedly one of the most interesting monu-
ments of Ecclesiastical Literature that have descended
to us.
The next of these primitive followers of the Apostles
* Priestley, for instance, to suit his purpose, considers the period
till the death of Adrian (A. D. 138) as comprising the pure and virgin
a,ge of the Church.
( 20 )
wliose writings engaged my attention, was St. Ignatius,
the immediate successor of the Apostle Peter in the See
of Antioch. This holy man was, by his contemporaries,
called Theophorus, or the God-borne, from a general no-
tion that he was the child mentioned by Matthew and
Mark, as having been taken up by our Saviour in his
arms, and set in the midst of his disciples. It was,
therefore, with a feeling of reverent curiosity that I ap-
proached his volume ; and, much as I had been, in my
ignorance, astonished, to find a Pope, or Bishop of Rome,
presiding,* at such a period, over the whole Christian
world, I was now infinitely more astounded and puzzled
by what met my eyes in the pages of Ignatius, a writer,
nursed, as it were, in the very cradle of our faith, and
who, as one of the first that followed in the footsteps of
the Divine Guide, was among the last from whom I
could have expected a doctrine so essentially Popish, —
the invention, as I had always been led to suppose, of the
darkest ages, and maintained in mockery, as well of rea-
son, as of the senses, — the doctrine, in short, of a real,
corporal Presence in the Eucharist !
In speaking of the Docetse, or Phantasticks, a sect of
heretics who held that Christ was but, in appearance,
Man, — a mere semblance or phantasm of humani-
ty, — Ignatius says, "They stay away from the Eucha-
rist and from prayer, because they will not acknow-
ledge the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus
Christ, that flesh which suffered for our sins." Now,
when it is considered that the leading doctrine of the
Docetae was, that the body assumed by Christ was but
apparent, there cannot be a doubt that the particular
opinion of the orthodox to which they opposed them-
selves, was that which held the presence of Christ's
body in the Eucharist to be real. It is evident that a
figurative or unsubstantial presence, such as Protestants
maintain, would in no degree have offended their anti-
corporeal notions ; but, on the contrary, indeed, would
have fallen in with that wholly spiritual view of Christ's
nature which had led these heretics to deny the possibi-
lity of his incarnation.
This perplexing and irresistible proof, on the very
* The Epistle of St. Ignatius to the Romans, which was written
in the first century, is addressed " to the Church that presides
(7r£0K&$n<rxj) in the country of the Romans."
( 21 )
threshold of my inquiry, of the existence of such a be-
lief among the orthodox of the first century, threw me, I
own, into a state of unspeakable amazement. I looked
at the words again — rubbed my eyes, and again consult-
ed my lexicon. But I had made no mistake ; — there it
was, in black and white, stark staring Popery. I had
found language of a similar import, respecting the Eu-
charist, in other passages of the same Father; — in the
Epistle to the Philadelphians, and in that also to the Ro-
mans, But had there existed only these notices, his pre-
cise opinion upon the subject might have been doubtful ;
and, as in many other cases, where the Fathers have
happened to express themselves allegorically or obscure-
ly, would have remained matter of controversy. But,
taken, as I have already said, with reference to the Do-
cetse, and representing the belief of those heretics, re-
specting the Eucharist, as wholly irreconcilable with the
«reed of the orthodox,* this passage in the Epistle to the
Smyrnseans, can admit of but one conclusion, namely,
that the orthodox Christians of that day saw in the con-
secrated bread and wine, not any mere memorial, repre-
sentation, type, or emblem, — not any such figurative sub-
stitute for the body of our Lord, — but his own real sub-
stance, corporally present and orally manducated.
To find myself thus back again in the very depths of
Popery, after having so fondly fancied that I had emerged
from them for ever^ was, it must be owned, not a little
trying to a neophyte's zeal; — nor had I well recovered
from my surprise and perplexity at this sample of Popish
doctrine, when, on turning to an account of the martyr-
dom of this same Father, I fell upon a no less glaring
specimen of Popish practice. Ignatius, as is well known
to all readers of Martyrology, was delivered up to be de-
* " It seems highly probable, that Communicants, in St. Ignatius's
4ays, were obliged expressly to acknowledge the Eucharist to bo
Christ's body and blood, by answering ' Amen ' at the delivery of the
Sacramental body and blood, as well as by joining in prayer to God
that he wonld make them so ; and, because the Docetae could not do
this, therefore they absented themselves from the Christian Assem-
blies." — Johnson.
That this express acknowledgment of the Real Presence was re-
quired of communicants, in the first ages of the Church, appears from
all the ancient Liturgies, and we have St. Augustin's authority that
such was the meaning attached to the " Amen," in his times : — " Ha-
bet magnam vocem Christi sanguis in terra cum, eo accepto, ab om-
nibus gentibus respondetur Amen."— Contra Faust,
( 22 )
votired by lions in the amphitheatre at Rome. After the
victim had been despatched, the faithful deacons who
had accompanied him on his journey gathered up, as we
are told, the few bones which the wild beasts had spared,
and carrying them back to Antioch, deposited them there
religiously in a shrine, round which annually, on the day
of his martyrdom, the Faithful assembled, and, in memo-
ry of his self-devotion, kept vigil around his relics !
It should have been mentioned, also, — to make the
matter still worse, — that, when on his way through Asia
to the scene of his sufferings, this illustrious Father, in
exhorting the Churches to be on their guard against He-
resy, impressed earnestly upon them " to holdfast by the
Traditions of the Apostles ;" — thus sanctioning that two-
fold Rule of Faith, the Unwritten as well as the written
Word, which, by all good Protestants, is repudiated as
one of the falsest of the false doctrines of Popery !
Marvellous to me, most marvellous, were these disco-
veries ; — a Pope, Relics of Saints, Apostolical Traditions,
and a Corporal Eucharist, all in the First Age of the
Church! — who could have thought itl
-f
CHAPTER IV.
Visions of Hermas.— Weekly Fasting.— Good Works.— Rector of Bal-
lymudragget.— Rector no Faster.— Comparison between the Rector
and Hermas.
Aig-gR turning over the two Epistles that remain of St.
Barnabas and St. Polycarp, and learning but little, to-
wards the object of my search, from either, it was with
some pleasure I opened the pages of the pious and fanci-
ful Hermas, and among his Visions, which breathe all
the simplicity of an apostolic age, forgot myself, for some
hours, as in a fairy tale. His recollections of his early
love — his seeing the heavens open, as he knelt one day
praying in a meadow, and beholding the maid whom he had
loved looking out of the clouds to salute him, saying,
** Good day, Hermas f — his account of the various visions
m which " the Church of God" had appeared to him ; now,
I
( 23 )
in the shape of an aged matron, reading; — now, as a
young maiden, clad all in white, and having a mitre on
her head, over which the long hair fell shining; — through
all these innocent and (as they were thought at the time)
inspired fancies,* I wandered with the good Father, in a
sort of drowsy reverie, even as though I were myself the
dreamer of his visions.
It was not till, in the course of my reading, I came to
that part of his work called Precepts and Similitudes, —
which were, as he says, revealed to him by his guardian
angel, in the shape of a Shepherd, — that I was awakened
to a recollection of the immediate object of my studies,
and awakened, also, alas ! to find myself once more in
Popish company. This Father, be it recollected, was
one of those distinguished Christians to whom St. Paul
sends salutations in the Epistle to the Romans, and among
the moral precepts which in this work he represents his
angel to have communicated to him is the following: —
" The first thing we have to do is to observe the command-
ment of God. If afterwards a man wishes to add thereunto
any good work, such as fasting, he will receive the
greater recompense."
Here again was sheer Popery, both in doctrine and
practice— Satisfaction to God by Good Works, and one
of those Good Works, Fasting !
To this latter observance, I had from my childhood enter-
tained a peculiar aversion ; and it was* therefore, with
pain, as well as wonder, I now made the discovery that,
in rigour of fasting, the early Christians outwent even
our strictest Romanists. The Fast preparatory to Eas-
ter Day, which was one of total abstinence, was by some
pious persons continued for the space of forty successive
hours ; and those who laugh at Papists now for fasting
twice a week would have had equal grounds for laugh-
ing at the Primitive Christians, who, by the Apostolic
Canons, were enjoined to a similar practice ; — the only
difference being that the appointed days of fasting, which
were then Wednesday and Friday, are now Friday and
* Origen quotes the Shepherd as a work divinely inspired; and Ru*
finus expressly styles it a " Book of the New Testament." — Expos, in
Symb. Apostol. Whiston, too, with his usual ready belief in all that
suits his purpose, considers the Shepherd to be a distinct inspired
Book of itself, which '■ comes directly from our Saviour as the Apo-
calypse does."
( 24 )
Saturday.* Just before Easter, indeed, these latter days-
were also observed, as fast-days, and for this reason, that
"in those days the bridegroom was taken away."f And
this was the age to which I had been sent for emancipa-
tion from Popery !
These ancient Christians, too, contrived to make the
Good Work of Fasting subservient to another practice,
reputed also among Good Works, alms-giving ; the same
Apostolic Canons informing us that whatever had been
saved by abstinence was always laid out in relieving the
necessities of the poor.}:
How vividly now, as I sat leaning my elbow on the
pages of " the Shepherd," did I call to mind what my own
feelings had been, more than once, at my poor father's
table, when it has happened that our rich neighbour, the
Rector of Bally mudragget, has invited himself to dine
with us, on a Friday, or other fast-day; and while his Re-
verence has sat feasting on the flesh and fowl provided
purposely for his regale, I have found myself forced to-
put up with that sorry fare which " Hopdance cried for
in Poor Tom's belly — two white herrings ;"} and still
more mortifying, had to bear the smile of consequential
pity with which the Rector looked round on his super-
stitious fellow-diners, — blessing his stars, no doubt, that
the glorious Reformation had put all these matters on so
much more civilized and gentlemanlike a footing.
Little did I then, for my consolation, know that I was
borne out by the Apostolic Canons in my starvation ; and
when I now pondered over these things, and compared
my fat friend, the Rector, with the simple Hermas, who
can wonder if a slight doubt came over my mind, whe-
* The learned Bishop Beveridge, who supposes these Canons to have
been framed by the disciples of the Apostles about the end of the se-
cond century, considers the Fasts therein enjoined to have been of
apostolic institution. — CcyJex Canon. Ec. tf-c. Mosheim, too, allows
that " those who affirm that, in the time of the Apostles, or soon
after, the fourth and sixth days of the week were observed as Fasts,
ere not, it must be acknowledged, destitute of specious arguments in
favour of their opinion."
t " But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from
them, and then shall they fast."— Matthew, ix. 15. St. Jerom, who
pronounces Lent to be an apostolic institution, attributes the eamt
high origin to the Saturday's Fast.
t Tnv Trz^io-o-tixv rvg v>iv<7m; Trmrtv iviyju^yw. — ^P- Const.
§ Shakspeare's Lear.
( 25 )
ther, — as far, at least, as a world to come is concerned,
— it might not be safer to fast with the friend of St,
Paul, than to feast with the Rector of Ballymudragget.
-~»»e i
CHAPTER V.
Second Century.— St. Justin the Martyr.— Transubstantiation.— St.
Irenceus. — Papal Supremacy. — Sacrifice of the Mass. — Unwritten
Tradition.— Old Man of the Sea.
Thus far my progress in Protestantism had not been
very rapid. I was determined, however, not to be lightly
turned aside from my purpose; so,. taking leave of the
simple writers of the apostolic age, I launched boldly into
the sacred literature of the Second Century, hoping to
find, on my way, somewhat more of the Thirty-nine Arti-
cles, and somewhat less of Popery. I had but a short
way, however, descended the stream, when I found my
sails taken aback by the following passage in St. Justin
the Martyr, — a man described by an ancient bishop a3
being near to the Apostles both in time and in virtue :
" Nor do we take these gifts (in the Eucharist) as com-
mon bread and common drink; but as Jesus Christ, our
Saviour, made man by the word of God, took flesh and
blood for our salvation, so in the same manner we have
been taught that the food which has been blessed by
prayer, and by which our blood and flesh, in the change,
are nourished, is the fiesh and blood of that Jesus incar-
nate." — Apol. 1.
The assertion of a real, corporal Presence by St. Igna-
tius had more than sufficiently startled me ; but here was
a still stronger case, a belief in the change of the ele-
ments, in actual Transubstantiation, — and this on the
part of a Saint so illustrious as St. Justin ! Verily, they
who could send a Christian youth to learn Protestant doc-
trine of teachers like these, must plead guilty to the
charge either of grossly deceiving him or being ignorant
themselves.
( 20 )
We have already seen that the Primacy of the Roman
See was, in the only case that called for an appeal to it,
acknowledged in the first age of the Church ; and I now
found, in the second age, the same claim practically and
universally recognised, both in the acts of the Church
and in the writings of her chief pastors. How little could
I have anticipated such a discovery! — the "Great Har-
lot," the " Mother of the fornications and abominations of
the earth" (as so often I had heard our college preacher
style the Papacy,) standing, in the pure morning of
Christianity, supreme and unrivalled !
Accustomed, indeed, as I had long been to consider the
papal jurisdiction as a usurpation of the dark ages, the
clear proofs I now saw of the chain of succession by which
its title is carried up and fixed fast in that " Rock " on
which the Church itself is built, convinced and confound-
ed me; nor, though myself but an "embryon immature"
of Protestantism, could I help sympathizing most heartily
with all that a full-fledged follower of that faith must
feel, on reading the following strong attestation of the
Papal Primacy in St. Irenseus, — a writer, be it recollected,
so near to the apostolical times as to have had for his in-
structor in Christianity a disciple of St. John the Evan-
gelist.
" We can enumerate those bishops who were appointed
by the Apostles and their successors down to ourselves,
none of whom taught or even knew the wild opinions of
these men (heretics) . . . However, as it would be te-
dious to enumerate the whole list of successions, I shall
confine myself to that of Rojne, the greatest and most
ancient and most illustrious Church, founded by the
glorious x\postles Peter and Paul ; receiving from them
her doctrine, which was announced to all men, and
which, through the succession of her bishops, is come
down to us. Thus we confound all those who, through
evil designs, or vain-glory, or perverseness, teach what
they ought not ; for, to this Church, on account of its
Superior Headship, every other must have recourse, that
is, the faithful of all countries; in which Church has been
preserved the doctrine delivered by the Apostles." — Adv.
Hares. Lib. 3.
Of Irenseus it must be, in truth, acknowledged that,
though so apostolically educated, and graced by Photius
( 27 )
With the title of u the Divine Irenseus," * he would have
made but a faithless subscriber to the Thirty-nine Arti-
cles. For only hear how this Saint speaks of the Sacri-
fice of the Mass,f — that "blasphemous fable," as the
Thirty-First of those Articles terms it: — u Likewise, he
declared the cup to be his blood, and taught the new Ob-
lation of the New Testament, which oblation the Church
receiving from the Apostles offers it to God over all the
earth." Again: — " Therefore, the offering of the Church
which the Lord directed to be made over all the world
was deemed a pure sacrifice before God and received by
Him."J
Consistently with his belief of a Sacrifice in the Eu-
charist, this Father maintained also, with Justin and Ig-
natius, the Real Presence of Christ's body and blood in
that Sacrament; pronouncing it a miracle such as could
not be supposed to exist, without admitting the Divinity
of Him who had instituted it. " How," he asks, " can
these heretics (those who denied that Christ was the Son
of God) prove that the bread over which the words of
thanksgiving have been pronounced is the body of their
Lord and the cup his blood, while they do not admit that
he is the Son, that is, the Word of the Creator of the
World!"
To the same heretics, who, from their views of the
corruption of matter, could not reconcile to themselves
the doctrine of a resurrection of the body, he makes use
of an argument founded, in like manner, on his belief of
the reality of Christ's Presence and the transubstantia-
tion of the elements: — "When (says he) the mingled
chalice and the broken bread receive the word of God,
* Tot/ §i?7r&rtov JLi^vniou.
f Anciently called the Sacrifice of the New Testament, or Catholic
Sacrifice (QvcrtA kclQoXikh. Chrysos'om Serm. de Cruce et Latrone,)
the word Mass not having been introduced till about the time of St.
Ambrose.
% See also Justin. Dial, cum Tryphon.
" The Centuriators of Magdeburgh, — whose zeal and acuteness dis-
played in the Protestant cause are well known — have been con-
strained reluctantly to own that the existence of the Sacrifice of the
New Law stands recorded in the early monuments of Christianity;
and on the passage of St. [renjeus here referred to, they express their
acknowledgment in terms of indignation." — Coombes's Essence of Rb~
ligioua Controversy.
( 2S )
they become the Eucharist of the body and blood of
Christ,* by which the substance of our flesh is increased
and strengthened. How then can they pretend, that this
flesh is not susceptible of eternal life which is nourished
by the body and blood of the Lord, and is his member )"
On the subject of Unwritten Tradition, — that con-
tested source of so much of the doctrine, practice, and
power of Rome, this Father's testimony brings with it
double weight, inasmuch as he not only asserts, in all his
writings, the high authority of Tradition, but was him-
self one of the earliest and brightest links in that chain of
oral delivery which has descended to the Church of Rome
from the apostolic age. Referring to his own master,
Polycarp, who had been the disciple of St. John the
Evangelist. t he says — " Polycarp always taught these
things, which he had learned from the Apostles, which he
delivered to the Church, and which alone are true." In
a fragment of another of his writings there occurs a most
impressive and interesting passage to the same effect. —
Addressing a heretic, named Florinus, who had adopted
the errors of the Yalentinians, he says — " Those opinions
the Presbyters before us, who also conversed with the
Apostles, have not delivered to you. For T saw you,
when I was very young, in the Lower Asia with Poly-
carp. ... I better remember the affairs of that
time than those which have lately happened; the things
which we learn in our childhood growing up with the
soul and uniting themselves to it. Insomuch that I can
tell the place in which the Blessed Polycarp sat and
taught, and his going out and coming in; and the
manner of his life and the form of his person ; and the
discourses he made to the people, and how he related his
conversation with St. John, and others who had seen the
* There is yet a stronger passage to this purpose in one of those
Fragments attributed to Ireneeus, which were published in 1715 by
Dr. PfarF. from manuscripts in the Kin? of Sardinia's library:— wh-re,
in describing the ceiernonies of the Sacrifice, it is said that the Holy
Spirit is invoked that he may make the bread the body of Christ and
the cup the blood of Christ. Much doubt, however, has been thrown
upon the genuineness of these Fragments, both by MafTei, who ob-
jected to them on their first appearance, and by the remarks of the
ever judicious Lardner afterwards.
t By many also supposed to have been the Angel of the Church of
Smyrna, to whom the Epistle in the second chapter of the Book of
Revelation was directed to be sent.
( 20 )
Lord ; and how he related their sayings, and what he had
heard from them concerning the Lord ; hoth concerning
his miracles and his doctrine, as he had received them
from the eye-witnesses of the Word of Life : all which
Polycarp related agreeably to the Scriptures. These
things I then, through the mercy of God toward me, di-
ligently heard and attended to, recording them not on
paper, but upon my heart; and, through the grace of
God, I continually renew my remembrance of them."
Could we now summon to earth the shade of this holy
Father, — this Saint, so " nourished up in the words of
faith and of good doctrine," — with what face can we ima-
gine a Protestant, an upstart of the Reformation, to stand
forth, in contradiction to so orthodox a spirit, and pro-
nounce the Unwritten Word of the Catholic Church to
•be but an inheritance of imposture, the jurisdiction of the
See of St. Peter a rank usurpation, and a sacrifice of the
Holy Mass "a blasphemous fable]"
If any thing more were wanting to show the deep
sense which this Father entertained of the reverence duo
to tke authority and traditions of the Church, we should
find it in the few following passages from his writings: —
" In explaining the Scriptures, Christians are to attend
to the Pastors of the Church, who, by the ordinance of
God, have received the inheritance of truth, with the
succession of their Sees." " The tongues of nations
vary, but the virtue of tradition is one and the same
every where ; nor do the churches in Germany believe or
teach differently from those in Spain, Gaul, the East,
Egypt or Lybia." " Supposing the Apostles had not
left us the Scriptures, ought we not still to have followed
the ordinance of Tradition, which they consigned to
those to whom they committed the Churches? It is this
ordinance of Tradition which many nations of barbari-
ans, believing in Christ, follow without the use of letters
or inky — Adv. Hser. Lib. 4.
It w T ill easily be believed that, at the close of this long
day's studies, I felt utterly disheartened and wearied
with my pursuit. I had now found sanctioned by the
authority of the Church's earliest champions, — some of
them men who " had the preaching of the Apostles still
sounding in their ears," — six no less Popish points of
faith and observance than— 1. The acknowledgment of a
3*
( 30 )
Sovereign Pontiff; * 2. A Reverence due to Relics ;
3. Satisfaction to God by fasting, alms-deeds, &c. ; 4.
The authority of Tradition ; 5. A Corporeal Presence in
the Eucharist; and 6. The Sacrifice of the Mass. Who
can wonder if, after all this, I despaired of ridding my-
self of Popery] Heaving a heavy sigh, as I closed my
ponderous folios, and with a sort of oppressed sensation
as if the Pope were himself bodily on my back, I went to
bed feeling much as Sinbad the sailor would have done,
if, after having shaken off, as he thought, the troublesome
little old Man of the Sea, he felt the legs of the creature
again fastening round his neck.
— "»•»►>$ © ©<<««•—
CHAPTER VI.
Making the sign of the Cross.— Tertullian.— Veneration of [mages.—
Prayers for the Dead. — Determination to find Protestantism some-
where.
On the following morning I rose, — thanks to the re-
cruiting power of sleep, — somewhat recovered from the
rebuffs of the few preceding days, and feeling, on the
whole, as well and Protestant as could be expected. At
least, my horror of returning to Popery was as strong as
ever ; though my chances of becoming a good Protestant,
— or, indeed, finding out what a good Protestant was, —
had become all but desperate. I was, therefore, pretty
much in the " unhoused condition" of that sect of here-
tics, called Basilidians, who described themselves as being
no longer Jews, but still not yet Christians.
Of the disagreeable, but apostolic, practice of weekly
fasting I have already spoken ; but there was another
Popish custom, against which, as a badge of anile super-
stition, I still more indignantly rebelled ; — and this was
the practice of making the sign of the Cross on the fore-
head, after grace, at meals. The feeling of shame with
which, in my youth, I used to perform this overt act of Po-
* We find this very title of " Sovereign Pontiff" given to the
Bishop of Rome by no less high and ancient an. authority than Ter-
tullian,
( 31 )
pery, in the presence of Protestants, I shall never forget. *
Nor do I appear to have been, in this feeling-, at all sin-
gular among' my fellow Catholics, as I have observed
that, ever since the two Religions have come to be on
dining terms with each other, the practice has been al-
most wholly discontinued ; insomuch that he must be a
primitive Catholic, indeed, who, in the present times,
would venture to bless himself (as the operation is called)
in good company.
" This, at least," said I to myself, pettishly, as I open-
ed a huge volume of Tertullian, — "this monk's trick, at
least, can assuredly never have received any sanction
from the orthodox Christians of the early Church." The
words had scarcely passed my lips, when, on turning to
this Father's account of the modes and customs of his
fellow Christians, I read, to my astoundment, as follows:
— "We siom ourselves with the sign of the cross in the
forehead, whenever we go from home or return, when we
put on our clothes or our shoes, when we go to the bath,
or sit down to meat, when we light our candles, when
we lie down and when we sit." Here was crossing
enough, God knows, — crossing enough, in a single day of
Tertullian's, to serve the most particular old Catholic
lady in all Ireland for a week.
There now remained little else to fill up the measure
of what are called Popish superstitions but Veneration of
Images and Prayers for the Dead ; and to both these I
found the same eminent Father lending his sanction. In
speaking of the wife who survivesher husband, he desires
that she should "pray for her husband's soul, solicit for
him refreshment, and offer on the anniversaries of his
death." In another place, too, we find him tracing this
practice to apostolical traditions, not enforced, as he says,
by the positive words of Scripture, but delivered down
from his predecessors; — thus not only upholding the pa-
pistical usage of praying for the Dead, but deriving his
authority for it through that equally papistical channel,
Tradition !
* It appears from occasional rebukes, in the Fathers, on this sub-
ject, that a similar shame of being seen to make the sign of the cross
was not unknown even among ancient Catholics. — " Let us not be
ashamed ("says St. Cyril) to confess Him who was crucified ; let the
vQgxyis (the si 2 n of the cross) be. confidently made upon the fore-
head with the finger,"
( 32 )
With respect to Images, the use of which, as memo-
rials, was derived also by the early Christians from tradi-
tion, a passing sentence of Tertullian, in which he men-
tions as though it were of common occurrence, the pic-
tures of Christ upon the communion-cups,* is a suffi-
cient proof that the use of images had been, at the time
he wrote, long prevalent. There appears little doubt,
indeed, that Reformed eyes would have been shocked by
such "idolatrous" representations, not only in the second
century of Christianity, but most probably from its very
earliest periods, f From the same fondness for religious
memorials, we find St. Clement of Alexandria, in the
same century, recommending to Christians to wear the
figure of a fish engraved on their rings, — the fish being a
symbol of the name of Christ.}:
I had now, in addition to the six "plague spots of Po-
pery," which I had already, in this her virgin period,
counted on the fair face of the Church, to number also
the three following, — viz. 7, Prayers for the Dead. — 8.
Veneration of Images. And 9. Crossing, without end!
Assuredly, any one less determined than myself to find
Protestantism somewhere, would have given up the chase
in despair. But I was still resolved to persevere. I had
bid too solemn a farewell to Popery to allow of my re-
voking the step now with a good grace. Besides, it is
but fair to confess, — what I ought perhaps to have con-
fessed somewhat sooner, — that, in addition to a very con-
scientious desire of exchanging my religion for a better, I
had also some motives of a more mundane, and, I may add,
tender nature, which had considerable weight in deter-
mining me to become a Protestant as soon as possible ; —
motives which, though of that class usually styled pri-
vate and delicate, I shall, in some future chapter, venture
to communicate to the reader.
* In a curious work on the Eucharistic Cups of the ancient Chris-
tians (by Doughty), the author has collected, with much industry, an
account of the" different materials of which these vessels were formed,
from wood up to crystal, onyx, &c. and among the images upon them
be particularly specifies that of the Crucified Saviour, and the good
Shepherd carrying the lamb on his shoulders.
t In the year 814, when Leo, the Armenian, assembled several bish-
ops in order'to induce them to break images, Euthymius, metropolitan
of Sardis, thus addressed him:— "Know, sire, that for 800 years, and
more since Christ came into the world, he has been painted and adored
in his image. Who will be bold enough to abolish so ancient a tra-
dition ?"
t Clem. Alexand, Opera cura Potteri, p. 286.
'■>
( 33 )
CHAPTER VII.
Great dearth of Protestantism.— Try Third and Fourth Centuries.— St.
Cyprian.— Origen.— Primacy of St. Peter and the Pope.— St. Jerome.
—List of Popiih abominations.
Though 1 had now pretty well convinced myself that
if, as Protestants assure us, the pure original of their Creed
is to be found in the first ages, it must be found there in
some such modest and unobtrusive shape as that of a cer-
tain tragic author's "moon behind a cloud," I did not, even
yet, allow myself to despair of catching, at least, a
glimpse of this retired luminary. I therefore continued
my inquest; and, summoning the Fathers of the two fol-
lowing centuries before me, resolved to try whether, by
dint of close cross-questioning, I should be able to detect
a single Protestant among them. But no: the answer of
all was the same, — they belonged to the one Catholic
Church; to that Church, says St. Cyprian, "which, im-
brued with the light of the Lord, sends forth her rays
over the whole earth." When asked to name the cen-
tre from which this Catholic light radiates, the same
Saint points to Rome, to the chair of Peter, and " the
principal Church (as he says emphatically) whence the
Sacerdotal Unity took its rise." — Ep. 55.
Thus foiled, I flew to Origen, with somewhat, perhaps,
of a hope that, being but a questionable Saint, he might
prove a good Protestant. But my success was no better ;
I found him as eager for the Primacy of St. Peter and
the Pope as his brethren, and, on the subject of exclu-
sive salvation, as Catholic as need be : " Let no one," he
says, "persuade, let no one deceive himself; out of this
house, that is, out of the Church, there is no salvation."
— Horn. 3. in Josue. By St. Jerome this monopoly of
heaven was, I saw, asserted with no less vigour: — I
know that the Church is founded upon Peter, that is,
on a Rock. Whoever eateth the Lamb out of that house,
is a profane man. Whoever is not in the Ark shall pe-
rish by the flood." — Ep. 14. ad Dam. To a wight, like
me, just tottering upon the edge of said Ark, — if not al-
ready off, — this metaphoric hint was comfortable !
( 34 )
On all those Popish points of belief and practice which,
as I have shown, were sanctioned by the Fathers of the
two First Centuries, I found the doctrine of those of the
Third and Fourth precisely the same ; only put forth
more copiously in detail, and enforced by richer stores of
ingenuity and learning. To bring forward, indeed, all
the testimonies that might, but too triumphantly, be cited
to prove that, in those times, Christianity and Popery
were convertible terms, would be to transcribe the
greater part of the writings of the four first ages, from
the simple Hermas down to the learned and rhetorical
St. Chrysostom. I shall therefore content myself with
adding to what I have already said of the Primitive times,
a few specimens of the doctrine held by the leading
Fathers of the third and fourth centuries, on some of the
principal points at issue between the Church of Rome
and her opponents.
AUTHORITY OP THE CHURCH. — TRADITION.
Tertullian* — " To know what the Apostles taught,
that is, what Christ revealed to them, recourse must be
had to the Churches which they founded, and which they
instructed by word of mouth and by their Epistles." — De
Prce scrip, c. 21.
" Of these (certain practices in the administration of
Baptism) and other usages, if you ask for the written
authority of the Scriptures, none will be found. They
spring from Tradition, ivhich practice has confirmed and
obedience ratified." — De Corona Militis, c. 3, 4. " To the
Scriptures, therefore, an appeal must not be made
the question is, to whom was that doctrine committed
by which we are made Christians? for where this doctrine
and this faith shall be found, there will be the truth of
the Scriptures and their expositions, and of all Chris-
tian Traditions." — De Prcescrip. c. 19.
Orige?i.— u As there are many who think they be-
lieve what Christ taught, and some of these differ from
others, it becomes necessary that all should profess that
doctrine which came down from the Apostles, and now
* This Father, having embraced Christianity about the year 1?5,
and died in 216. ie usually claimed as belonging alike'to both Cen-
turies.
( a* )
continues in the Church. That alone is truth which in
nothing differs from ecclesiastical and apostolical tra-
dition." — Prgef. lib. 1. de Princip. " As often as the he-
retics produce the Canonical Scriptures, in which every
Christian agrees and believes, they seem to say, Lo!
with us is the word of truth. But to them (the heretics)
we cannot give credit, nor depart from the first and ec-
clesiastical tradition. We can believe only as the suc-
ceeding Churches of God have delivered." — Tract. 29
in Mat.
Lactantius. — " The Catholic Church alone retains the
true worship. This is the source of truth, tliis is the
dwelling of faith."— Jaw*. I. 4. c. 30.
Cyprian. — " It is easy to minds that are religious and
simple to lay aside error, and to discover truth : for if we
turn to the source of Divine Tradition, error ceases."* —
Ep. 63.
Eusebius. — " Which truths, though they be consigned
to the Sacred Writings, are still, in a fuller manner,
confirmed by the Traditions of the Catholic Church,
which Church is diffused over all the earth. This un-
written Tradition confirms and seals the testimonies of
the Holy Scriptures." — Dem. Evang. lib. 1.
Basil. — " Among the dog-mas of the Church there are
some contained in the Scriptures and some come from
Tradition ; but both have an equal efficacy in the promo-
tion of piety." — De Spirit. Sanct. c. 27. " In my opi-
nion, it is apostolical to adhere to unwritten Traditions."
— Ibid c. 29. " It is the common aim of all the enemies
of sound doctrine, to shake the solidity of our faith in
Christ by annulling apostolical Tradition .... they dis-
miss the unwritten testimony of the Fathers as a thing
of no value." — lb. c. 10.
Epiphanius. — " We must look also to Tradition ; for
all things cannot be learned from the Scriptures."
Chrysostom. — " Hence it is manifest that they (the
Apostles) did not deliver all things by means of Epistles,
but that they made many communications without
* On this passage St. Augustin remarks :— The advice which St.
Cyprian gives to recur to the Tradition of the Apostles, and thenre to
bring down the series to our own times, is excellent, and manifestly to
be followed."— De Bapt. contra Donatist. I. 5. «. 26.
( 3G )
writing; and that both are equally entitled to credence.
It is a tradition, ask no farther." — Horn. 4. in 2 Thess.*
PRIMACY OF THE SUCCESSORS OF ST. PETER.
Some of the strong* testimonies, on this point, of St.
Irenseus, St. Cyprian, &c have already been laid before
the reader.
Cyprian. — Nevertheless that he (Christ) might clearly
establish unity, he formed one See, and by his authority
fixed the origin of this same unity by beginning from
one. The other apostles were accordingly, like Peter,
invested with an equal participation of honour and power;
but the beginning is built on unity. The Primacy is
given to Peter, that there might be exhibited one Church
of Christ and one See." — De Unitat. Eccles.
Jerom. — (In a letter to Pope Damasus.) " I am follow-
ing no other than Christ, united to the communion of
your Holiness, that is, to the Chair of Peter. I knew
that the Church is founded upon that Rock." — Ep. 14.
ad Damasum. " I cease not to proclaim, He is mine who
remains united to the Chair of Peter."
Chrysostom. — " For what reason did Christ shed his
blood I Certainly, to gain those sheep the care of which
he committed to Peter and his successors."
SATISFACTION TO GOD BY PENITENTIAL WORKS.
Cyprian. — " The Lord must be invoked ; must be ap-
peased by our satisfaction." — De Lapsis. Before Him
let the soul bow down : to Him let our sorrow make
satisfaction : .... By fasting, by tears, and by moaning,
let us appease, as he himself admonishes, his indignation. 1 '
lb. " Purge away your sins by works of justice, and
by alms-deeds which may save the soul. God can pardon :
he can turn away his judgment. He can pardon the
penitent who implores forgiveness; he can accept for him
the supplications of others ; or should he move him more
by his own works of satisfaction, and thus disarm his
*On the passage of St. Paul :— " Therefore, brethren, stand fast
and hold the traditions which ye have leeu taught, whether by word,
or our epistle. M
( 37 )
anger, the Lord' will repair his strength, whereby he
shall be invigorated anew."* — lb.
Ambrose. — " Let Christ see thee weeping, that he
may say, ■ Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be
comforted.' (Mat. v. 4.) Therefore, did he immediately
pardon Peter, because he wept bitterly ; and if thou weep
in like manner, Christ will look on thee, and thy sin will
be cancelled Let no consideration then with-
hold thee from doing penance. In this imitate the
Saints, and let their tears be the measure of thy own." —
De Poznit. c. 10.
PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD.
Cyril of Jerusalem. — " Then (in the Sacrifice of the
Mass) we pray for the Holy Fathers and the Bishops
that are dead; and, in short, for all those who are de-
parted this life in our communion ; believing that the
souls of those, for whom the prayers are offered, receive
very great relief, while this holy and tremendous victim
lies upon the altar." — Catech. My stag. 5.
Ambrose. — (In his Funeral Oration on the two Empe-
rors, Valentinians.) " Blessed shall you both be if my
prayers can avail any thing. No day shall pass, in which
I will not mention you with honour ; no night in which
you shall not partake of my prayers. In all my oblations
I will remember you."
Epiphanius. — " There is nothing more opportune,
nothing more to be admired, than the rite which directs
the names of the Dead to be mentioned. They are aided
* See Bossuet's defence of the language of St. Cyprian, on this sub-
ject, in answer to M. Jurieu. '• II faut, dit-il (Saint Cyprien,) satisfaire
a Dieu pour ses peches ; mais il faut aussi que la satisfaction soit recue
par notre Seigneur. II faut croire que tout ce qu'on fait n'a rien de
parfait ni de sufnsant en soi-meme puisqu'apres tout, quoique nous
fassions, nous ne sorames que de serviteurs inutiles et que nous
nVavons pas raerae a nous glorifier du pu que nous faisons, puisque,
comme nous Tavons deja rapporte tout nous vient de Dieu par Jesus
Christ, en qui seul nous avons acces aupres du Pere." — flvertissemens
aux Protestants. Such is the much misrepresented doctrine of Catholics
on this point.
The language of St. Augustin respecting this doctrine is fully as
Popish as that of St. Cyprian : — " It is not enough," he says, " that the
sinner change his ways, and depart from his evil works, unless by
penitential sorrow, by bumble tears, by the sacrifice of a contrite
heart, and by alms-deeds, he make satisfaction to God for what he has
committed."— HomiL 1. T.x.
4
( 38 )
by the Prayer which is offered for them, though it may
not cancel all their faults. — We mention both the just
and sinners, in order that for the latter we may obtain
mercy." — Hair. 55.
Chrysostom. — " It is not in vain that oblations and
prayers are offered and alms given for the dead. So has
the Divine Spirit ordained that we might mutually assist
one another." — Homil. 21. " Not without reason was
it ordained by the Apostles, that in celebrating the Sa-
cred Mysteries, the Dead should be remembered; for they
well knew what advantage would thence be derived to
them." — Homil. 3. in Epist. ad Philip. *
INVOCATION OF SAINTS AND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
Origen. — " We may be allowed to say of all the holy
men who have quitted this life, retaining their charity
towards those whom they left behind, that they are anx-
ious for their salvation, and that they assist them by their
prayers and their meditation with God. For it is written
in the books of the Maccabees, * This is Jeremiah, the
prophet of God, who always prays for the people.' — Lib.
3. in Cant. Cantic. 4 1 will fall down on my knees, and,
not presuming, on account of my crimes, to present my
prayer to God, I will invoke all the saints to my assis-
tance. O ye saints of Heaven, I beseech you with a sor-
row full of sighs and tears, fall at the feet of the Lord of
Mercies for me, a miserable sinner.' " — Lib. 2. de Job.
Cyprian. — " Let us be mindful of one another in our
prayers; with one mind, and with one heart, in this
world, and in the next, let us always pray, with mutual
charity relieving our sufferings and afflictions. And may
*On the subject of Prayers for the Dead there occurs an interesting
passage in St. Ephrem of Edessa, which appears to have escaped the
notice of my friend. In a work entitled his Testament, this pious
Father thus speaks :— My brethren, come to me, and prepare me for
my departure, for my strength is wholly gone. Go along with me
in psalms and in your prayers, and please constantly to make oblations
forme. When the thirtieth day shall be completed, then remember
me ; for the dead are helped by the offerings of the living. — Now listen
with patience to what I shall mention from the Scriptures. Moses
bestowed blessings on Reuben after the third generation (Deut. xxxiii.
6.;) but, if the Dead are not aided, why was he blessed? Again, if
they be insensible, hear what the Apostle says : — * If the dead rise not
again at all, why are they then baptized far them V (I Cor, xv. 29.";
( 39 )
the charity of him who, by the divine favour, shall first
depart hence, still persevere before the Lord ; may his
prayer, for our brethren and sisters, be unceasing'." — De
Habitu Virg.
Athanasius. — " Hear now, oh daughter of David ; in-
cline thine ear to our prayers. — We raise our cry to thee.
Remember us, oh! most Holy Virgin, and for the feeble
eulogiums we give thee, grant us great gifts from the
treasures of thy graces, thou, who art full of grace. —
Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Queen
and Mother of God, intercede for us." — Serm. in Annunt.
Hilary. — " According to Raphael, speaking to Tobias,
there are Angels who serve before the face of God, and
who convey to him the prayers of the suppliant. — It is
not the character of the Deity that stands in need of this
intercession, but our infirmity does. — God is not ignorant
of any thing that we do: but the weakness of man, to sup-
plicate and to obtain, calls for the ministry of the spiri-
tual intercession."— In Psalm 129.
Basil. — (In celebrating the Feast of the Forty Martyrs)
" O ye common guardians of the human race, co-opera-
tors in our prayers, most powerful messengers, stars of
the world and flowers of Churches, let us join our
prayers with yours." — Horn. 19.
Ephrem of Edessa. — " I entreat you, oh ! Holy Mar-
tyrs, who have suffered so much for the Lord, that you
would intercede for us with Him that he bestow his
grace on us." — Encom. in SS. Mart. " We fly to
thy patronage, Holy mother of God: protect and guard
us, under the wings of thy mercy and kindness. — Most
merciful God, through the intercession of the most
Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the Angels, and of all
the Saints, show pity to thy creature." — Serm. de Laud.
B. Mar. Virg.
RELICS AND IMAGES.
Hilary. — " The holy blood of the Martyrs is every
where received, and their venerable bones daily bear
witness." — L. contra Constant.
Basil. — " If any one suffer for the name of Christ, his
remains are deemed precious : and, if any one touch the
bones of a martyr, he becomes partaker, in some degree,
( 40 )
of his holiness, on account of the grace residing in them.
Wherefore, " precious in the sight of God is the death of
his Saints.' " — Serm. in Psalm 115.
" I receive the Apostles, the Prophets and the Martyrs.
I invoke them to pray for me, and that by their interces-
sion God may be merciful to me and forgive my trans-
gressions. For this reason I revere and honour their
images, especially since we are taught to do so by the
tradition of the holy Apostles; and so far from these
being forbidden us, they appear in our Churches." — Ep.
nd Julian*
Ephrem. — "The grace of the divine spirit, which
works miracles in them, ever resides in the Relics of the
Saints." — In Encom. omnium Mart.
Ambrose. — "I honour, therefore, in the body of the Mar-
tyr, the wounds that he received in the name of Christ ;
I honour the memory of that virtue which shall never
die; I honour those ashes which the confession of Faith
has consecrated ; I honour in them the seeds of eternity :
I honour that body which has taught me to love the
Lord, and not to fear death for his sake." — Serm. 55.
Chrysostom. — " Next to the power of speech, the mo-
numents of Saints are best adapted, when we look on
them, to excite us to the imitation of their virtues.
Here when any one stands, he feels himself seized by a
certain force ; the view of the shrine strikes on his heart ;
he is affected, as if he that there lies were present, and
offered up prayers for him. Thus does a certain alacrity
come over him, and, changed almost to another man, he
quits the place. For this reason, then, has God left us
the Remains of the Saints." — Lib. contra Gent. "That
which neither riches nor gold can effect, the Relics of
Martyrs can. Gold never dispelled diseases nor warded
off death; but the bones of Martyrs have done both.
In the days of our forefathers, the former happened;
the latter in our own." — Homil. 67. de St. Drosid. Mart.
Gregory of Nyssa. — (In his Oration on the Feast of
the Martyr Theodorus) " when any one enters such a
* In quoting tbis Epistle to Julian, as from the pen of St. Basil,
my young friend has not shown his usual accuracy. The fragment
from which the above passage is taken, though extant among the
Acts of the Second Nicene Council, is given up, I believe, as spurious,
by the most judicious Catholic writers; and even the zealous Baronius,
though he produces the fragment, forbears cautiously from laying any
Btreii upon it, as authority.
( 41 )
place as this, where the memory of this just man and his
relics are preserved, his mind is first struck, while he
views the structure and all its ornaments, with the gene-
ral magnificence that breaks upon him. The artist has
here shown his skill in the figures of animals and the
airy sculpture of the stone, while the painter s hand is
most conspicuous in delineating the high achievements
of the Martyr The figure of Christ is also
beheld looking down upon the scene"
Nilus. — " In the chancel of the most sacred temple,
towards the east, let there be one and only one Cross . .
Let the sacred temple be filled with pictures well exe-
cuted by tfie most celebrated artists, representing the most
remarkable events of the Old and New Testaments; that the
unlettered and those who are incapable of reading the di-
vine Scriptures may, by the sight of the picture, be in-
structed in the virtuous deeds of those who have served
the true God, according to his own will and command."
Lib. 4. Ep. 61.
CHAPTER VIII.
Invocation of the Virgin. — Gospel of the Infancy, &c— Louis XL—
Bonaventura.— St. Ambrose, St. Basil, and Doctor Doyle.
In the foregoing list, containing a few of those " abomi-
nations " of Popery, which I found sanctioned by the
highest authorities of the Christian Church, there is one
placed under the head of "Invocation of Saints," to
which I had not before adverted, namely, the devotion
(or, as Protestants will have it,) idolatry paid by Papists
to the Blessed Virgin. There appears no doubt that this
worship, within the due bounds to which all rational
Catholics would confine it, formed a part of the devotions
of Christians, from the very first ages of the Church.
In the Second Century we find Irenaeus, the great light
of that age, attributing such power to the intercession of
the Virgin with God, as to suppose her the advocate, in
heaven, for the fallen mother of mankind, Eve. The
Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus, a work referred to the same
4*
( 43 )
period, and which, though manifestly an imposture,*
may, at least, be depended upon, as an echo of the tone
prevalent among the orthodox of its times, in relating the
circumstances which took place previously to our Lord's
nativity, gives to the Virgin simply the name of " Mary,"
but immediately after that event, styles her the " Divine
Mary," and adds that Churches were, in those times, de-
dicated to her honour.f
In the irritation which, I own, I could not help feeling
at the discovery of this fresh proof of Popery, in the ear-
ly ages of the Church, I found myself secretly wishing
that it might also be in my power to detect, in those
times, the same extravagant follies respecting the wor-
ship of the Virgin, which, in after ages, brought such
discredit upon the religion that was made responsible for
them, and by which alone, indeed, most Protestants form
their judgment of the Catholic faith on this subject.]: I
allude not so much to the gross extravagances of those
who have installed the Virgin as a Fourth Person of the
Godhead, or to such superstitious follies as that of Louis
XL, who, by a formal contract, made over to the Mother
of God all right and title in the fee and privileges of the
Comte de Boulogne, — not so much to these blasphemous
absurdities do I allude,, as to that injudicious excess of
zeal which led Bonaventura and other distinguished Ca-
tholics to claim for the Virgin a rank in the scale of su-
* With this Gospel another apocryphal work, of the game high
antiquity, is usually joined, to wit, the Gospel of the Birth of Mary, in
which it is declared that the object of her espousals with Joseph was,
not that he might make her his wife, but that he might be the guardian
of her perpetual Virginity ; the High Priest having said to him, *'Thou
nrt the person chosen totake the" Virgin of the Lord, to keep her for
him." •
t The minister, Jurieu, contended that the claims of the Virgin to
invocation or worship were not admitted till after that decision of the
Council of Ephesus, which, in opposition to Nestorius, pronounced
Mary to be the mother of God. It is well answered, however, by Bos-
suet, that the very Church in which that Council was held bore testi-
mony to the honours already paid to the Virgin by its having been
dedicated to her name. He refers also to a circumstance which, long
before the sitting of that Council, St. Gregory of Nazianzum had re-
lated of a female martyr in the third century, who prayed to the
Blessed Mary " to aid a virgin who was in peril."
X The Lutheran Goetzius~ assuming charitably that female saints,
— Mary, Anne, Catherine, Manraret, &c. (as he enumerates them,)—
form the principal object of worship with the Catholics, calls their
faith a womanish Religion."— rcligio muliebris. See his Meletemata
Annaebergensia.
( 43 )
perior beings much higher than either reason or true pie-
ty would assign to her.*
So far from finding, however, in the first ages, any
sanction for such pretensions, I soon discovered that
though, even then, some abuses of this worship had in-
truded themselves, the great teachers of Christian doc-
trine rebuked and denounced them as idolatrous: nor
could there be given, perhaps, a more faithful exposition
of all that the Catholics of the present day think and feel
on this subject, than is to be found in the following re-
marks, which the great antagonist of heresies, Epiphanius,
directed against some female heretics of his time, by whom
a more than due share of honour was paid to the Vir-
gin: — " Her body (he says) was, I own, holy, but she was
no God. She continued a Virgin, but she is not proposed
for our adoration; — she herself adoring him who, having
descended from heaven and the bosom of his Father, was
born of her flesh Though, therefore, .she was
a chosen vessel, and endowed with eminent sanctity, still
she is a woman, partaking of our common nature, but de-
serving of the highest honours shown to the Saints of
God. — She stands before them all on account of the hea-
venly mystery accomplished in her. But we adore no
saint: and as this worship is not given to angels, much
less can it be allowed to the daughter of Ann. — Let Mary,
therefore, be honoured; but the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost alone be adored: let no one adore Mary." — Adv.
Collyridianos\ Hcer. 59.
* The absurdity of ths learned Tripsins (one of those many literati,
whose whole due of fame is, as it were, discounted to them while
living) in bequeathing his best fur cloak to the Virgin on his death-
bed, drew down from the Netherland wits a burst of ridicule upon his
memory, which the defence of the bequest by his friend Wowerius
(Assertio Lipsiani Don an) was but ill calculated to extinguish.
Of the lengths to which some pious enthusiasts in the cause of the
Virgin have gone, many curious instances might be collected. For
example, the following thesis, put forth by the Recollets of Liege, in
1076. — " Frequens confessio et communio, et cultns B. Virginia etiam
in iis, qui gentiliter vivunt, sunt signum predestinationis ;" and, still
more absurd, the assertion of a Portuguese Jesuit, Francis Mendoza,
** impossibile esse ut B. Virginis cuitor in sternum damnetur." These
are, to be sure, wretched extravagances; but if the excess or per ver-
sion of a religious belief is to be assumed as an argument against the
belief itself, far more vital points of faith than the intercessorial
power of the Virgin may suffer by such logic.
t These heretics, who were chiefly women, used to offer up to the
Virgin a particular kind of cake, or bun, called in Greek, Collyris.
The«r grand offering, however, was a loaf, which, at a stated seasofi
( 44 )
Precisely such, as I conceive, is the wide and essential
distinction which a Catholic divine of our own days
would draw between adoration and honour; — between
the worship due only to God, and that devout veneration
which, in common with all Christian antiquity, we should
offer to her whom an inspired voice pronounced "blessed
among women," and "the Mother of the Lord."
In short, looking- back from the point where I had now
arrived to the whole course and results of my search
through those ages, I found myself forced to confess, that
the Popery of the nineteenth century differs in no respect
from the Christianity of the third and fourth ; and that if
St. Ambrose, St. Basil, and a few more such " flowers of
Churches," had been able to borrow the magic night-
caps of their cotemporaries, the Seven Sleepers, and were
now, after a nap of about fifteen centuries, just opening
their eyes in the town of Carlow, they would find in the
person of Dr. Doyle, the learned Bishop of Leighlin and
Ferns, not only an Irishman whose acquaintance even
they might be proud to make, but a fellow Catholic every
iota of whose creed would be found to correspond exactly
with thtur own.
m , > J**, fflfc ^44ti t» ■
CHAPTER IX.
Prayers for the Dead. — Purgatory.— Penitential Discipline. — Confes-
sion.— Origen.— St. Ambrose.— Apostrophe to the Shade of Father
O'H * *.
Among those articles of Popery which I have enume-
rated as pre-existing in the creed of the Primitive Church,
there are two, rather implied than mentioned, namely, a
belief in Purgatory and auricular Confession, concerning
which I have to offer a few brief remarks.
The solemn usage of praying for the Dead, can be found-
ed only on the belief that there exists a middle state of puri-
cf the year, they presented to her with much solemnity, and then
each of them partook of the oblation. In this ceremony, the wo-
icaen performed tfie office of Priesthood.
( 45 )
fication and suffering through which souls pass after
death, and from which the prayers of the faithful may aid
in delivering them. The antiquity, therefore, of the use
of Prayers for the Dead (and we trace them through all
the most ancient Liturgies) sufficiently prove to us how
ancient was the belief on which they are founded. From
the Second Book of the Maccabees (taking these Books
merely in the Protestant view of them, as an uncanonical
but authentic record) we learn that the ancient Jews, on
this point, held the same faith as the Catholics: — "It is,
therefore, a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the
dead, that they may be loosed from their sins."
We cannot wonder that such a belief should be thus
ancient, for assuredly none can be more natural ; nor, on
the other hand, can any thing be less consistent either
with our knowledge of human nature, or our notions of
the divine, than such an absence of all gradation, both in
reward and punishment, as the w T ant of an intermediate
state between heaven and hell must imply. What the
Protestant divine, Paley, has said on the subject of Pur-
gatory appears to me to be founded on such sentiments as
both reason and nature approve: "Who can bear," he
asks, " the thought of dwelling in everlasting torments 1
Yet who can say that a God everlastingly just will not
inflict them] The mind of man seeks for some resource:
it finds one only in conceiving that some temporary pu-
nishment, after death, may purify the soul from its moral
pollutions, and make it at last acceptable even to a Deir
ty infinitely pure."
Fully agreeing with Paley on this point, it was with
some pleasure I now discovered that, from Justin Martyr
down to Basil and Ambrose, all the Fathers of the first
four ages concur in opinion as to the existence of such an
intermediate state ; — the greater number of them inter-
preting a remarkable passage of St Paul (1 Cor. iii. 13,
14, 15,) as denoting expressly some region of purgation
for the soul, where " the fire shall try every man's work
of what sort it is," and where, as Origen explains the
passage, " each crime shall, in proportion to its charac-
ter, experience a just degree of punishment." Referring
to the same passage of the Apostle, St. Ambrose says,
" From hence it may be collected, that the same man is
saved in part, and is condemned in part;" and, again, in
a Commentary on this Epistle, he remarks: — " The Apos-
( 46 )
tie said, 'He shall be saved, yet so as by fire,' in order
that his salvation be not understood to be without pain.
He shows that he shall be saved indeed, but that he shall
undergo the pain of fire, and be thus purified ; not like
the unbelieving and wicked man who shall be punished
in everlasting fire.*' — Comment, in 1 Ep. ad Cor. With
similar views it was maintained by St. Hilary (and Ori-
gen seems to have been of the same opinion) that, after
the day of Judgment, all — even the Blessed Virgin her-
self—must alike pass through this fire, to purify them
from their sins.
The system of Penitential Discipline,* of which Con-
fession forms one of the most important parts, was, as we
learn from the ecclesiastical historian, Socrates, observed
by the Bishops of Rome from the very earliest times; and
the public penance of the Emperor Theodosius, in the
great Church of Milan, proves what deference continued
to be paid to the same spiritual ordinance, after Christi-
anity had become the established religion of the Empire.
Far different, however, were the notions of Repentance
prevailing among the early Christians from those that
have since been taught by the Apostles of the Reforma-
tion, who, in abolishing Confession, Penitential Fasting,
&c. and getting rid of all that slow, humbling process of
self-accusation and penance, by which the Catholic Church
has, through all ages, disciplined her erring children,
seem to have thought of little else than consulting the
comfort of the sinner, and rendering his road to salvation
short and easy. " There is yet," says Origen, " a more
severe and arduous pardon of sin by penance, when the
sinner washes his couch with his tears, and when he
blushes not to disclose his sin to the Priest of the Lord,
* As, in this world, the abuse of all good gifts follows as naturally
on their use as shadows do on lights, it can little surprise us to rind
that the Sacrament of Penance was as much perverted from its true in-
tention and spirit by the weak Catholics of other days, as it is, and will
be, perverted by the same description of Catholics "to the end of time.
The existence of such false notions of Penance, in his own days, is
thus noticed and reprehended by St. Ambrose: — "There are some who
ask for penance, that they may be at once restored to communion.
These do not so much desire to be loosed as to bind the Priest, for they do
not unburden their own consciences, but they burden his. * * * Thus
you may see persons walking about in white garments, who ought to
be in tears for having defiled that colour of grace and innocence.
Others there are, who, provided they abstain frornthe Holy Sacraments,
fancy they are doing penance. Others, while they have this in view,
conclude they are licensed to sin, not aware that" penance is the re-
medy, not the provocative of sin."— De Pcenit.I. 2. c. 9.
( 47 )
and to ask a remedy.* Thus is fulfilled what the Apos-
tle says,. 'Is any man sick among you, let him bring in
the Priest^ of the Church.' (James v. 14.")
Of St. Ambrose it is said, by his secretary and biogra-
pher, that " as often as any one, in doing penance, con-
fessed his faults to him, he wept so as to draw tears from
the sinner. He seemed to take part in every act of sor-
row. But, as to the occasions or causes of the crimes
which they confessed, these he revealed to no one but God,
with whom he interceded ; leaving this good example to
his successors in the Priesthood, that they should be in-
tercessors with God, not accusers before men." — Paulin.
in Vita Ambros. The writings, indeed, of that age
abound with affecting remarks upon the sacred and deli-
cate duty which a Confessor has to perform, and the con-
soling balm he may apply to wounded and repentant spi-
rits. * Show me bitter tears (says St. Gregory of Nyssa)
that I may mingle mine with yours. Impart your trouble
to the Priest, as to your Father; he will be touched with
a sense of your misery. Show to him what is concealed,
without blushing ; — open the secrets of your soul, as if
you were showing to a physician a hidden disorder ; he
will take care of your honour and of your cure." — Serm.
de Pcenit.
How often, in reading such passages, did I call to mind
my own innocent and Popery-believing days, when, aa
the regular season for Confession returned, I used to set
off, early in the morning, to — — Street Chapel, trem-
bling all over with awe at the task that was before me,
but still firmly resolved to tell the worst, without dis-
guise. How vividly do I, even at this moment, remember
kneeling down by the Confessional, and feeling my heart
beat quicker, as the sliding-panel in the side opened, and
I saw the meek and venerable head of the kind Father
O'H stooping down to hear my whispered list of sins.
The paternal look of the old man, — the gentleness of hia
voice, even in rebuke, — the encouraging hopes he gave
of mercy as the sure reward of contrition and reforma-
tion, — all these recollections came freshly over my mind,
as I now read the touching language employed by some
of the Fathers on this subject; language such as the fol-
lowing, from the Homilies of Origen, which, though writ-
* St. Augustin also writes : " Our merciful God wills us to confess
in this world that we may not be confounded in the other."— Horn. 20.
( 48 )
ten when Christianity was little more than 200 years old,
is as applicable to many a Catholic Confessor of our owa
times, as if indited but yesterday. " Only let the sinner
carefully consider to whom he should confess his sin,
what is the character of the physician; — if he be one who
will be weak with the weak, who will weep with the sor-
rowful, and who understands the discipline of condolence
and fellow-feeling: so that when his skill shall be known,
and his pity felt, you may follow what he shall advise. 1 ' —
HomiL 2. in Psalm 27. " If we discover our sins, not
only to God, but to those who may thus apply a remedy
to our wounds and iniquities, our sins will be effaced by
him who said, ■ I have blotted out thy iniquities as a cloud,
and thy sins as a mist' " — HomiL 17. in Lucayn.
Shade of my reverend Pastor, could st thou have looked
down upon me, in the midst of my folios, how it would
have grieved thy meek spirit to see the humble little vi-
siter of thy confessional, — him whom sometimes thou hast
doomed, for his sins, to read the Seven Penitential Psalms
daily, — to- see him forgetting so soon the docility of those
undoubting days, and setting himself up, God help him,
as controvertist and Protestant 1
"• Ml)£ x^ ©t^** —
CHAPTER X.
The Eucharist.— A glimpse of Protestantism.— Type, Figure, Sisrn, tee.
—Glimpse lost again.— St. Cyril of Jerusalem.— St. Cyprian— St. Je-
rom.— St. Chrysostom.— Tertullian.
In tracing the doctrines of Popery through the third
and fourth ages, I have reserved, as may have been re-
marked, one of the most important of them all, — that re-
lating to the Eucharist, — for separate consideration; and
this I have done not merely on account of the great im-
portance of the doctrine itself, but because on this point
alone could I at all flatter myself with having discovered
any little glimmerings of that Protestant Christianity of
which I was in search.
The two first centuries, I saw clearly, must be given
up as desperate ; the language employed upon this sub-
( 49 )
ject by Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, having
abundantly convinced me that, in those apostolic times*
the literal or Popish interpretation of the words "This is
my body " was the accepted doctrine ; and that the Chris-
tians of the Primitive Church believed not only in the
Real, corporal Presence, but in the miraculous change of
substance after consecration. In the present depressed
state of my hopes, however, — lowered as they were to the
freezing temperature, — I would have compounded gladly
for a sample of Protestantism even of a much less ancient
date ; and it was therefore with considerable satisfaction
I had discovered in some writers of the third century the
use of such expressions, in speaking of the Eucharist, as
" Type," " Antitype," " Figure," &c, which seemed to
afford a sort of escape from the difficulties of a Real Pre-
sence into the vague and figurative substitute for that mi-
racle which, on the principle of believing "made easy,"
has been adopted by Protestants.
My self-gratulation, however, on this discovery was but
of very short duration. In the first place, I soon found
that this use of the words " Type," " Antitype," " Sign,"
&c. is not confined to those few Fathers to whom the
Protestants look up as authority, but that the same terms 5
have been also applied to the Eucharist by several of those
writers whose real opinions respecting the nature of that
Sacrament are known to have been as transubstantiatory
as Popish heart could desire. Thus the great Catechist,
Cyril of Jerusalem, who, in his doctrine concerning the
Real Presence, goes the full lengths of all that Rome has
ever asserted on the subject, yet applies to the Eucharist
the word " Type," and that in a manner which seems to
bear out the opinions of those who think that the term, as
thus employed by the Fathers, denoted but the external
appearance, or accidents, of the Eucharistic elements. "In
the type of bread (says Cyril) is given to thee the body,
and in the type of wine is given to thee the blood."* In
the same manner, in one of those Liturgies which go un-
der the name of St. Basil, we find the bread and wine of-
fered under the name of Antitypes, while in the prayer
that follows, the Holy Spirit is invoked to come down and
* Ev ruffa X*g x^rou JJotm gu vm^'A xxt iv tuna) ctvou <T^V
5
( 50 )
bless the gifts, and " make * the bread the body and the
wine the blood of Christ.*'
If we may rely, indeed, on the authenticity of a passage,
adduced by Bullinger from some MS. writings of Origen,
— and I see no reason to doubt the honesty of the Re-
former, in this instance, — it would appear, that Origen
foresaw the heresy that was likely to arise on this point,
and thus, by referring to the direct words of our Saviour*
endeavoured to guard against it. — "He did not say (ob-
serves Origen) ' this is a symbol,' but ' this is a body;' —
indicating thereby that nobody must suppose it to be a
type."f Another passage, still more strongly to the same
purport, is quoted by the same eminent Protestant, Bul-
linger, from the writings of Magnes, a Priest of Jerusa-
lem, who flourished in the third century: — "The Eucha-
rist is not a type of the body and blood, as some men,
defective in their understanding, have babbled, but rather
the body and blood."J
But, whatever may be thought of the authenticity
of these passages, I found to my sorrow, that the
Catholic view of the matter did not want the aid of any
such questionable authorities. So far, indeed, from con-
sidering the Eucharist to be, itself, merely typical or
symbolical, trie early Christians, on the contrary, held it
to be the accomplishment or reality of what had been
but typical, under the Old Law. In the bread and wine
offered by Melchisedek, the "Priest of the Most High
God," they saw the figure or shadow of that Sacrifice
which was to be instituted, from the same elements, in
the Eucharist, — the type, in short, of that great mystery
of which the Eucharist is the reality and the verity.
"That the blessing given to Abraham (says Cyprian)
might be properly celebrated, the representation of the
Sacrifice of Christ, appointed in bread and wine, pre-
ceded it; which our Lord perfecting and fulfilling it,
* Arzikirct.i, which, as Suicerus acknowledges, signifies here to
render or make.
J O'J >.tfg UTTi VtVTC VTTl cu/u&o.cv, aw' Tcvro ITTl CCS/AX
J/ftT/jta?, /v* fxa rqt i>i ns rvuroi uvsu.
\ Ovk strrtv Ev^acgjpriac rosrg twi c&y.zrcc y-xt <r:u cuuzrec,
ffTTn^ rate i^n-lSccvT-xv srasnigAAt?ej t;v vct/v, /uu,h?,cv £i <raux
x*t a.iux. — Advers. Thcosfhenem.
( 51 )
himself made offering- of in bread and wine; and thus he,
who is the plenitude, fulfilled the truth of the prefigured
image." (Ep. 63, ad Cecilium.) — Conceiving- the show-
bread of the Temple to have been also a preflguration of
the Eucharist, St. Jerome says, " There is as much dif-
ference betwixt the loaves offered to God in the Old
Law and the body of Jesus Christ, as betwixt the shadow
and the body, betwixt the image and the truth." {Com-
ment, in Ep. ad Tit.)
It having been evidently the belief of the early or-
thodox Christians that the Eucharist had been prefigured
in the offerings of the Old Law, to assert that they held
this sacrament itself to be typical is to impute to them
the absurdity of saying that it is but a type of types, a
mere shadow of shadows;* — thus sinking their estimate
of the importance of this institution to even a lower and
more evanescent point of value than it has been reduced
to by modern Sacramentarians and Arminians. That the
very reverse, however, of all this was the case, I have
just clearly shown ; and how precious they held the as-
surance that in place of the types and shadows of old,
they had, in the Sacrifice of the New Law, a reality and
a substance, f will appear from the language, ever glow-
* In a certain sense, and as far as it does not affect or qualify the
belief in a Real Presence, the Catholic may with perfect consistency
apply the words Figure or Symbol to the Eucharist, seeing that every
sacrament, as such, must be an outward sign, and consequently a
Figure or Symbol. In this sense it is that Pascal understands the
terms in question, used by the Fathers; and as the view taken by
so great a man of an article of faith so disputed cannot but be interest-
ing, I shall here transcribe his own characteristically clear words : —
11 Nous croyons que la substance du pain etant changee en relle du
corps de notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, il est present reellement au Saint
Sacrement. Voila une des verites. Une autre est que ce Sicrement
est aussi une figure d« la croix et de la gloire, et une commemoration
des deux. Voila la foi Catholique, qui comprend ces deux verites qui
semblent opposees.
" L'heresie d'aujourd'hui, ne concevant pas que ce Sacrement con-
tient tout ensemble, et la presence de Jesus Christ et sa figure, et qu'ii
soit Sacrifice, et Commemoration de Sacrifice, croit qu'on ne peut ad-
mette Tune de ces verites sansexclure l'autre.
*♦ Par cette raison ils s'attachment a ce point, que ce Sacrement est
figuratif ; et en cela ils ne sont pas heretiques. Ils pensent que nous
exclusion cette verite ; et de la vient qu'ils nous font tant d'objections
sur les passages des Peres qui le disent. Enfin, ils nient la presence
reelle ; et en cela ils sout heretiques." — Pcnsees, Sec. Partie.
| " We have an altar,"' says St. Paul, " whereof they have no right
to eat which serve the tabernacle." — And yet (observes St. Thomas
Aquinas on this passage) tfc)se who served the tabernacle had the
( 52 )
ing, of Chrysostom on this subject. — Asserting the Eu-
charist to be the accomplishment of the typical Passover,
he says, " How much greater holiness becomes thee, oh !
Christian, who hast received greater symbols than the
Holy of Holies contained; — for you have not the Cherubim,
but the Lord of the Cherubim dwelling in you ; — you have
not the Urn, and the Manna, and the Tables of Stone,
and the Rod of Aaron, but the body and blood of our
Lord." (In Psalm 133.) Again, Horn. 46, he says— " This
blood, even in the type, washed away sin. If it had so
great power in the type, — if Death were so affrighted by
the shadow, tell how it must be affrighted at the Verity
itself. Truly tremendous are the mysteries of the Church;
truly tremendous are our altars!"
The truth is, that the use of the words Type, Figure,
Sign, &c, as applied to the Eucharist, is to be found
neither in the Scriptures, nor in any of the pure Chris-
tian writers of the first two centuries. In the Scriptures,
the Eucharistic elements are usually denoted by the words
"body" and " blood;" and the same unqualified and un-
evasive language descended from the Apostles to their
immediate successors in the Church ; among whom, " to
offer," to receive," " to eat and drink the body and blood
of Christ," were as familiar phrases as "to receive the
Sacrament," or " to administer the Communion " are
among ourselves.
With Tertullian may be said to have commenced that
change in the public language of the Fathers on this sub-
ject, — that circumlocution, and, not unfrequently, am-
biguity, in their notices of this mystery, — of which before
there had been no example, and of which the Protestants
have, in their despair, taken advantage as affording some
shadow of plausibility to their argume-nts against the true
Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. The system of secrecy
to which such ambiguities, and, as it would seem, incon-
figure of Jesus Christ in their Sacrifices. Where, then, would be the
advantage that the Law of Grace professes to have over the Syna-
gogue ? If the Manna of the desert and the Eucharist are both alike
but the image of his body, wherefore does the Saviour mark out that
essential difference between them that the former was but a food
miraculously formed in the air which save not life, while the latter is
" the bread which comet h from heaven," and which if any man eat of,
M he shall live for ever." (John, xi.)—Sce Conferences sur les Mystery
torn. 2. p. 279.
( 53 )
sistencics in these holy writers may be traced, forms too
remarkable a feature in the annals of the early Church,
and is, indeed, too closely connected with the history of
this and other Christian doctrines, to be dismissed with-
out receiving some farther consideration.
CHAPTER XL
Discipline of the Secret.— Concealment of the doctrine of the Real
Presence.— St. Paul.— St. Clement of Alexandria. — Apostolical Con-
stitutions.— System of secrecy, when most observed.
The system to which I have referred, at the close of the
preceding chapter, as being- the principal cause of that
restraint and ambiguity which are observable in the
language of some of the Fathers concerning the Eucharist,
is well known among the learned by the name of the
Discipline of the Secret, and by many is supposed to have
been of apostolic origin. Among those alleged imitations
of the religious policy of the Pagans with which the
Primitive Christians and the Papists have alike been re-
proached, one of the most striking, as regards the former,
is that distinction drawn in the early Church between
the initiated and the non-initiated, — or, in other words, the
baptized and the unbaptized, — and the sacred care with
which the latter of those two classes were excluded from
all knowledge of those more recondite and awful doc-
trines of the faith, in which (to use the language of the
Apostle) " the wisdom of God in a mystery " lies con-
cealed.
In like manner, too, as among the Heathen Initiations,
there were certain stages through which the candidate
had to pass, not only for the purposes of discipline and
instruction, but to stimulate also his ardour in the pursuit,
before he arrived at the full and crowning close of his
task, so in these Mysteries of the Church, and declaredly
for the same reasons, a series of gradations was established
through which the Catechumens and Penitents were
a*
( 54 )
obliged slowly to advance to that highest station where
they were at length thought worthy of being initiated
into the Faith, and the great Mystery, the Eucharist,
was for the first time communicated to them. Till this
period, not only were the Catechumens prohibited from
being present at the celebration of that Sacrament, but
ail notion of its nature was carefully withheld from them,
nor was it ever suffered to be mentioned, except ob-
scurely, in their presence.
The chief object of all this secrecy was to guard from
the profaning scoffs of the infidel such doctrines as the
ear of Faith was alone worthy to listen to ; and the au-
thority alleged for its adoption was no less sacred a one
than the injunction of Christ himself: — "Place not holy
things before dogs, nor pearls before swine." That the
Apostles, in their capacity of " Stewards of the Mysteries
of God," observed a similar rule of secrecy was the cur-
rent opinion of the Fathers ; and the words of St. Paul
(1 Cor. iii. 1, 2.) are often adduced by them to prove that
already, in his time, this distinction between the Cate-
chumens and the Faithful was in force, " And I, breth-
ren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as
unto carnal persons, even as unto babes in Christ. I
haye fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto
ye were not able to bear it; neither yet now are ye
able,"
" If, therefore (says St. Clement of Alexandria, in com-
menting on this passage,) Milk be said by the Apostle to
belong to babes, and Meat to them that are perfect, Milk
will be understood to be Catechizing, as the first kind of
food of the soul, but Meat the concealed Theories." How
strongly St. Jerome also was of opinion that St. Paul
acted upon this principle appears from his reply to his
friend Evagrius, who had consulted him respecting the
meaning of an obscure passage of the Apostle with re-
gard to the sacrifice of Melchisedek : — " You are not to
suppose (says St. Jerome) that Paul could not easily have
explained himself; but the time was not come for such
explanation. He sought to persuade the Jews, and not
the Faithful, to whom the mystery might have been de-
livered without reserve."
Did the curious Collection, known by the name of the
Apostolical Constitutions, possess any such claim to a
( 55 )
rank among scriptural writings as Whiston labours to es-
tablish for it, the apostolic origin of the Discipline of the
Secret could be no longer doubtful ; — these Constitutions
having been professedly collected, under such a law of
secrecy, by the fellow-labourer of St. Paul, Clement, as
he is himself thus made to declare : — " The Constitutions,
dedicated to you, the Bishops, by me, Clement, in Eight
Books; — which it is not fitting to publish before all, be-
cause of the Mysteries contained in them."
But, though the authenticity claimed by Whiston, with
such profuse waste of learning, for this book, be now ge-
nerally disallowed, the work still furnishes a proof that,
in the third or fourth century, when it was fabricated, a
belief prevailed that those unwritten traditions and doc-
trines over which the Church drew a veil of silence had
descended to her, under the same religious law of secre-
cy, from the Apostles themselves. " We receive," says
£>t. Basil, " the dogmas transmitted to us by writing, and
those which have descended to us from the Apostles, be-
neath the veil and mystery of oral tradition
The Apostles and Fathers who prescribed from the be-
ginning certain rites to the Church, knew how to pre-
serve the dignity of the Mysteries by the secrecy and si-
lence in which they enveloped them. For what is open
to the ear and the eye is no longer mysterious. For this
reason several things have been handed down to us with-
out writing, lest the vulgar, too familiar with our dogmas,
should pass from being accustomed to them to the con-
tempt of them." — De Spirit. Sanct. c. 27.
Upon the controversy which is known to have been
maintained among the learned as to the precise time
when the Discipline of the Secret was first introduced
into the Church, it is not my intention here to dwell. —
Some, as we have seen, trace its origin as far back as the
time of jthe Apostles,* while others suppose it to have
been first practised towards the close of the second cen-
tury, and others, again, contrary to all authority, date its
commencement so low down as the fourth. The truth
seems to be that the principle of this policy was acted
* Among moderns, Schelstrate has contended most strenuously for
the apostolic origin of the Secret, while, in opposition to him, Tent-
zeiius and others refer its rise to about the close of the second century,
( 56 )
upon, in the Christian Church, from its very beginning.
So strongly has not only St. Paul, but our Saviour him-
self, inculcated a sacred reserve in promulgating the
Mysteries of the Faith, that there can be no doubt the
succeeding teachers of the Church would, in this, as in
all things else, follow their Divine Master's precept.
But though, as a principle, this reverential guard over
the Mysteries was observed, doubtless, from the very first
rise of Christianity, it does not appear to have been
strictly enforced, as a rule of discipline, till about the
close of the second century. The curiosity, and, still
more, the bitter enmity excited by the rapid spread of a
religion founded wholly, as it appeared, on mysteries,
but whose progress was, in unbelieving eyes, the greatest
mystery of all, rendered increased caution necessary on
the part of its ministers; and the divine precept by which
they were enjoined to hide the " holy things " of the
Faith from unbelievers, began, about this time, to be
acted upon by them with a degree of jealous strictness
proportionate to the prying insolence and violence by
which they were encompassed.
"■* M *f © ^^ ©4^*^"**
CHAPTER XII.
Doctrine of the Trinity.— St. Justin.— Irenxus.— Apparent heterodoxy
of the Fathers of the Third Century. — Accounted for by the Disci-
pline of the Secret. — Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, &c.
It has been asserted by more than one learned writer,
that the doctrine of the Trinity was not included among
the mysteries to which the protection of this rule of se-
crecy was extended.* But such an assumption is not
* In defiance, as it appears to me, of all evidence, it has been main-
tained by Tentzelius, Casaubon and others, that it was neither the
Trinity, nor any of the other dogmas of the Faith, but merely the rites
and ceremonies of the two Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist
that were intended to be concealed from the non-initiated by the ob-
servance of this Discipline.
( 57 )
only inconsistent with the main objects for which such a
rule was established, but is also, as it will not be difficult
to show, at variance with fact. It was, indeed, the pious
horror of exposing* such high mysteries as that of the
Trinity to the scoffs and, what was still worse, the mis-
representations of the Gentiles, that formed the chief mo-
tive of the Christian Pastors for the policy which they
adopted, — a policy which, on some points (such as that of
the Seven Sacraments,*) is supposed to have led them to
preserve an unbroken silence, but which, for the most part,
consisted in holding such language respecting any mys-
tery they had to mention before unbelievers, as was, at
the same time, transparent enough to allow the truth to
shine out to the initiated, and yet too obscure to betray
either the teacher or his doctrines to the profane. In
this reserved and ambiguous manner do Tertullian and
some of the succeeding Fathers speak of the Eucharist ;
and still more evasively, from the same cause, have al-
most all the Fathers of the first three centuries and a half
spoken of the Trinity.
This latter fact I am, in a peculiar degree, anxious to
impress on the reader ; seeing that it is of importance to
my subject to show that by an almost exactly similar fate
has the progress of these two mysteries, the Trinity and
the Real Presence, been all along marked ; and that the
same cause which produced, in some of the early Fathers,
that ambiguity of language, on the subject of the Eucha-
rist, of which the Protestants have availed themselves for
the support of their schism, produced also that still
greater ambiguity and inconsistency in the language of
the same Fathers, respecting the Trinity, which has,
with a similar degree of dexterity, been employed, in fa-
vour of their own heresy, by the Arians.
I have already remarked how much more free from
* It is to the operation of the Discipline of the Secret that Catholic
writers attribute the entire silence which they acknowledge has been
preserved, on the subject of the Seven Sacraments, in all the authen-
tic monuments of antiquity that remain to us. According to Schel-
strate, — one of those by whom the circumstance is thus accounted
for,— it is not till the seventh century that any mention of the Seven
Sacraments occurs ; — " Si pervolvamus omnia antiquitatismonumen-
ta, s,i perscrutemur cuncta antiquissimorum Patrum scripta, si inves-
tigemus ipsa Synodorum decreta, nullum librum, nullum decretum
reperiri, quod ante septimum sseculum egerit de Septem Sacramentis,
£Drumque ritus exposuerit."— Schclstraten. J?e Disciplin, 4rca$,
( 68 )
the restraints of this singular Discipline were those wri-
ters who flourished previously to the close of the second
century than were any of their successors for the next
hundred and fifty years; and I need but mention, in proof
of this fact, that the same illustrious Father, St. Justin,
who, as I have shown, ventured, in his Address to the
Sovereign and Princes of the Empire, to promulgate the
doctrine of Transubstantiation, proclaimed also, in the
same public document, the mystic dogma of the Trinity.
How far the circumstance of his not being an ecclesi-
astic may have rendered this Father somewhat less
guarded in his public writings, I will not pretend to de-
termine; but it is plain that even he thought it prudent
so far to disguise or soften down some of the more sa-
lient points of the doctrine of the Trinity as to present
it to the minds of unbelievers in its least startling shape,
knowing well that the charge of Polytheism was lying
in wait for him, as well from Jews as from Gentiles, he
refrains most cautiously, in his Apology, from asserting
the co-eternity of the Son with the Father, and even, in
some passages, expressly declares the inferior nature of
the former ; — " Next after God, we adore and love that
Word which is derived from the ineffable and unbegotten
God." And again, in speaking of the Logos, "Than
whom a more Royal and just Ruler, after God the Fa~
ther, we know not one."
The charge of heterodoxy which such language has
drawn down upon St. Justin w T ould appear not to be with-
out some foundation, had we not the Discipline of the Se-
cret to account for it satisfactorily, and did there not oc-
cur other passages, in the very same document, where
this veil of reserve is withdrawn and the true doctrine dis-
closed to the Initiate. Of this nature is the following,
showing clearly that the pure, orthodox belief, — that
which holds the Son to have been generated, not created,
and to have been with the Father from all eternity, —
w T as the belief delivered to St. Justin, and by him taught
to the baptized: — "But his Son, who alone is properly
called his Son, the Word, who was with him and was be-
gotten by him before the Creatures."
Another writer of the same age, Irenseus, may be cited
as yet more remarkable for the extent to which he has
ventured to unveil both the Sacrifice in the Eucharist,
( 59 )
and, still more fully, the great mystery of the Eternal
Generation of the Son. With so much bolder a hand
than any of his successors has he laid open the depths of
this latter doctrine, that in him alone does Whiston allow
that there can be found any sanction for that high view
of the Trinity, to which Whiston himself was opposed;
but which, however apparently, at times, " shorn of its
beams," has been, throughout every age of the Church,
her unchanging doctrine. It was from want of attention
to the operation of the Discipline of the Secret that
Whiston and others have been led into exactly the same
error, respecting the Trinity, that other Protestant di-
vines have fallen into, on the subject of the Real corporal
Presence.
Far different, indeed, from the language of Justin and
Irenseus was that held, on both these dogmas, by the
Fathers of the following age, when the system of secrecy
had begun strictly to be acted upon, and when, amidst
the storms of persecution that gathered round their heads,
the ministers of the Faith found in this holy Silence a
protection both for their doctrines and themselves. No-
thing, in truth, can show more strongly the difference
that, in this respect, distinguished the two periods, than
a comparison of the conduct of St. Justin with that of St.
Cyprian, in situations very nearly similar. The former,
as we have seen in his Defence of Christianity, addressed
to the Princes of the Empire, did not hesitate so far to
throw open the sanctuary of the Faith as to place before
them its two great Arcana, the Trinity and the Real
Presence ; whereas St. Cyprian, when, in like manner,
called upon to stand forth in vindication of his religion,
ventured no farther, in his public Epistle on the occa-
sion, than to assert the doctrine of the Unity of God,
leaving the Trinity and the mystic Sacraments of the
Church wholly unmentioned.
So cautiously, indeed, are the Christians of Cyprian's
age known to have shrunk from all mention of the Tri-
nity before the uninitiated, that* in reviewing the Acts
of the Martyr, St. Pontius, the chief point on which the
learned Schelstrate rests his conviction of their spurious-
ness is their representing this Martyr as speaking openly
of the Trinity before the emperors Philip, while still
Gentiles, — a violation of the law of secrecy, on this sub-
( 60 )
ject of which no Christian would, at that time,* have
been likely to be guilty.
Were we to form our judgment solely on some de-
tached passages of Tertullian, Origen, and Lactantius,
we must either come to Winston's conclusion, that the pre-
sent accepted doctrine of the Trinity was not that of the
primitive Church; or else suppose that the truth of this
divine mystery, having broken out brightly and genuine-
ly in the writings of St. Justin and Irenseus, was again,
for an interval of a hundred and fifty years, eclipsed and
lost. To give but an instance or two of the imperfect
views, respecting the relation between Christ and God,
which the Fathers of the third century suffered to glim-
mer through their writings, we find the following unor-
thodox passage in Tertullian on the subject : — " God was
not always a Father or Judge, since he could not be a
Father before he had a Son, nor a Judge before there
was any sin ; and there was a time when both sin and
the Son were not."
The fear of drawing upon themselves the imputation
of Polytheism from the Gentiles appears to have been
one of the chief motives with these holy men for their
reserve respecting the Trinity ; and how readily disposed
were not only the Pagans, but some of the heretics, to
found such an accusation on this doctrine appears from
the account given by Tertullian of the Sabellians of his
day, whose first question, as he tells us, in meeting any
of the orthodox, was, " Well, my friends, do we believe
in one God or three P 1 It was evidently to counteract
such an impression that St. Cyprian, as we have seen, in
his Letter to the Proconsul of Africa, contented himself
with solely establishing the Unity of God ; and that ano-
ther learned Father, Lactantius, about half a century
later, thought it prudent to put forth the following decla-
ration : — " Our Saviour taught that there is but one God,
and that he alone is to be worshipped; nor did he ever
say once himself that he was God. For, he had not been
* There occur also some instances of the same strict observance of
secrecy, in the second century. Thus, we find. Alexander, the Martyr,
when preaching to the prisoners, made no mention of the Holy Spirit,
nor of the mystery of the Trinity; and when ordered by Aurelius to
explain all the dogmai of his faith, answered that he was not permit-
ted by Christ to place holy things before dogs.
( 61 )
faithful to his trust, if, when he was sent to take away
Polytheism, and assert the Unity of God, he had intro-
duced another besides the one God. This had been not
to preach the doctrine of one God, nor to do the business
of him that sent him, but his own." — De vera Sapient.
In a similar manner, with the view of removing those
prejudices which were known to exist against Christi-
anity, from a notion that, like Paganism, it sanctioned
the worship of many Gods, we find Origen, in his Trea-
tise on Prayer, going so far as almost to deny that Christ
is to be considered an object of supplication or thanks-
giving: — "But if we understand (says this Father) what
Prayer is, care must be taken that no derivative Being
be the object of Prayer, — no, not Christ himself, but only
the God and Father of the Universe, to whom also our
Saviour himself prayed, as we have before expounded,
and as he teaches us to pray. For, when one said to him,
Teach us to pray, he does not teach us to pray to himself,
but to his Father, saying, ■ Our Father which art in hea-
ven.' "
It is from attending solely to passages such as these
that not only calumniators of the Fathers, like Daille and
Jurieu, but even Catholics of distinguished character,
such as Petau and Huet,* have been led into the error of
accusing the teachers of the early Church of Arianism ;
whereas, a little more fairness in some of the theologians
just named, and a little more industry in the others,
would have enabled them to cite from writings of the
very same Fathers, — writings produced under circum-
stances that led them more freely to unfold the mysteries
of their Faith, — passages fully asserting the dogma of
the Tri-une Deity, in all its primitive, orthodox, and in-
scrutable grandeur. Thus Tertullian, who, as we have
seen, in addressing the Stoic Hermogenes, could so far
shrink from the true exposition of this doctrine as to de-
clare that there was a time when God was not a Father,
and had not a Son, has yet, in his Defence of the Trinity
against Praxeas, given conclusive evidence of his belief
* This learned Catholic, in referring to the heretical opinions which
are to be found in such passages as I have above cited from the Fa-
thers, doubts whether to impute them to impiety or unskilfulness.
But the self-imposed restraint, under which they, at times wrote, af-
fords the true clew to all such difficulties.
6
( 62 )
in the in-dwelling of the Word with God from all eternity ;
and has, moreover, in one sentence, defined the consub-
stantial union of the Three Persons as strictly as was af-
terwards done by Athanasius himself, — calling" it " Una
substantia in tribus cohffirentibus." In a like manner,
too, Origen, notwithstanding passages such as I have
above cited from him, which lower our Saviour in the
scale of Being to a rank secondary and derivative, has
asserted so orthodoxly, in other parts of his writings, the
co-equality of the Son, in Godship, with the Father, as to
have drawn from Bishop Bull, the defender of the Nicene
Anathema, the praise of perfect orthodoxy.
The natural working, indeed, of the wary policy which
gave to these writers such an appearance of inconsistency,
may be traced visibly through the course of the writings
of St. Clement of Alexandria, in some of the earlier of
which the equality of the Son to the Father is expressly
maintained ;* while, in his subsequent works, whether
yielding to prudence, or to that admiration of the occult
wisdom of the Greeks which he so warmly avows, f he
withdraws this bolder view of the nature of the Re-
deemer, and represents him, almost invariably, as a sub-
ordinate and created Being.
That this reserve and ambiguity on the subject of the
Trinity continued to be practised to as late a period as
the middle of the fourth century appears from the follow-
ing remarkable passage, in one of the Catechesses of St.
Cyril of Jerusalem, which is in itself confirmatory of my
view of the whole system : — " ^Ye do not declare the
Mysteries concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
to a Heathen; nor do we speak plainly to the Catechu-
mens about those Mysteries. But we may say many
things often in an occult way, that the Faithful who
know them may understand them; and that those who
do not understand them may not be hurt thereby."
* His words are, if I recollect right. t£ir*Shtc ra 7r±rgi.
* f In citing the words of St. Paul, "We speak the wisdom of God in
a mystery, even the hidden mystery/' Clement remarks that the Holy
Apostle here observes " the prophetic and really ancient concealment,
from whence the excellent doctrines of the Grecian philosophers were-
derived to them."'
( 63 )
CHAPTER XIII
Doctrine of the Incarnation. — Importance attached to it by Christ
himself. — John vi.— Ignatius. — Connexion between the Incarnation
and the Real Presence. — Concealment of the latter doctrine by the
Fathers. — Proofs of this concealment.
Having dwelt thus long- upon the influence which that
rule of policy, called the Discipline of the Secret, exer-
cised so manifestly over the writings of the Fathers on
the subject of the Trinity, I shall now proceed to show
that the same influence, — though certainly, in many in-
stances, to a much less considerable degree — affected the
public writings of these same Fathers, on the no less vi-
tal and mysterious doctrine of the Eucharist.
It may be observed to have been chiefly round those
points of belief on which the Christians felt themselves
most exposed to the charge of borrowing from the theo-
logy of the Heathens that they took the most especial
care to throw the protection of this sacred silence. Of
this description was, as I have already shown, the Trini-
ty ; arid in the same predicament, as doctrines liable to
be misrepresented, were the great mysteries of the Son-
ship and the Incarnation; the former of which the philo-
sophic Gentiles exclaimed against, as originating in the
same gross notions which had dictated the genealogy of
the Heathen Gods; while, by such scoffers as Celsus, the
Incarnation of the EternaJ Word was compared to those
transformations which Jupiter underwent in his multifari-
ous love-adventures. In truth, the very first great point
of the Christian scheme of Redemption which Christians
themselves, in the presumptuous exercise of their judg-
ment, dared to call into question, was the Incarnation of
the Redeemer. Under the very eyes of our Lord himself
there arose, as we have seen, a sect of heretics,* who,
refusing to believe that Spirit so pure could clothe itself
in corrupt flesh, chose rather to deny his humanity, and
thus, in fact, nullify his mission as a Redeemer by re-
* The Docette. See page 20,
( 64 )
moving that only link between the divine and human na-
ture through which a mediation, implying sympathies
with both, could be effected.
To obviate the mischiefs of this heresy, — coeval, as it
would seem, with Christianity itself, and confirm the
truth of the manifestation of God in the Flesh, was, it is
evident, one of the most anxious objects, as well of our
Saviour himself, as of those who acted under his autho-
rity. Had we no other proof, indeed, of the prevalence
of such an error, respecting his nature, the solicitude he
showed, in his interview with the Apostles after his re-
surrection, to convince them of his corporeality, by making
them handle his limbs and by eating in their presence,
w 7 ould be sufficient to prove" both the doubts, as to his
humanity, that prevailed, and the immense importance
which he himself attached to their removal : * Handle me
(he says) and see ; for a Spirit hath not flesh and bones,
as ye see me have :" or, as he is made to say, in an apo-
cryphal work, cited by Origen,* " I am not an incorpo-
real Demon."
In the First Epistle of St. John, we find those heretics
who denied the reality of Christ's body thus denounced :
— " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come
in the flesh is of God ; and every spirit that confesseth not
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God ; and
this is that spirit of Antichrist whereof ye have heard
that it should come ; and even now already is it in the
world." It is, indeed, supposed to have been principally
with the view of obviating so dangerous an error that the
same Apostle wrote his Gospel ; and not only the earnest-
ness with which he anathematizes this heresy in his Epis-
tle, but also the pains taken by him, as Evangelist, to as-
sure the world of the real death of Christ and of the
issuing of real blood and water from his wounded side,
render such a view of his design, in writing this sacred
narrative, both natural and rational.
It is, in fact, the 6th chapter of his Gospel, — that re-
markable chapter, whose testimony to the marvellous na-
ture and virtues of the Eucharist the ingenuity of Pro-
testant Divines so vainly labours to explain away, — that
we find the very strongest proof of the vital importance
* The Doctrine of Peter.— Origin, de Princip.
( 65 )
attached, in the Christian scheme, to the establishment
of the verity of Christ's flesh and blood. Nor can it be
doubted that, as St. John's main object, in this Gospel,
was to refute and extinguish that pernicious heresy
which, by denying the reality of the flesh of Christ, would
deprive mankind of the benefits of his Incarnation, so the
stress which he here represents our Saviour as laying
upon the ever blessed and life-giving effects of the Eu-
charist has evidently the same most momentous object in
view, — showing emphatically that this miraculous Sacra-
ment was, as it were, a sequel to the mystery of the In-
carnation ; and that the mighty privileges and benefits
which the latter had procured for mankind, were, by the
former, to be perpetuated and commemorated through all
time.
That such* was the light in which our Saviour himself
represented this Sacrament, in that memorable discourse
uttered by him in the Synagogue, at Capernaum, none
but those who perversely wrest the word of God to their
own rash judgments, will venture to deny. " One princi-
pal motive," says a learned Protestant writer, " that mo-
dem Divines have to deny that John vi. is to be taken of
the Eucharist is this, viz, that the effects and conse-
quences there attributed to the eating and drinking
Christ's flesh and blood (especially that of eternal life
and all evangelical blessings annexed to it) are too great
and valuable to be applied to the Communion."*
Nothing can be more just or candid than this remark.
Hence, in truth, all the wretched shifts resorted to by
Church of England divinesf for the purpose of robbing the
* Johnson's Unbloody Sacrifice.
t Thus, Dr. Whitby, adopting, in matter-of-fact seriousness, that
allegorical and analogical mode of interpretation, which Clement of
Alexandria and Origen employed to mystify their hearers, had the
conscience to maintain that by the phrases " eating his flesh" and
" drinking his blood," in John vi., Christ meant nothing more than
,; believing his doctrines!" On this opinion Johnson remarks,— " It
must be owned that if our Saviour, by men's eating his flesh and
drinking his blood, meant nothing but so obvious a thing as receiving
him and his doctrine by faith and obedience, he clothed his thoughts
in most unnatural language." and again, "We may as properly be
said to eat and drink the Trinity by believing in it as to eat the
body of Christ by bare faith."
Next came Bishop Hoadley, who, rejecting all application of John
vi. to the Eucharist whatever, described the discourse of our Saviour
in the Synagogue as " only a very high figurative representation to
6*
( 66 )
Catholic doctrine of the support of th's chapter, and ena-
bling the Protestant to sink the mir: culous character ot
the Eucharist down to the " low" view * taken of it by the
Socinians and Hoadleyites. But the sense of all the great
teachers of Christianity is against them ; and, above all,
of those earliest in the field of the Faith. The apostoli-
cal Ignatius, who had been the disciple of him ' ; who
wrote these things," and had doubtless heard, from the
holy Penman's own lips, their true import and spirit, un-
derstood, manifestly, by the promise of Eternal Life con-
veyed on that occasion, no vaguely allegorical lesson of
faith or doctrine, but a clear assurance of a happy resur-
rection and immortality, to be derived from that commu-
nion with the body of Christ which is enjoyed by eating
his flesh and drinking his blood in the Eucharist. Hence
it is that the holy Ignatius speaks of this Sacrament, in
language which no other part of Scripture, but this Chap-
ter of John, justifies; — calling it, on the strength of the
privileges and virtues there annexed to it, the Medicine
of Immortality and Antidote against Death.
How perfectly the view taken of the Eucharist by the
Catholics, namely, that it was part and parcel of the mys-
tery of the Incarnation, — was understood by the Gnostic
Christians themselves, is evident from their conduct. For
this reason was it that the Docetse absented themselves,
the Jews then about him of their duty and obligation to receive to
their hearts and digest his whole doctrine as the food and life of their
souls." Dr. Waterland, who disapproved alike of Whitby's doctrinal
interpretation and Hoadley's reduction of the Sacrament to a mere
communicative Feast, is of opinion that the Chapter in question may
be applied to the Eucharist, but not interpreted of it ; and brings for-
ward a theory of his own respecting " Spiritual Eating and Drink-
ing,' 1 of the merits of which some judgment may be formed from the
fact that, though disapproving of Whitby's notion of eating doctrines,
he himself interprets a passage of St. Paul (Heb. xiii. 10.) to mean, eat-
ing the atonement! — (Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, p. 145.)
In order to get rid, too, of the testimony of St. Ignatius to the true
meaning of John vi., Dr. Waterland contends that this holy man, in
speaking of his enjoyment of " the Bread of Life," had no reference
whatever to the Eucharist in his thoughts, but, being then about to
suffer martyrdom, was merely looking forward to the prospect of eat-
ing of Christ's Flesh, in the other world! p. 153. Such are the straits
to which men are always sure to be driven who endeavour to make
out a case where there is no case to be made.
* " If any person think this a low character of such a rite instituted
by our Lord himself, upon so great and remarkable occasion," &c.
&c— Bishop Hoadley, Plain Account of the Mature and End of the Sacra-
mint of the Loxd's Supper.
( 67 )
as we have seen, from public worship, — not that the sect,
in genera], entertained any objection to the Eucharist,
according" to their own fantastic and spiritualizing view
of it, but because they were unwilling to sanction, by
joining in communion with the orthodox, that belief in
the reality of the flesh present which the latter, it was
known, maintained.
That the Fathers regarded this Sacrament in the same
light, — viewing it not only as a continuance, but as an
^extension of the Incarnation,* — a great abundance of pas-
sages might be adduced to prove. Thus, for instance, St.
Gregory of Nyssa, draws a comparison between the two
JYlysteries : — " The body of Christ (says this Father) was
by the inhabitation of the Word of God transmuted into
•a divine dignity, and so I now believe, that the bread
sanctified by the Word of God is transmuted into the
body of the Word of God. This bread, as the Apostle
says, is sanctified by the Word of God and Prayer, not that,
as food, it passes into the body, but that it is instantly
changed into the body of Christ, agreeably to what he
said, This is my Body. And therefore does the Divine
Word commix itself with the weak nature of man, that, by
partaking of the divinity, our humanity may be exalted."
In like manner, we find St. Ambrose pointing out the same
analogy between the deified flesh and the deified bread. Af-
ter asserting the dogma of Transubstantiation in its highest
Catholic sense, he proceeds, — " We will now examine the
truth of the mystery from the example itself of the Incarna
tion. Was the order of nature followed, when Jesus was
born of a virgin] Plainly not. Then why is that order to be
looked for here V 9 Many other passages, to the same pur-
port, might be adduced from the Fathers: but it is need-
jess to multiply citations. The very view taken by the
early Christians of the miraculous change of the elements
implies that they considered the Eucharist as a kindred
mystery with that of the Incarnation; — as the wonderful
* By calling the Eucharist an extension of the Incarnation, they
meant that while, in the latter mystery, Christ but joined himself to
one individual nature, and to no one person, in the former he joins him-
self not only to all individual natures, but also to their very persons.
41 Earn quam idcirco Patres Incarnationis extensionem appellarunt. In
illaenim uni individual naturae sese adjunxit, nulli persons; at in
ista se singulis individuis, imoetiam personis adjunxit." — DeLingin>
des Condones de Sanctissimo Eucharistia Sacramento,
( 68 )
means, in short, by which Christ perpetually renews his
incarnate presence upon earth, and continues to feed hi3
creatures with the same flesh by which he redeemed
them.
— »»©@©<4««—
CHAPTER XIV.
Concealment of the Doctrine of the Eucharist. — Proofs.— Calumnies
on the Christians.— Protestant view of this Sacrament— not that
taken by the early Christians.
When so great, as we have seen, was the solicitude
and watchfulness with which the Church screened from
the eyes of the profane all her other great dogmas, with
no less jealous care would she conceal, or, at least, soften
down, through the medium of enigmatic language, a doc-
trine so mysterious and astounding as that of the Real
Presence, — the test most trying of all (next, perhaps, to
the Trinity) of that implicit faith, by which, as by its
sheet-anchor, the -whole Christian scheme of salvation
holds. Accordingly, we are not only expressly told that this
dogma was among the most hidden deposites of the Secret,
but the language employed by the few Fathers, who, in
the third age, ventured to allude to it, shows with what
sensitive caution they shrunk from any disclosure of its
true nature. Thus Origen talks mysteriously and vaguely
of " eating the offered breads, which by prayers are made
a certain holy body" St. Cyprian, too, in relating, with
an awe that betrays his real belief, the miraculous cir-
cumstance of a warning having been given to some pro-
faner of the Sacrament by a flame bursting forth from the
box that held the consecrated bread, describes the box
thus signalized, as " containing the Holy Thing of the
Lord."
Nothing, indeed, could show more strikingly both how
awful were the associations with which they invested
this mystery themselves, and how jealous was their fear
lest it should become known to the infidel, than the lan-
guage of another Father of this time, Tertullian, who, in
( 69 )
representing to his wife the consequences of her marry-
ing a Pagan after his death, says, — " You would, by mar-
rying an infidel, thereby fall into this fault, that the Pa-
gans would come to the knowledge of our mysteries.
Will not your husband know what you taste in secret,
before any other food; and, if he perceives bread, will he
not image that it is what is so much spoken of!" — Ad
Uxorum, lib. ii. c. 5. In the following century we find
St. Basil alluding covertly to the Eucharist as " the Com-
munion of the Good Thing;" and Epiphanius, when
obliged to describe before uninitiated hearers, the Insti-
tution of this Sacrament, thus slurs over the particulars
of that astounding event: " We see that our Lord took a
thing in his hands, as we read in the Gospel, that he rose
from table, that he resumed the things, and having given
thanks, he said, this is my somewhat."
Even St. Gregory of Nyssa, by whom the great mira-
cle of the Metastoicheiosis, or Transubstantiation, is put
forth more boldly and definitely than by almost any of his
predecessors, yet, in one of his most explicit passages on
the subject, and in a writing too, intended expressly for the
initiated, stops short, as if awe-struck, when about to men-
tion the word " body," and leaves to the minds of his hear-
ers to fill up the blank. — " These things he gives us by
virtue of the blessing, changing the nature of the visible
things into — that."
There can hardly, perhaps, be a better proof of the ex-
treme secrecy with which this mystery was guarded than
that Arnobius, who was but a Catechumen when he
wrote upon Christianity, had been kept in such ignorance
of the use made of wine in this rite, that in a passage
where he reproaches, if I recollect right, the Pagans,
with their libations to the Deities, he tauntingly demands
of them, "What has God to do with wineTf
Still enough, notwithstanding this system of reserve
and secrecy, had transpired respecting the Christian doc-
trine of the Eucharist, to set the imagination and male-
volence of unbelievers at work. Indistinct notions of
dark, forbidden Feasts, where, it was said, flesh and blood
were served up to the guests, became magnified by the
fancies of the credulous into the most monstrous fictions.
* " Quid Deo cum vino est?"
( ™ )
Stories were told and believed of the dreadful rites prac-
tised by the Christians in their Initiations ; — of an infant
covered with paste, being set before the new comer, on
which he was required to inflict the first murderous stab,
and then partake of its flesh and blood with the rest, as
their common pledge of secrecy. It is not difficult, of
course, to see, through all this disfigurement of calumny,
the true doctrine of which the profane had caught these
perverting glimpses.
By such monstrous imputations was it that some of the
most cruel persecutions of the Christians were provoked
and justified ; and yet no power of cruelty, not the ago-
nies of death itself, could wrest their secret from them.
Had they seen nothing more in this sacrament than a
simple type or memorial, such as the Arminian and Soci-
nian consider it, they had but to say so, and not only per-
secution would have been thus foiled of its prey, but,
what was of still dearer import to them, their creed
would have won more ready acceptance. But no: — far
more "hard to be understood" was the secret object of
their worship ; and, when asked, as they were frequently
by the Pagans, " Why conceal what you adore ?" their
answer might have been, with truth, " Because we adore
it." They saw, as the Catholics see to this day, what in-
sulting profanation such doctrine is, in the hands of the
incredulous, exposed to; in what mire of ridicule and
blasphemy their "holy things" would be rolled; and, ac-
cordingly, even when threatened with torments to extort
from them their secret, they saw but one duty before
them — to be silent, and die.
Had Christian antiquity bequeathed to us, on the sub-
ject of the Eucharist, no other evidence than this solemn
and significant silence, — had we not also the ancient Li-
turgies of the Church, and the catechetical writings of
her Fathers, to bear ample testimony to the Catholic doc-
trine, on this point, — there still would have been, in this
very mystery and silence, abundant evidence to convince
any reasoning mind, that the Protestant notion of the Eu-
charist could not have been that entertained by the Pri-
mitive Christians. The simple history, in short, of this
doctrine's reception and progress, through all its earlier
stages, would be more than sufficient for such a pur-
pose. For, to maintain that a mystery which, on its first
( 71 )
promulgation, startled our Lord's disciples themselves,—
which the Gnostic heretics of the first age shrunk from, as
involving the doctrine of the Incarnation, — which the Pa-
gans, from some indistinct glimpses of its real nature, re-
presented as a murderous repast, a feast of " abominable
meats," — which by the Priests themselves who admi-
nistered it was seldom spoken of but as a " tremendous
mystery," one to be guarded from the eyes of the infidel,
at the price of life itself, — to assert, that the dread object
of all this concealment and worship, this amazement, hor-
ror, adoration, alarm, was nothing more than a simple
sign or memorial, a mere representation of our Saviour's
body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine, a
sacramental food in which Christ's presence is figurative,
not real, and to which, therefore, consisting as it does of
mere bread and wine, to offer up any adoration is an act
of idolatry, — to expect to have it believed, for a moment,
by any one who has at all inquired into the subject, that
such and no more was the sense attached to this divine
ordinance by the first Christians, is, on the part of the
Protestants, I must say, a most gross and wholesale de-
mand of that implicit faith, from others, of which they
are so perilously sparing themselves.
When again, too, after contemplating all those awful
circumstances which marked the reception and obser-
vance of this rite among mankind, we look back to the
stupendous occasion on which it was first instituted;
when we recollect the dreadful denunciations of the Apos-
tle against such as, by irreverence to this Sacrament, are
"guilty of the body and blood of the Lord," and remem-
ber that some, among the Corinthians, who " discerned
not the Lord's body," were smitten by God with diseases
and death,* — we cannot but marvel at the responsibility
those Christians take upon themselves, who venture to
cast off the ancient Faith, upon this most vital of its doc-
trines; who, first, refining away our Saviour's solemn
declaration on the subject,! dispose, in the same manner,
* 1 Corinth, xi. 30.
t As the Reformer, Zuinglius, took the liberty of altering Christ's
language, and reads, " This signifies my body," so Bishop Hoadley, in
like manner, presumes to supply a word which he thinks wanting, and
makes it '-This / call my body." It is remarkable enough, indeed,
that Protestants who are so much for referring to the language of
Scripture, on every occasion, should yet, in this important instanee,
( « )
of the Apostle's comment upon that text; and, in the
very face of his denouncements against those who " dis-
cern not the Lord's body" in this Sacrament, venture de-
liberately to deny that the Lord's body is there !
-~*>>e©®««
CHAPTER XV.
Concealment of the Eucharist— most strict in Third Century.— St. Cy^
prian — his timidity— favourite Saint of the Protestants. — Alleged
proofs- against Transubstantiation. — Theodoret. — Gelasius. — Belie'
vers in the Catholic Doctrine of the Eucharist, Erasmus, Pascal, Sir
Thomas More, Fenelon, Leibnitz, Sec.
From what I have said, in the preceding Chapter, of
the system of mystery and restraint which the Fathers of
the third and fourth centuries, hut more particularly of
the former, thought it politic to impose upon themselves
in speaking of the Eucharist, it will not be deemed won-
derful that there should occur passages in their public
writings and discourses, which, being intended by them
to be ambiguous, have fully attained that object ; and that,
designed originally as such passages were to veil the
truth from the unbeliever and the heretic, they should,
to eyes wilfully blind, still perform the same office. The
only wonder, indeed, is, taking all the circumstances we
have here reviewed into consideration, that the number
of passages affording this sort of handle to misapprehen-
sion should have been so inconsiderable; and that, not-
withstanding all the fastidious caution of the Fathers, on
this subject, such a mass of explicit evidence should still
be found in their writings ; — evidence so abundant and
convincing as, w 7 ith any unbiassed mind, to place the truth
question its most express and simple declaration,— a declaration re-
peated, in almost exactly the same words by three of the Evangelists,
as well as by St. Paul, and explained, exactly in the same sense, by
our Saviour, in the discourse reported by St. John. " Unam perpetuo
says an obscure, but sensible writer) Scripturam clamitant ; set ubi-
ventum est ad earn, auditis quomodo legant. Tarn aperta sunt verba;
in omnibus Evangelistis sunt eadem. Omnia tamen perrertunt, om-
nia ad haeresim suum trahunt."
( 73 )
of the Catholic doctrine, respecting the Eucharist, beyond
all question.
It was in the third century, when the followers of
Christ were most severely tried by the fires of persecu-
tion, that the discipline of secrecy, with respect to this
and the other mysteries, was most strictly observed. " A
faithful concealment," says Tertullian, " is due to all
mysteries from the very nature and constitution of them,
How much more must it be due to such mysteries as, if
they were once discovered, could not escape immediate
punishment from the hand of man" — (Ad Nation. L. 1.)
It may be conceived with what peculiar force such a mo-
tive to secrecy would be likely to act upon minds natu-
rally timid, — such as that of St. Cyprian, for instance,
whose indisposition to martyrdom, however firmly he at
last met it, when inevitable, was evinced on more than
one occasion when he prudently withdrew himself from
its grasp. We find, accordingly, in conformity with this
timidity of character, that, among the observers of the
Discipline of the Secret, he is allowed to have been one
of the most circumspect and close.
It is, indeed, curious, not only as illustrative of the cha-
racter of the individual, but as part of that kindred desti-
ny which seems to have attended, throughout, the two
Catholic dogmas of the Trinity and the Real Presence,
that the same cautious St. Cyprian who, in his public let-
ter to the Proconsul of Africa, thought it prudent to keep
the Trinity entirely out of sight, should have been also
the individual who, by his evasive language, concerning
the Eucharist, has been the means of furnishing the op-
ponents of a real, corporal Presence with almost the only
semblance of plausible authority by which they support
their heresy.* Little did he think, good Saint, that a
day would come, when this prudence or timidity, would
be made to pass for orthodoxy, and when, — sturdy a stick-
ler as he was for the supremacy of the Roman See, — he
should attain the eminence, such as it is, of being the
prime Saint of Protestants I
* Even St. Cyprian, however, couTd not help, on occasion, letting
the doctrine escape. Thus he says that, in the Eucharist, " we touch
Christ's body and drink his blood;" and, in an Epistle to Pope Corne-
lius, speaking of the victims of persecution, he says, " How shall we
teach them to shed their blood for Christ, if, before they go to battle,
we do not give them his blood ?"
7
( *4 )
It would be amusing, — were not so awful a point of
faith the subject of such trifling. — to observe the self-
complacent triumph with which a Protestant controvert-
ist sits brooding over one of these intentionally unmean-
ing passages of the Fathers, hatching it into an argu-
ment. It matters not that the holy writer from whom
the passage is extracted has, in a hundred others, preg-
nant both with meaning and with truth, borne testimony
to the belief of his Church in that mighty miracle, — that
fulfilment of a God's express promise which takes place
under the veil of the Eucharist. It matters not : — the one
convenient passage is alone brought forward again and
again ; the professional controvertist must still show him-
self in the lists, however "falsified "* his armour; and
though se//*-deception is not always practicable in such
cases, the great point is still gained of deceiving others.
The argument drawn from the occasional application
of the words "type," "sign," " figure," <fcc. to the Eu-
charist, I have already disposed of; and a large proportion
of the passages cited, as favourable to the Protestant side
of the question, come under this predicament. One of
the most triumphant pieces of evidence, however, (as
they themselves consider it.) which the champions of the
Reformed Faith are in the habit of bringing forward to
prove that Transubstantiation w T as not the belief of the
early Church, is to be found in a passage or two from
Theodoret and Gelasius (writers of the Fifth Century)
in which it is asserted that the nature and substance of
the sacramental elements remain after consecration.
The extract from Theodoret I shall here transcribe, as
well because it affords a curious insight into the opera-
tion of the Discipline of the Secret, as because it will
show to what straits the opponents of the Catholic doc-
trine must be driven, when they can contrive to extract
grounds for triumph from such testimony.
It is necessary to premise that the passage I am about
to give is from a work written by Theodoret against the
Eutychians (a sect of heretics who denied the human
nature of Christ ;f) and that, of the two fictitious persons
* " His shield is falsified "—a meaning of the word which Drydcn
attempted to introduce, from the Italian.
t It cannot be said correctly that Eutvches denied the humanity of
Christ— his belief being that, after the incarnation, there was no
longer any distinction between tiie divine and human nature, but
( 75 )
who discuss the question together, Orthodoxus represents
the Catholic, and Eranistes the Eutychian. Having
established, in a preceding Dialogue, the reality of
Christ's presence in the Sacrament, the speakers thus
proceed : — Eran. I am happy you have mentioned the
Divine Mysteries. Tell me, therefore, what do you call
the gift that is offered before the Priest's invocation 1 —
Orth. This must not be said openly ; for some may be
present who are not initiated. — Eran. Answer then in
hidden terms. — Orth. We call it an aliment made of
certain grains. — Eran. And how do you call the other
symbol? — Orth. We give it a name that denotes a
certain beverage. — Eran. And, after the consecration,
what are they called] — Orth. The body of Christ and
the blood of Christ. — Eran. And you believe that you
partake of the body and blood of Christ] — Orth. So I be-
lieve. — Eran. As the symbols then of the body and
blood of Christ were different before the consecration of
the Priest, and, after that consecration, become changed,
and are something else, in the same manner we Euty-
chians say, the body of Christ after his ascension was
changed into the divine essence. — Orth. Thou art taken
in thy own snare ; for, after the consecration, the mystical
symbols lose not their proper nature ; they remain both in
the figure and appearance of their former substance, to
be seen, and to be felt, as before ; but they are under-
stood to be what they have been made ; this they are be-
lieved to be, and as such they are adored."
We have here (in a conference, be it remembered,
supposed to have passed before the non-initiated) three
no less important points acknowledged than, — first a
change into " something else " of the symbols after con-
secration,* — secondly, a Real Presence of the body and
blood of Christ, — and, thirdly, adoration paid to the Sa-
that the latter had been absorbed into the former, as a drop of honey,
according to his illustration, would be swallowed up on falling into
the sea. By the Council of Chalcedon which, in 451, condemned
this heresy, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity was at length fully
established;— the union of the two distinct natures in Christ, and its
correspondence with that of the three persons in the Godhead, being
then definitely laid down.
* The same writer, in another place, asserts it to be Christ's "will
that we should believe in a change made by Grace " in the symbols:—-
tf£wM%n Tria-nvHv tv tx. rug X u ^ ncg ytyvwpwti (AtrAQohH*
( W )
crament, in consequence. The only doubt the passage
admits of is, whether, contrary to the Catholic doctrine
on the subject, Orthodoxus means to assert that the sub-
stance of the bread and wine remains after consecration ;
or whether, as the Catholic writers answer, the word
"substance," as here used, means merely the external
or sensible qualities of the elements, — those which, as
Theodoret says, may be " seen and felt as before." The
phrase "former substance," which seems to imply that a
second substance has taken the place of the first, might
certainly warrant the assumption that the whole passage
was meant orthodoxly ; but the fairest conclusion, per-
haps to come to (and the Catholic can well afford to be
candid on this head,) is that Theodoret may have had
some such vague notion, as Luther, afterwards, contrary
to the sense of all Christian antiquity, adopted, of the
presence of the substance of Christ's body and blood, in
the sacrament, together with the substance of the bread
and wine. On turning indeed, to the volume of this Fa-
ther's works, edited by Gamier, I find it to have been the
opinion of that learned Jesuit — after an impartial inquiry
into the exact belief of his author, respecting the modus
of Christ's presence, that Theodoret had, on the whole, a
leaning to the Consubstantial heresy.
Such, taken at its very worst, is the full extent of that
lapse from orthodoxy into which, at most, two Fathers,
out of the whole sacred band of the first five centuries,
can be said to have fallen on this subject, — the apparent
deviations of others being, as I have shown, easily ac-
counted for, — and such the quantum and quality of that
evidence against the doctrine of the ancient Catholic
Church which every successive champion of Protestantism
brings forward, each triumphing in the discovery of the
same worn out Fools' Paradise. The true view of such
insulated instances of heterodoxy is to be found in the fol-
lowing remarks which the subject has drawn forth from
the editor of that valuable compilation, " The Faith of
Catholics :" — " Should it be conceded that there is am-
biguity in these expressions, or that even the authors of
them meant to convey a sense, in our estimation, he-
terodox, how light must their authority be, when balanced
against the massive evidence of so many writers of their
own age, and of the preceding centuries ! — ' Since the
( 77 )
ancients,' says Erasmus, * to whom the Church, not with-
out reason, gives so much authority, are all agreed in
the opinion, that the true substance of the body and blood
of Jesus is in the Eucharist; since, in addition to all this
has been added the constant authority of the Synods,
and so perfect an agreement of the Christian world, let
us also agree with them in this heavenly mystery, and
let us receive, here below, the bread and the chalice of
the Lord, under the veil of the species, until we eat and
drink him without veil in the kingdom of God.' "
To this citation from Erasmus, I shall add another from
a writer worthy to be named along with that great man,
the pious and powerful Pascal, by whom the views of the
Eucharist presented in the above sentences are thus
more fully unfolded : — "The state of Christians, as Cardi-
nal du Perron, in accordance with the opinions of the
Fathers, remarks, holds a middle place between the state
of the Blessed and that of the Jews. The Blessed possess
Jesus Christ really, without figure and without veil.
The Jews possessed of Christ only the figures and the
veils, — such as were the Manna and the Paschal Lamb;
and the Christians possess Jesus Christ in the Eucharist,
veritably and really, but still covered with a veil
Thus is the Eucharist completely suited to the state of
faith in which we are placed, since it contains Christ
within it really, but still Christ veiled. Insomuch that
this state would be destroyed, were Christ not really un-
der the species of bread and wine, as the heretics pretend :
and it would be also destroyed, did we receive him un-
veiled as they do in heaven; seeing that this would be to
confound our state, in the former case, with that of
Judaism, in the latter, with that of Glory. 1 '
The reader who has thus far accompanied me from the
beginning of my inquiries, and who knows the dogged
resolution to turn Protestant with which I set out, will
feel anxious, perhaps, to be informed whether, at the period
where we are now arrived, any traces of my original resolve
still lingered in my mind ; or whether, with proofs clear
as daylight, before my eyes, of the true holiness of my
" first love," I had still lurking in my heart any desire of
apostasy to another. Alas, so humiliating would be the
confession and explanations which an attempt to answer
this inquiry must draw from me, that most willingly do I
( 78 )
reserve them for some future opportunity ; and, in the
mean time, shall only say that it was not from any blind-
ness to the light, — from any want of a deep conviction of
the truths that had opened upon me, if, at the bottom of
my heart, some worldly longings still lingered. There
even were moments (such as I experienced on reading
the passages just cited) when the unworthy " spirit of the
world" died away within me, — when such a flood of
religious feelings came over my heart as would not suffer
any baser thoughts to live- in their current, and when I
was, in soul and mind, all Catholic, without a " shadow of
turning." In this mood was it that, after closing the
pages of the two great men I have just mentioned, I went
to my pillow, pondering over the long list of illustrious
sages, — the Erasmuses, Pascals, Fenelons, Leibnitzes,
Sir Thomas Mores, — who have each, in turn, bowed,
with implicit faith, before the miracles of the Eucharist,
till, elevated above my own conscious nothingness by the
contemplation of such men, I found myself, as I laid down
my head, fervently saying, "Let my soul be with
theirs !"
■ ■■ " » >0 © ©<«••—
CHAPTER XVI.
Relaxation of the Discipline of the Secret, on the subject of the Trinity.
— Doctrine of the Real Presence still concealed. — The Eucharists
of the Heretics.— The Artoturites, Hydroparastatae, <fcc. — St. Au-
gustin a strict observer of the Secret. —Similar fate of Transubstan-
tiation and the Trinity.
About the beginning of the fourth century, the Dis-
cipline of the Secret had been, on some important points,
considerably relaxed ; and though the Eucharist still con-
tinued to be guarded with some strictness, the doctrine
of the Trinity was, by degrees, suffered to escape from
behind the veil. The Edict of Toleration which was, at
that period, issued by Constantine, gave to the Christians
full security in the promulgation of their opinions; while
( 79 )
the schism of Arius, by calling into question the divinity
of the Saviour, not only rendered a declaration of the
Church's doctrine on this subject necessary, but led
naturally, from the sifting controversies to which it gave
rise, to a more definite marking out the frontiers of Tri-
nitarian orthodoxy than had yet been attempted. Still it
was but by slow and cautious degrees that the entire
dogma, in its perfect form, as acknowledged now, was
developed. I have before quoted a passage from a Father
of this age where he says, " Of the Mysteries concerning
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we do not speak plainly
before the Catechumens;" and, according to the learned
Huet (himself a Catholic,) " it is certain that the Catholics
durst not plainly own the divinity of the Holy Spirit so
late as the days of Basil."
In the mean time, the doctrine of the Real Presence,
— following, for once, a fate different from that of its fel-
low mystery, the Trinity, — continued, as usual, to be
whispered, in the inner shrines, to the neophyte, while,
as Gregory of Nyssa informs us, the Eternal Sonship was
become a topic of dispute among the lowest mechanics.
Had any schism respecting the Eucharist taken place
within the Church, the necessity of defending the doc-
trine would have led doubtless, as in the case of the
Trinity, to the divulging of it. But no such schism had
occurred. Those among the Gnostic sects who adopted
the Eucharist, though they denied the real humanity of
Christ's body, did not question its presence in the sacra-
ment, while some of them even believed, with the or-
thodox, in a change of the elements, by the power of the
Holy Spirit. " The things," says the heretic, Theodotus,
" are not what they appeared to be, or what they are ap-
prehended to be; but by the power (of the Spirit are)
changed into a spiritual power."*
One of these sects, indeed, proceeded so far, in rivalry
of the Catholic Eucharist, as to contrive, by some me-
chanical process, to produce the appearance of blood
flowing into the chalice,t after the words of consecra-
* 'O rtgroc etyidL^iTAt <r» SuvdLfAti rou Trviu/uAro^ ou tcl eturet
OVreC KdLTA TO <p*lVO/UlV0V QIA ttotyd-H, Ahh& SuVctfMt it$ eT UVSLjMV
?rviu/ULU.rt)tnv fAircL^KhTdii.
t"U (Marc) avoit deux vases, un plus grand et un plus petit; ill
( 80 )
tion, — thereby outdoing, as they, thought, the orthodox in,
at least, the outward show of the miracle. In thus coun-
terfeiting, by means of real liquid, that blood of which
they, at the same time, denied the reality, these heretics
were, of course, as absurd as knavish; but the testimony
which their tricks bear to the antiquity of the Catholic
doctrine is not the less valuable. Were any additional
proof, indeed, wanting of the prevalence, in those times,
of a belief in the transubstantiation of the wine into
blood, this effort of the Marcionite heretics to outbid, if I
may so say, the orthodox altar in its marvels would
abundantly furnish it.
There were also some other sects, besides the Gnos-
tic, that adopted peculiar notions of their own respecting
this sacrament. The Artoturites, for instance, a branch
of the Monta-nists, offered bread and cheese in their re-
ligious rites. The Hydroparastatse, from a regard to so-
briety, used only water in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
Among the Ophites, who worshipped the serpent that
tempted Eve, the sacrament consisted of a loaf, round
which a serpent they kept always sacredly in a cage had
been suffered to crawl and twine himself; and there was
a sect of JNIanichseans who, holding bread to be one of
the productions of the Evil Principle, kneeded up the
paste of which they composed their Eucharist in a way
too abominable to be mentioned.
These heresies, however, though on so vital a point of
doctrine, yet, having been engendered out of the pale of
the church,* and being, all of them, with the exception of
that of the Phantasticks, limited and obscure, were not
thought important enough to break the silence of the
Church respecting this mystery. The doctrine of the
Real Presence, therefore, undisturbed by dissent and
sacred from controversy, was left, partly through policy
mettoit le vjn destine & la celebration du sacrifice de la Messe dans
le petit vase, et faisoit une priere : un instant apres la liqueur bouil-
lonnnit dans le grand vase, et Ton y voyoit du sang au lieu du vin.
Ce vase n'ctoit apparemment que ce que Ton appelle communement
la fontaine des nooces de Cana: c'est un vase dans lequel on verse
de l'eau, versee fait monter du vin que Ion a mis auparavantdans ce
vase et dont il se remplit.-' — Memoires pour servir a VHisiooii e dcj
Egaremens de l' Esprit Bumain, $c. 8^c.
* St. Cyprian, on being consulted respecting the nature of Xovitian^s
errors, answers, " There is no need of a strict inquiry ichat errors he
teaches, wbile he tenches out of the Church,"
( 81 )
and partly through hahit, enshrined in all its forms of
mystery during the whole of the fourth century ; and how
well the secret was still guarded from the Catechumens
as late as the time of St. Augustin may be seen from the
following remarkable passage: — "Christ does not com-
mit himself to Catechumens. Ask a Catechumen, Dost
thou believe 1 — He answers, I do, and signs himself with
the cross of Christ; he is not ashamed of the cross of
Christ, but bears it in his forehead. If we ask him, how-
ever, Dost thou eat the flesh and drink the blood of the
Son of Man ] he knows not what we mean, for Christ
hath not committed himself to him. Catechumens do
not know what Christians receive."*
St. Augustin himself, from the peculiar circumstances
of his position, was induced occasionally, on this subject,
to adopt a reserve and ambiguity of language which are
not to be found, in the same degree, in any of the writers
of his period. Living, as he did, in Africa, where the
population was still, for the greater part, Pagan, he
deemed it prudent, evidently, to follow the ancient prac-
tice of the Church, and in the presence of all but the
Faithful, to speak of this Mystery with caution. Hence
is it that, though in none of the other Fathers are there
to be found passages more strongly confirmatory of the
ancient and Catholic faith,f on this point, he has, in some
instances, employed language of whose vagueness and
ambiguity the Sacramentarians have, as usual, taken ad-
vantage for the bolstering up of their desperate cause.}:
* " Interrcgemus eum, Manducas carnem Filii Hominis et bibis
sanguinem ? Nescit quid dicimus, quia Jesus non se credidit ei. Ne-
sciunt Catechumeni quid accipiant Christiani." — Tractat. in Joann.
t Alger, who defended the doctrine of Transubstantiation against
Berenger, refuted him chiefly, if not entirely, by passages out of St.
Augustin.
X Even by Zuingle, however, it is not asserted that St. Augustin
was against transubstantiation, but merely that he would have been
so, could he have ventured to express his opinion freely. This he was
forced, says Zuingle, in some measure, to conceal on account of the
very general prevalence which the belief in a real fleshly Presence had,
at that time, obtained. — De ver. ctfals. religione. And here, we may
be allowed to ask, how is this admission of Zuingle, with respect to
the prevalence of such a belief in the time of St. Augustin, to be re-
conciled with that other favourite theory of the Protestants, which
supposes the doctrine of Transubstantiation to have been first intro-
duced by the monk, Paschasius, in the ninth century? But it is use-
less to ask such questions, — there being, in fact, no end to the incon-
( 82 )
How barefaced, however, must be the assurance that
would claim St. Augustin as a Protestant authority on
this head, will appear by the following" extracts from his
writings: — "When, committing to us his body, be said,
This is my body, Christ was held in his own hands. He
bore that body in his hands." — Enarrat. 1. in Psalm 33. —
Again, in another Sermon on the same Psalm, he thus,
in the mystic language of the Secret, expresses himself:
— " How was he borne in his hands I Because when he
gave his own body and blood, he took into his hands
what the Faithful know;* and he bore Himself "in a cer-
tain manner, when he said, ' This is my body.'' " — In
his Exposition of the 98th Psalm, he says, " Christ took
upon him earth from the earth, because flesh is from
the earth, and this flesh he took from the flesh of Mary :
and because he here walked in this flesh, even this same
flesh he gave us to eat for our salvation ; — but no one
eateth this flesh without having first adored it ; and not
only we do not sin by adoring, but we even sin by not
adoring it."
It was my intention originally, as the reader possibly
recollects, not to include the Fathers of the fifth century,
— to which period Augustin more properly belongs, with-
in the range of these inquiries; but an exception, in fa-
vour of so important an authority, will without difficulty
be admitted. The brief history, too, which I have at-
tempted to give of the Eucharist, through the " aurea
secula" of the church, would have been left imperfect
without the testimony which the passage, just cited, fur-
nishes; a testimony -valuable, as proving the general be-
lief of a Real Presence in this Sacrament, by that best
practical evidence, the adoration paid to it, — the belief
and the practice implying reciprocally each other.
I have already intimated that most of the writers con-
* Quod norunt fideles" — These words, or, as expressed in Greek,
lTdL<riv ci TnfAVHfjLivA, formed what may be called the watch- word of
the Secret, and occur constantly in the Fathers. Thus St. Chrysostom,
for instance, — in whose writings Casaubon remarked the recurrence
of this phrase, at least, fifty times, — in speaking of the tongue ("Com-
ment, in Psalm 143.) says. " Reflect that this~is the member with
which we receive the tremendous sacrifice, — the Faithful knew what I
speak of" Hardly less frequent is the occurrence of the same phrase in
St. Augustin, who seldom ventures to intimate the Eucharist in any
other way than by the words "Quod norunt Fideles."
( 83 )
temporary with, or just preceding- St. Augustin, have, ag
compared with him, spoken frankly on the subject of the
Eucharist. It was not possible, indeed, that such a de-
velopment as, about this period, took place of a doctrine
hitherto so enshrined in obscurity as was the Trinity,
should not encourage by degrees a boldness of language
and thought which would show itself in the assertion of
the other great mysteries. Accordingly we find, — not
only in the catechetical discourses of this time, but even
in writings more intended for the public eye, — a far more
explicit testimony to the doctrine of the Real Presence
and of the change of substance than had been ventured
on since the days of St. Justin and St. Irenaeus. It is
worthy of remark, too, — as adding another illustration to
the many I have already noticed of the similar fate that
has, in most instances, attended these twin mysteries,
Transubstantiation and the Trinity, — that the same emi-
nent men who, in the fourth century, carried the latter
dogma to that high region of orthodoxy where it stands
fixed at present, were also those who asserted most boldly
the entire Catholic doctrine respecting the Eucharist; —
the same Gregory of Nyssa who held that " the bread
sanctified by the Word of God was transmuted into
the body of the Word of God," having been also the
strenuous maintainer of the doctrine, " that there was a
whole Son in a whole Father, and a whole Father in a
whole Son;" and the same Gregory of Nazianzum who
desired his hearers " not to stagger in their souls, but,
without shame or doubting, to eat the body and drink
the blood," having likewise told them that " whoever
maintains that any of the Three Persons is inferior to the
others overturns the whole Trinity."
( 84 )
CHAPTER XVII.
Fathers of the Fourth Century.— Proofs of their doctrine respecting
the Eucharist. — Ancient Liturgies.
Having now laid before my reader the whole process
of thought and inquiry by which that phantom of Pro-
testantism which had, as I fancied, beckoned to me out
of the pages of St. Clement and St. Cyprian was again
explained away into " thin air," I shall now select a few
of the innumerable passages that abound throughout the
writings of the fourth century, bearing testimony incon-
trovertible to the true nature both of the Blessed Eucha-
rist itself, and of all the rites and doctrines connected
with that mystery, — the altar, the oblation, the unbloody
sacrifice, the real presence of the victim, the change of
substance, and, as the natural consequence of all, the ado-
ration.
St. James of Nisibis.* — " Our Lord gave his body
with his own hands, for food ; and his blood for drink,
before he was crucified."f — Serm. 14.
" Abstain from all uncleanness, and then receive the
body and blood of Christ. Cautiously guard your mouth,
through which the Lord has entered, and be it no longer
a passage to words of uncleanness." — Serm. 3.
* A distinguished Bishop who assisted at the Council of Nice, in
325, and was, as Cave describes, him " doctrinae orthodoxy vindex
primarius." This Father, indeed, deserves to be included among
those mentioned in the preceding Chapter as having maintained an
equally high tone of orthodoxy in both the great Christian mysteries,
the Trinity and the Real Presence.
t " Christ offered himself, as a Priest, before his crucifixion."— See
Johnson's Unbloody Sacrifice. — This learned Protestant, who, like
Grabe, Chillingworth, and other ornaments of the same Church, was
sufficiently open to the light of truth to adhere to the ancient Catholic
doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, thus expresses himself on the
subject in another part of his work: — " I suppose all Protestants will
allow that Christ's sacrifice was intended for the expiation of sin;
and, if so, they cannot think it strange that it was offered before it
was slain, and that by the Priest himself ;— for it is clear this was the
method prescribed by Moses of old." — And. again, " We may safely
conclude that he did then offer himself, while alive ; especially since
sacrifices of expiation and consecration were, of old, thus offered by
the Priest before they were slain."
( 85 )
ISt. Ephrem of Edessa. — " Consider, my beloved, with
what fear those stand before the throne, who wait on a
mortal King. How much more does it behoove us to ap+
pear before the heavenly King ivithfear and tremblings
and with awful gravity] Hence it becomes us not boldly
to look on the mysteries, that lie before us, of the body
and blood of our Lord." — Parazn. 19. " The eye of faith
manifestly beholds the Lord, eating his body and drink-"
ing his blood, and indulges no curious inquiry,,* You
believe that Christ, the Son of God, for you was born in
the flesh. Then why do you search into what is inscru-
table] Doing this, you prove your curiosity, not your
faith. Believe, then, and with a firm faith receive the
body and blood of our Lord.'' 1 — De Nat. Dei.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem.]— " The bread and wine which
before the invocation of the Adorable Trinity were no-
* The counsel here given, not to pry curiously into the mysteries of
the Faith, is inculcated frequently in the writings of the Fathers*
Thus St. Ambrose says, " Manum ori admove; — scrutari non licet
Buperna mysteria." {De Ahrah. Patr.) St. Cyril of Alexandria lays it
down, too, with equal solemnity, that all curiosity is to be refrained
from in matters of faith: — to 7na-<rii 7rcLgx<fixrGV etn'o\vir^ctyjuov»'ToV
tivxi %qh- — Had the Fathers themselves somewhat more attended to
this caution, much of the trifling speculation into which they have
entered, touching the manner into which Christ's body unites itself
with the bodies of those who receive it, would have been, with advan-
tage, avoided. St. Cyril of Alexandria compares the union which
thus takes place to that of lead with silver; while another Father sees
in it a resemblance to the mixing up of leaven with paste. A third
says it is like the melting of one piece of wax into another ; while, by
some, an illustration of the mystery is sought for, in the manner in
which medicine passes into the entrails.
Such attempts to solve what is inexplicable but afford triumph to
the infidel and the heretic ; and, accordingly, in the controversy which
gave rise to the celebrated work, " De la Perpetuite de la Foi," we find
the Reformed Ministers profanely reproaching the Catholics with be-
lieving that the body of Christ is received " comme on mange des pi*
lules."
t The Discourses of St. Cyril, from which these extracts are taken,
were addressed to those Christians who were newly baptized, and who
had, therefore, but recently been admitted to the Mysteries.
The learned and Protestant author of a very useful work, lately pub»
lished, (Clarke's Succession of Ecclesiastical Literature) expresses strong
doubts as to the authenticity of these Discourses of Cyril, but omits to
assign any reasons for his doubts. We have against him, indeed,
high Protestant authorities. " To question," says Cave, "whether
these Discourses be Cyril's (as some have done) is foolish and trifling;
when they arc not only quoted by Damascen.but expressly mentioned
by St. Jerome, and cited by Theodoret, the one contemporary with him,
the others flourishing but a few years after him."
The distinguished theologian, Bishop Bull, contends, alio, most sue*
8
( 66 )
thing but bread and wine, become, after this invocation,
the body and blood of Christ." — Catech, My stag. 1.
"The Eucharistic bread, after the invocation of the Holy
Spirit, is no longer common bread, but the body of Christ"
— Catech. 3. " As then Christ, speaking of the bread,
declared, and said, ' This is my body,' who shall dare to
doubt it? And as, speaking of the wine, he positively
assured us, and said, 4 This is my blood,' who shall doubt
it and say that it is not Ins blood!" — Catech. Myst. 4.
" Jesus Christ, in Cana of Galilee, once changed water
into wine by his will only ; and shall we think him less
worthy of credit, when he changes wine into blood)" —
Ibid. " Wherefore, I conjure you, my brethren, not to
consider them any more as common bread and wine, since
they are the body and blood of Jesus Christ according to
his words; and, although your sense might suggest that
to you, let faith confirm you. Judge not of the thing by
your taste, but by faith assure yourself, without the least
doubt, that you are honoured with the blood and body of
Christ: — this knowing, and of this being assured, that
what appears to be bread is not bread, though it be taken
for the bread by the taste, but is the body of Christ ; and
that which appears to be wine, is not the wine, though
the taste will have it so, but the blood of Christ" — Ibid.*
St. Basil. — " About the things that God has spoken
there should be no hesitation nor doubt, but a firm per-
suasion that all is true and possible, though Nature be
imously against those who would contest the authenticity of thess
Catecheses, and the opinions of Vossius, Whitaker, and other learned
Protestants r may be cited on the same side.
* St. Cyril of Alexandria, who lived in the succeeding century, i>,
if anything, still more express and emphatic in asserting a real, cor-
poral Presence than his namesake of Jerusalem. Thus, in his Homily
on the Mystic Supper, he pronounces Christ to be " both Priest and
Victim, him that offers and that is offered." In his Commentary on
St. John, too, we find the following passages: — " And what is the
meaning and the efficacy of this Mystic Eucharist? is it not that Christ
may corporally dwell in us by the participation and communion of his holy
flesh?" — "By the mediation of Christ, therefore, we enter into a union
with God the Father, receiving him within us, corporally and spiritu-
ally, who by nature truly is the Son. and consubstantial with hira."
Another Holy Father, Isidore of Pelusium, who lived at the com-
mencement of the same age, and was one of the Disciples of St. Chry-
sostom, thus, in writing against Macedonius, who denied the Divinity
of the Holy Ghost, brings, as a proof of the Spirit's Divine nature, the
miracle of Transubstantiation :— " Since it is lie who, on the myste-
rious table, produces from common bread the very body of Jesus Christ in-
iarnaic: y —Zy. ad Marathon. Monach.
( 87 )
against it* Herein lies the struggle of faith." — Regula
viii. Moral. " The words of the Lord, ' This is my hody,
which shall be delivered for you,' create a firm convic-
tion." — Ibia\ in Reg. Brev.
St. Gregory of Nyssa. — " What is this medicine?
No other than that the hody which was shown to be more
powerful than death, and was the beginning of our life,
and which could not otherwise enter into our bodies than
by eating and drinking. Now, we must consider, how
it can be, that one body, which so constantly, through
the whole world, is distributed to so many thousands of
the faithful, can be whole in each receiver, and itself re-
main whole, f This bread, as the Apostle says, is sanc-
tified by the Word of God and prayer, — not that, as food,
it passes into the body, but that it is instantly changed
into the body of Christ, agreeably to what he said,
* This is my body.' "\—Orat. Catech.
St. Gregory of Nazianzum. — " The law puts a staff
in your hand, that you may not stagger in your souls,
when you hear of the blood, passion and death of God :
but rather without shame and doubting, eat the body and
drink the blood, if you sigh after life, never doubting of
what you hear concerning his flesh, nor scandalized at
his passion." — Or at. 42.
St. Ambrose. — " Perhaps you will say, why do you
tell me that I receive the body of Christ, when I see
quite another thing ? We have this point, therefore, to
prove. How many examples do we produce to show
you that this is not what nature made it, but what the
benediction has consecrated it ; and that the benediction
is of greater force than nature, because, by the benedic-
* Hctv g*[AtL 3-g:w et\v$es wai aat fuydLrtv, km h quel; /u&-
t Bonaventura illustrates this miracle by the example of a mirror,
which, when broken, repeats, in each several fragment, the same en-
tire image which it had reflected, when whole.
% " The thirty-seventh Chapter (of Gregory of Nyssa's Great Cate-
chetical Discourse) treats of the Eucharist, where he fully and clearly
avows the doctrine of the Real Presence— KslX&s cvv hzi vuv tov too
Xoya tou Qtov ecyix.£o/utvov et^rov etc g-cojua rou Gtov Aoyou fxi^st-
vromo-&Ai 7ri<Ti-ivo(j.*t."— Clarke's Succession, &c. It is, in like man-
ner, acknowledged by the learned Protestant, Dr. Grabe, that Gregory
of Nyssa and Cyril of Jerusalem both assert, in their writings, that
the substance of bread in the Eucharist is transferred into the flesh
of Christ which he took of the Virgin.
( 88 )
Hon, nature itself is changed. Moses cast his rod on
the ground, and it became a serpent ; he caught hold of
the serpent's tail, and it recovered the nature of a rod.
Thou hast read of the Creation of the world:
if Christ, by his word, was able to make something out
of nothing, shall he not be thought able to change one
thing into another ?"* — De Mysteriis.
St. Jerome. — " Moses gave us not the true bread, but
our Lord Jesus did. He invites us to the feast, and is
himself our meat : he eats with us, and we eat Aim." —
Ep. 150, ad Hedib.
St. Gaudentius of Brescia. — "In the shadows and
figures of the ancient Pasch, not one lamb, but many
were slain, for each house had its sacrifice, because one
victim could not suffice for all the people : and also be-
cause the mystery was a mere figure, and not the reality
of the passion of the Lord. For the figure of a thing is
not the reality, but only the image and representation of
the thing signified. But now, when the figure has ceased,
the one that died for all, immolated in the mystery of
bread and wine, gives life through all the churches,f and,
* Of this Discourse of St. Ambrose, the writer, referred to in the
preceding note, says — " Had a work been now written on ihe Roman
Catholic practice and doctrine of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, it
could not more fully assert the Papal creed on these points than this Dis-
course." (Clarke's Succession cf Sacred Literature.) After such admis-
sions as this, — and no Protestant, with candour and knowledge, will
gainsay its truth, — what becomes, I again ask, of the old wives' tale
still harped upon occasionally by a few worn-out controversialists,
which would represent Transubstantiation as an invention of the
ninth century?
In the Treatise de Sacramentis, attributed to St. Ambrose, we find
equally strong and clear proofs of this Father's belief in Transubstan-
tiation. As, for instance, " Though they may seem to be the figure
of the bread and wine, yet, after the consecration, they must be be-
lieved to be the flesh and blood and nothing else." In noticing the
doubts that have been raised as to the authenticity of this particular
Treatise, Mr. Clarke observes, "The arguments seem strong against
it; but, however it maybe, it is clear, from the ascertained productions
of this author, that the doctrines contained in it are in accordance
with his opinions; and the Real Presence, and the forms and ceremo-
nies, &c. of Baptism, are just such as St. Ambrose would have deli-
vered."
t Such passages as this, wiiich abound in the writers of the fourth
age, attributing a life-giving effect to the participation of the Eucha-
rist, prove most clearly that the sixth chapter of St. John was under-
stood by them as referring to that Sacrament In this sense, Julius
Firmicus, a writer of the fourth age, calls the Eucharistic chalice " po-
culum immortale," and adds, that bestows upon the dying the gift of
eternal life M And what do they hold (says St. Augustin) who ealj
( 89 )
being consecrated, sanctifies those who consecrate. . . .
.... He who is the Creator and Lord of all natures,
who produces bread from the earth, of the bread makes
his own proper body (for lie is able, and he promised to
do it) and who of water made wine, and of wine his
blood."— Tract. 11, de Pasch.
St. John Chrysostom. — " Let us believe God in every
thing, and not gainsay him, although what is said may
seem contrary to our reason and our sight* Let his
word overpower both. Thus let us do in mysteries, not
looking only on the things that lie before us, but holding
fast his words ; for his word cannot deceive! but our
sense is very easily deceived. Since then his word says,
* This is my body,' let us assent and believe, and view it
with the eyes of our understanding." — Homil. 82, in
Matt. " As many as partake of this body, as many as
taste of this blood, think ye it nothing different from
that which sits above, and is adored by angels. 1 '' — Homil.
3, in c. 1, ad Ephes. " Wonderful ! — the table is spread
with mysteries, the Lamb of God is slain for thee, and
the spiritual blood flows from the sacred table. The
spiritual fire comes down from heaven ; the blood in the
chalice is drawn from the spotless side for thy purifica-
tion. Thinkest thou that thou seest bread ? that thou
seest wine? that these things pass off as other foods do?
Far be it from thee to think so. But, as wax brought
near to the fire loses its former substance which no long-
er remains ; so do thou thus conclude, that the mysteries
(the bread and wine) are consumed by the substance of
the Body." — Horn. 9, de Pcenit. " But are there many
Christs, as the offering is made in many places'? By no
means: it is the same Christ every where; here entire,
and there entire, one body. As then, though offered in
many places, there is one body, and not many bodies ; so
is there one sacrifice." — Horn. 17, in c. 9, ad Hebr.
St. Maruthas. — " As often as we approach and receive
the Sacrament of the Lord's Table, Life, but that which was said, ' I
am the Bread of Life, and except ye eat of me, ye shall have no life in
you?"'
* The same Father defines the signification of a Mystery to be,
" when we see one thing but believe it to be another."— greg* cp&jutv t
8*
( 90 )
on our hands the body and blood, we believe that we em-
brace his body, and become, as it is written, flesh of his
flesh and bone of his bones. For Christ did not call it
the figure or species of his body, but he said, 'this truly
is my body and this is my blood.' " — Com. in Mat.
In addition to the decisive testimony of all the Fathers
on this subject, there is yet another body of evidence,
still more ancient and precious, to be found in those Li-
turgies of the early Churches, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sy-
riac, die. which, like the Apostles' Creed, and for similar
reasons, were handed down unwritten,* and preserved,
in the memories of the Faithful, from age to age. It was
not till Christianity had found a refuge under the roofs of
Kings that these depositories of her sacred rites, prayers
and dogmas, were published to the world; and, whatever
interpolations they may have, some of them, suffered in
their progress, it is not doubted, among the learned, that,
in those parts where they are found all to agree, they
may be depended upon as authentic monuments of the
apostolic times.f Their entire agreement, therefore, in
the sense of those prayers which were used in conse-
crating the elements of the Eucharist,} is a proof more
remarkable, perhaps, than any other that has been ad-
duced, of the apostolical date of the Catholic doctrine on
that subject. An extract or two from some of the most
ancient of these Liturgies shall conclude this long
Chapter.
Liturgy of Jerusalem (called also, the Liturgy of St.
* The Apostles' Creed is supposed to have been one of the Signs of
the Secret, by which the Initiated, or baptized, knew each other, and
to have thence derived the designation of Symbol—See Hist, of jos-
tles' Creed.
t It can hardly be doubted (says Archbishop Wake) " but that those
prayers in which the Liturgies all agree, in sense at least, if not in
words were first prescribed, in the same or like terms, by those Apos-
tles and Evangelists" whose names they bear.— .Iposiolic Fathers.
X " I add to what has been already observed the consent of all the
Christian Churches in the world, however distant from each other, in
the holy Eucharist, or Sacrament of the Lord's Supper ; which consent
is indeed wonderful. All the ancient Liturgies agree in this form of
prayer, almost in the same words, but fuHy and exactly in the same
sense, order and method ; which whoever attentively considers must
be convinced that this order of prayer was delivered to the several
churches in the wry first plantation and settlement of them."— Bishop
Bull, Sermons en Cov.mor, Brayer.
( 91 )
James.) — " Have mercy on us, O God ! the Father Al-
mighty, and send thy Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of
life, equal in dominion to thee and to thy Son — who de-
scended in the likeness of a dove on our Lord Jesus Christ
— who descended on the holy Apostles in the likeness of
tongues of fire — that coming he may make this bread the
life-giving body, the saving body, the heavenly body, the
body giving health to souls and bodies, the body of our
Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus, for the remission of sins
and eternal life to those who receive it. — Amen
Wherefore we offer to thee, O Lord, this tremendous and
unbloody sacrifice for thy holy places which thou hast
enlightened by the manifestation of Christ, thy Son,"
&c. &c.
Liturgy of Alexandria (called also, the Liturgy of St,
Mark.) — " Send down upon us, and upon this bread, and
this chalice, thy Holy Spirit, that he may sanctify and
consecrate them, as God Almighty, and make the bread
indeed the body and the chalice the blood * of the New
Testament of the very Lord, and God, and Saviour, and
our sovereign King, Jesus Christ," &c. &c.
Roman Liturgy (called also, the Liturgy of St. Peter.)
— " We beseech thee, O God, to cause that this oblation
may be, in all things, blessed, admitted, ratified, reasona-
ble and acceptable ; that it may become for us the body
and blood of thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.''*
At the Communion, bowing down in sentiments of pro-
found adoration and humility, and addressing himself to
Jesus Christ then present in his hand, he says thrice,
V Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under
my roof; but say only the word and my soul shall be
healed."
Liturgy of Constantinople, — " Bless, O Lord, the holy
bread — make, indeed, this bread the precious body of thy
Christ. Bless, O Lord, the holy chalice ; and what is in
this chalice, the precious blood of thy Christ — changing
by the Holy Spirit." Then, dividing the holy
* " I.find," says the Protestant Grotius, " in all the Liturgies, Greek,
Latin, Arabic, Syriac and others, prayers to God that he would conse-
crate, by his Holy Spirit, the gifts offered, and make them the body and
blood of bis Son. I was right, therefore, in saying that a custom so
ancient and universal that it must be considered to have come down
from the primitive limes, ought not to havs been changed."— Votwm.
■pro Face.
( 92 )
bread into four parts, the Priest says, " The Lamb of God
is broken and divided, — the Son of the Father, he is
broken, but not diminished ; he is always eaten, but is not
consumed; but he sanctifies those who are made par-
takers,"
♦r^v ^^ ^♦v***"
CHAPTER XVIII.
Visit to T d Street Chapel. — Antiquity of the observances of the
Mass.— Lights, Incense, Holy Water, &c— Craw-thumpers.— St. Au-
gustin a Craw-thumper.— Imitations of Paganism in the early
Church.
It was, I recollect, late on a" Saturday night, when my
task of selecting the extracts given in the preceding
chapter was completed ; and so strong, I confess, was the
yearning with which I found myself drawn back to old
Mother Church by so many irresistible proofs of her pure
Christian descent, that, on the following morning, for the
first time since I had ceased to be a boy, I went to attend
the celebration of mass in T d Street Chapel. It was
as a sort of peace-offering to the manes of my venerable
old confessor, Father O' , that I thus chose the chapel
to which he had belonged, as the scene of the Prodigal's
Return, and, — like those mariners of old who used to
hang up their votive tablets in the temple, after escaping
from shipwreck, — went to offer up a short prayer on my
arrival, safe and sound, from this long and adventurous
cruise after that phantom-ship, primitive Protestantism.
But, though returning thus to the mansion of her who
had nursed me, was I, indeed, " worthy to be called her
son?" — Though my reason had been so fully, so abun-
dantly convinced, was that worst source of error, " the
blindness of the heart," yet removed 1 My readers them-
selves will know but too well how to answer this question,
when I confess, that so ashamed did I feel even of the
slight hankering after my former faith which this visit to
the chapel betrayed, that I took care to place myself
where I should be least likely to meet with persons who
( 93 )
knew me ; and even there cowered in my corner so as to
be, as much as possible, concealed.
Though it is evident, from all this, that my feeling of
religion had gained but little by my late course of sacred
studies, my stock of knowledge on the subject could not
be otherwise than considerably increased. Far different,
indeed, were the thoughts with which I now witnessed
the ceremonies of that altar from those which they had
awakened in me in my boyish days. I had then blindly
revered all its forms, without knowing what they meant;
I was now book-learned in their history and their import,
but — where was the feeling] It was, I blush to own, far
more with the zeal of an antiquary than of a Catholic, or
Christian, that, as I now peeped from my corner, I took
pleasure in tracing, through every part of the service,
some doctrine or observance of the primitive times, and
admiring the watchful fidelity with which Tradition had
handed down every little ceremony connected with that
dawn of our faith.
In the use of lights and incense, — a practice sneered
at by the Protestant, as pagan, — I but read the touching
story of the early Church, when her children, hunted by
the persecutor, held their religious meetings either at
night, or in subterranean places,* whose gloom, of course,
rendered the light of tapersf necessary, and where the
fumes of the censer, besides being familiar to the people
among whom Christianity first sprung, were resorted to
as a means of dissipating unwholesome odours. In sprink-
ling the Holy Water on my forehead, I called to mind
the far period, — as early as the beginning of the second
century, — when salt bngan to be mixed with the blessed
water, in memory of Christ's death ;| or, as others will
have it, as a mystic type of the hypostatic union of the
two natures in the Redeemer.
* Ciampini, in his curious work on the remains of ancient buildings
and Mosaics, denies that the primitive Christians performed their wor-
ship in crypts, and asserts that their meetings were held in houses
built over or near the cemeteries. This lahorious antiquary numbers
up a list of no less than eighty churches built by the Christians from
the year 33 to 275.
t Thus we are told, in some notes on Eusebius (Dc Die Dominieo,
•' Q,uod Christiani mane quondam congregati, Synaxes suas ad lumina
accensa celcbrarint, qu?e deinceps, etiam interdiu retenta sunt."
X According to Tertullian, the sprinkling of the Holy Water wa^
" in maraoriam riedicatjonie Christi "
( 94 )
At that period of the Mass when the mysterious Sacri-
fice begins, I found myself reminded of the forms of words,
" Foris Catechumeni," in which invariably, as long as the
Discipline of the Secret continued to be observed, the
Catechumens, or unbaptized, were dismissed from Church,
before those Mysteries, which none but the initiated were
allowed to witness, commenced. By the words, " Per
quern haec omnia Domine,"* my thoughts were recalled
to the simplicity of the first ages, when the young fruits
of the season used to be laid on the altar, and receive, in
these words, the blessing of the Priest, before the Com-
munion. Again, when I heard the Priest say, " Lift up
your hearts/' and the people respond to him, " We have
lifted them up to the Lord,"' could I help remembering
with reverence that in the very same phrases did St. Cy-
prian and his flock commune before their God,f no less
than fifteen hundred years since, — that is, twelve whole
centuries before any of those Protestants, by whom the
Mass was abolished, existed !
But there occurred to me yet another proof of the high
antiquity of the religious observances of the Catholics,
which struck me the more forcibly inasmuch as it related
to one of their most ridiculed practices, that of beating
the breast with the clenched hand, at the Confiteor, and
other parts of the service ; — a practice, which, in Ireland,
has drawn down on the Papists the well-bred appellation
of craw-thumpers. When I looked round, however, upon
the humble Christians, thus nick-named, and remembered
that St. Augustin himself, the pious and learned St Au-
gustin, was also a craw-thumper, I felt that to err with
him, was, at least, erring in good company, and proceed-
ed to join the " tundentes pectora" (as the Saint describes
them,J) with all my might.
The charge brought against the Catholics of being co-
pyists of the Pagans is one regularly renewed by every
tour-writing parson who returns, horror-struck with
* By Calvin, Basnage, &c. an attempt has been made to turn this
formula of the Ancient Mass into an argument against the doctrine
of the Real Presence, — but the explanation given above is a sufficient
answer to their cavils.
t De Orat. Domin. — St. Cyril of Jerusalem also makes mention of
this formula, Catech. Myst. 5.
X " Si non habemus peccata, et tundentes pectora, dicimua 4 Dimitte
nobis peccata nostra.' &c. &c. v — Serm. 35.
( 96 )
images, &c. from Rome and Naples. So far from deny-
ing, however, their adoption of some Pagan customs, the
early Christians would have avowed and justified such a
policy, as calculated to soften down that appearance of
novelty in their faith which formed one of the most start-
ling obstacles to its reception with the Heathen, and
thus to enable them, by borrowing some of the forms of
error, to win over their hearers to the substance of
truth*
The numerous vestiges, indeed, of Paganism, which
partly from this policy, partly from the force of habit and
imitation, were still retained in the ritual, language, and
ceremonies of the early Church, would take far more
space than my present limits can afford to enumerate
them. Not to dwell on such instances as the adoption of
the words " Mystery" and " Sacramentf" from the reli-
gious language of the Romans and Greeks, — the form of
dismissal addressed to the Catechumens, at the com-
mencement of the Sacrifice, " Depart, ye who are not
initiated," in which we recognise the " Procul este, pro-
fani," of the Pagan mysteries, — the confession of sins,
and abstinence from particular foods required by both re-
ligions of the candidates for initiation,}: and the different
stages or ranks through which they were* in each, gradu-
ally promoted, 5 — the special selection by the Christians of
those days, for the Festivals of their Church, which had
been before dedicated to some superstitious solemnity by
the Pagans, [| — not to dwell upon these and many other
* The advantage of such a mode of proceeding is put acutely in the
following words of Bede :— "Pertinaci Paganismo mutatione subven-
tum est, quum rei in totum sublatio potius irritasset."
f By Doctor Waterland the application of the word "Sacrament"
to the Eucharist is traced to so early a date as that of the letter of
Pliny respecting the* Christians, in which he says, " Seque Sacramento
non in scelus aliquod obstringere, sed ne furta, &c." But it is evident
that Pliny here employs the word, in the Roman sense, as meaning an
Oath ; nor is there, I believe, any recorded instance of its application
to the Eucharist before the time of Tertullian.
X After confessing their sins, the Heathen candidates were asked,
M Have you eaten of the lawful food, and abstained from the unlaw-
ful ?'' — to PITOU X.CLI <T0 /UH 37T0U <Tc lyiVVU.
§ The last and highest stage of initiation was by the Heathen Mys-
tagogues called Teletes, or the Consummation ; and in the same man-
ner, the admission of the Christian neophyte to communion is styled
frequently by the Fathers tx§uv wri ro retetov.
|j •* Our Lord God," says Theodoret, " hath brought his dead (viz.
the Martyrs) into the room and place of your gods, whom he hath sent
( 96 )
such striking points of resemblance, we can trace, even
in the Liturgic service of the early Church, both the
forms and language of the Pagan worship.
Thus that species of Psalmody, called Antiphony, first
introduced into the Church by St. Ignatius, wherein the
anthem was sung alternately by two choirs, was the
mode of singing, according to Casaubon, that had been
practised in the temples of the Gentiles; and the responses
of the people to the Priests found a precedent in some of
the ancient Bacchic rites: — " Praise God," said the Da-
duchus, or High Priest, and the people answered, " Oh,
son of Semele, bestovver of wealth." The very words,
indeed Kyrie Eleison, "Lord* have mercy on us," which
have kept their place in all Litanies to the present day,
were, as appears from Arrian, (who wrote in the second
century,) the ordinary form of prayer to the Deity among
the Pagans. " We pray to God (says Arrian, himself a
Pagan) in the words Kyrie Eleison."*
So far from denying, I repeat it, the source from which
these forms have been derived, the Catholics are them-
selves among the first to avow it ;+ well knowing, howe-
ver, the Protestant may wish to blink such a conclusion;
that these occasional resemblances to the forms of Pa-
ganism, in the ceremonies of their Church, form one of
the countless proofs she can give of the high antiquity of
her descent, — even the outward formulary of her devo-
tions being thus traceable to that bright dawn of Chris-
tianity, when truth gained upon error gradually, like light
upon darkness; and when, if any such lingering mists re-
mained from the night, they were but to be made subser*
vient to the glory of the day.
about their business, and hath given their honour to his Martyrs.
For, instead of the feasts of Jupiter and Bacchus are now celebrated
the festivals of Peter and Paul," &x.
* lev Qcov iTriK'JLktvfAivoi JiofxiSsL a.vrcu t Ku^ii thino-ov. —
ZHssertat. Epictet.
t The learned Brisson (one of the victims of the League) says ex-
pressly of the words Kyrie Eleison, in his work on the Forms of the
Catholic Church, " Fontein hujus precationis esse a Paganorum con-
iuetudine."
( 97 )
CHAPTER XIX.
.Ruminations— Unity of the Catholic Church.— History of St. Peter'a
Chair.— Means of preserving Unity.— Irenaeus.— Hilary.— Indefecti-
bility of the one Church.
Surely, thought I, as, ruminating, I sauntered home*
Wards from the chapel,— were there even no other evi-
dence in favour of the authenticity of her claims, this ad-
herence, on the part of the Catholic Church, through all
changes of time and circumstance, to every, even the mi-
nutest point of discipline or worship on which the seal of
her primitive teachers was set, would be, of itself, a suf-
ficient assurance, without any farther testimony, that she
had kept equally scrupulous watch over the great doc-
trines bequeathed to her, and handed them down, even
Unto our own times, as they were "delivered by the
Saints."
Though nothing less, of course, than the superinten-
dence of a Divine Providence can be held sufficient to ac-
count for this great standing miracle of a church uphold-
ing itself through the lapse of eighteen centuries, un-
changed and, as it would appear, unchangeable, — it may
yet be permitted to inquire how far, as a subordinate in-
strument, human policy may have had its share in pro-
ducing this result; and there can be no doubt that the
zealous watchfulness with which the pastors of the Ca-
tholic Church have ever acted upon, themselves, and pre-
scribed urgently to their flocks the precept of St. Paul, " Be
ye of one mind," has been, of all the human means em-
ployed to keep the strong fabric of their Faith unbroken,
the most sagacious and powerful.
What importance they attached to Unity, and how
great was their horror of schism, appears from the ear-
nest language of all the Fathers on the subject. " Unity
cannot be severed," says St. Cyprian, " nor the one body
by laceration be divided. Whatever is separated from
the stock, cannot live, cannot breathe apart: it loses the
9
( OS )
substance of life." — De Unitat. Eccles. " The ancient
Catholic Church alone (says St. Clement of Alexandria)
is one in essence, in opinion, in origin, and in excellence,
one in faith." — Strom. I. 7. In a still more Popish spi-
rit, St. Optatus (a bishop of Milevis in the fourth centu-
ry) thus writes: — »** You cannot deny that St. Peter, the
chief of the Apostles, established an Episcopal Chair at
Rome. This chair was one, that all might preserve
Unity by the union which they had with it : so that, who-
ever set up a chair against it should be a schismatic and
an offender.'''' — De Schism. Donat.
The history, indeed, of this "one chair" presents, in
itself, such a phenomenon and marvel as no other form
of human power, in any age of the world, has paralleled.
Through a course of eighteen centuries, amidst the con-
stant flux and reflux of the destinies of nations, while
every other part of Europe has seen its institutions, time
after time, broken up and reconstructed, while new races
of kings have, like pageants, come and disappeared, and
England herself has passed successively under the sway
of five different nations, the Apostolic See, the Chair of
St. Peter, has alone defied the vicissitudes of time, — has
remained, as " a city seated on a mountain," a rallying
point for the church of God throughout all time, and
counting an unbroken succession of Pontiffs* from its
first occupant, St. Peter, down to the present hour.
To return, however, to the more directly human means
by which the stability of the Catholic Church has been
thus wonderfully preserved, — we have seen that to the
maintenance of entire and changeless unity among her
children, all the energies of her most enlightened pastors
have, in all times, been directed; and such a system of
union being, in fact, indispensable both to the peace and
durability of their Church, it is of importance to inquire
by what means they so well succeeded in effecting it.
Was it by throwing open the Scriptures to the multi-
tude 1 Was it by leaving, like modern Reformers, the
right of judgment unfettered, and allowing every man to
interpret the Sacred Volume as he fancied] Far from
* In speaking of the first links of this chain,— from St. Peter down
to Eleutherius, the 12th Bishop of Rome,— Ire rise us says, " In this very
order and succession has the Tradition which is in the Church, and the
preaching of the truth, come to us from the Jlpostles."
( 99 )
it; — they were as little Protestant on this point as on all
others. They asked, with St. Paul, " Are all Prophets 1
are all Teachers'?" They knew, with St. Peter, that there
are, in the Scriptures, " things hard to be understood,
which the unlearned and unstable wrest to their own de-
struction.*' They saw the consequences of the first steps
of dissent in the random course of all the heretics of their
day; and the language employed by them in speaking of
these vagrant sectaries was but an anticipation of what
the Catholics of after times have had to apply to Protes-
tants. Thus, St. IrenaBus, who lived, if I may so say, in
the very sunset of the apostolical age, and had its light
fresh around him, after remarking the uncountable va-
rieties of doctrine into which heresy had even then
branched, adds : — " When, therefore, they shall be agreed
among themselves on what they draw from the Scrip-
tures, it will be our time to refute them. Meanwhile,
thinking wrongfully, and not agreeing in the meaning of
the same words, they convict themselves. But we, having
one true and only God for our master, and making his
words the rule of truth, always speak alike of the same
things. "—Adv. Hcer. I. 4 *
Two centuries later we find the great Trinitarian, St.
Hilary, describing the Arian creed-mongers of his own
time in terms no less appropriately applicable to the Lu-
thers, Zwingles, and Calvins of the Reformation, and to
all those succession crops of creeds that sprung up so
rankly under their culture. " When once they (the Ari-
ans) began to make new confessions of faith, belief be-
came the creed of the times rather than of the gospels.
Every year new creeds were made, and men did not keep
to that simplicity of faith which they professed at their
baptism. And then, what miseries ensued! for soon
there were as many creeds as might please each party ;
and nothing else has been minded, since the council of
* In the same spirit is another remarkable passage of the same
Father : — " Paul said, ■ We speak wisdom among the Perfect, but not
the wisdom of this world.' Every one of these men (the heretics) af-
firms that this wisdom is in himself; that he findeth it of himself, —
namely, the fiction which he hath invented. So that, according to
tbem, the truth is said to be sometimes in Valentinus, sometimes in
Marcion, sometimes in Cerinthus, and, after that, in Basilides. When
again we appeal to that tradition, which is delivered from the Apostles,
and which is preserved in the Church by a succession of Elders , they then
turn against tradition,"
( ioo )
Nice, but this creed-making'. — New creeds have come
forth every year, and every month: they have been
changed, have been anathematized, and then re-esta-
blished; and thus, by too much inquiry into the faith,
there is no faith left. Recollect, too, that there is not
one of these heretics who does not impudently assert tliat
all his blasphemies are derived from the Scriptures" —
Ad Constant, lib. 2.
Having, from the earliest times of the Faith, such ex-
amples to warn them, and adhering firmly to the princi-
ple of oneness enjoined by Christ himself, the heads of
the Church continued invariably to act upon the system
of requiring all within the fold to follow the one Shep-
herd ; and if any resisted, or dissented, cast them forth
from the flock. To this exclusion, no less awful a penalty
was attached than the forfeiture of eternal salvation;* and,
however stern and tremendous such a decree must ap-
pear, they who had been taught that there was but " one
Lord, one faith, and one baptism," and who held, there-
fore, that he who was not in the ark must perish by the
deluge, could not, with any sincerity, pronounce a more
lenient sentence.
Under the shelter of such guards and sanctions, hu-
man as well as divine, has the Catholic Church been
enabled to hold on her changeless course, and exhibit an
example of permanence, indefectibility, and unity, to
which the whole history of human systems afford no pa-
rallel; sustaining herself, unblenched and unbroken —
with the single exception of the partial schism of the
Eastern Church — through a period commensurate with
the existence of Christianity itself, and, ■ amidst all the
changes, eclipses, and wrecks of all other institutions,
delivering down the same doctrines from father to son,
through every age; while of all the leaders of sects op-
posed to her, from Simon Magus down to Luther, not a
single one has been able to frame a creed for his follow-
ers, the articles of which have remained unaltered be"
yond his own life-time.
* The Synodal epistle of the Council of Zerta, drawn up by St. Au-
gustin, thus tells the Donatists: — "Whoever is separated from this
Catholic Church, however innocently he may think he lives, for this
crime alone, that he is separated from the Unity of Christ, wiJJ not
.have life, but the anger of God remains upon him."
( ioi )
CHAPTER XX.
A Dream.— Scene, a Catholic Church— Time, the third Century. — An-
gel of Hermas.— High Mass.— Scene shifts to Ballymudragget.— Rec-
tor's Sermon. — Amen Chorus.
This train of thought into which I had been led by the
ceremonies of the morning*, and which continued, more
or less, to occupy me during the remainder of the day,
was doubtless the cause of a strange dream by which I
was visited that night, and which, for the benefit of all
those who have any fancy for such u children of the idle
brain," I shall here relate.
I found myself seated, as I thought, in the middle of a
great church, in some foreign land, and, according to the
impression I had on my mind, in the third or fourth cen-
tury. From the lights, the incense, and the sounds of
psalmody that arose around, I could not doubt that I
stood in some temple of Catholic worship, and, by a still
greater miracle of fancy, was reconverted into a good,
orthodox Catholic myself. On looking round, however,
through the crowd of fellow-believers that encircled me,
I was rilled with astonishment at the varieties of hue and
habit which they exhibited ; — the Roman, the Carthagi-
nian, the Gaul, the citizens of Athens and of Jerusalem,
of Corinth and of Ephesus, the Alexandrian and the Spa-
niard, all seated round, arrayed in the different garbs of
their respective countries, and waiting, in solemn silence,
the opening of the Mass.
I now, for the first time, perceived, by my side, a youth
of divine aspect, who regarded me with a smile of bene-
volence that came, like sunshine, into my heart. He was
habited in the manner of a shepherd of the old pastoral
times, and on considering his features more closely, I re-
cognised in him the same friendly Angel who, in the
garb of a Shepherd, had led Hermas through his series of
Visions.* An exchange of salutations having passed be-
* See page 22 of this volume.
9*
( 102 )
tween us, I was about to inquire after his old pupil's ce-
lestial health, when he pressed his fore-finger on his lip,
as a warning of silence, and, almost at the same moment,
the first words of the service broke on our ears. The ve-
nerable Priest who officiated seemed to my fancy a sort
of compound being, made up from the descriptions I had
read of some of the celebrated Fathers of the Church, —
having the bald, Elisha-like head of St. Chrysostom, the
upright eyebrows of St. Cyril, and " the beard prolix "
(as Dr. Cave terms it) of the great St. Basil. Some-
times, too, as my dream shifted, like a morning mist, it
appeared to me as if the holy personage ministering at
the altar was no other than my good old confessor, Father
O'H himself.
The public part of the mass being now ended, the mo*
ment had arrived when, by the solemn form of words,
1 Depart in peace," those who had not yet been initiated,
by baptism were warned to retire, and the Faithful left
to perform the dread Sacrifice among themselves. But
who shall worthily describe that rite which followed]
Never shall I forget the effect, as it then presented itself
to my fancy, of the still and unbreathing silence* of that
vast multitude of Christians, — till, at the awful moment
of communion, when, as the Priest, raising the sacred
Host, pronounced it " the Body of Christ," the whole as-
sembly fell prostrate, in adoration, before it, and the word
" Amen,"f as if with one voice and one soul, burst from
all around. It was like a sweet and long-drawn peal of
music, a concert of sounds, unbroken by a single breath
of dissonance, from every quarter of this earth which the
wind visits, — all blending in the belief of an incarnate
God, who by his flesh, hath redeemed, and with his flesh
still feeds, his creatures.
So overpowering was the effect of this sound upon me,
* When the Priest, says St. Chrysostom, stands before the Table,
stretching out his hands to heaven, invocating the Holy Spirit, that
he would come and give the contact, all is stillness and silence—
TTOXXH HO-V^VL, 7T0XKH <7iy\).
t " In the very form of communion, the whole primitive Chnrch
made a solemn and public profession of the truth of the body of Christ
in this Sacrament. The Priest, in giving it, spake these words, Cor-
pus Christi, that is, the b.idy of Christ, and the communicant answered
Jlmen, that is, it is truer— Rutter on the Eucharist.
( 103 )
that I had nearly waked with emotion ; — but the inter-
ruption was only momentary. Though the web of my
dream had been broken, the thread was not altogether
lost ; and, after a short interval of entanglement, I found
myself again in company with the Angel-Shepherd, in
;the very act of proposing to him, that in return for his
condescension in thus procuring me a peep into a church
of the third century, he would allow me the honour of
treating him to a similar glimpse into one of our new-
fashioned churches, or conventicles, of the nineteenth.
Scarcely had the words passed my lips, when, by a
sudden shift of scene, we were at once, transported away
to the Parish Church of Ballymudragget, and arrived just
;as the rich and roseate Rector of that place was ascend-
ing the pulpit, to read over to his half-a-sleep flock the
•last ready made sermon he had purchased. The church
appeared to me to have been, in some marvellous man-
ner, enlarged for the occasion, and was now thronged
with a dense multitude of persons whom, by that intui-
tive knowledge given only to dreamers, I knew to con-
sist of all the various sects and denominations into which
— with a vitality as infinitely divisible as that of the po-
lypus itself — English Protestantism has been subdivided ;
and as, in the first stage of my dream, we had witnessed
the spectacle of a variety of nations with one religion, so
we now had before us the Reformed fashion of one nation
with a variety of religions ; — there being collected there
(to mention but a few of the diversities of faith that pre-
sented themselves) Calvinists, Arminians, Antinomians,
Independents, Baptists, Particular Baptists, Methodists,
Kilhamites, Glassites, Haldanites, Bereans, Swedenbor-
gians, Quakers, Shakers, Ranters, and Jumpers.
It was said of the great St. Ambrose that he had a pe-
culiar talent for smelling out dead martyrs ;* and no less
quick a scent did my friend, the Angel, appear to have
for live heretics. For, perceiving instantly the difference
between these moderns and the old, regular Christians
he had been accustomed to, he begged, in a whisper, that
I would explain briefly to him the particular form of he-
* "Idem Praesul (says Daille, gibingly, in speaking of the great
Bishop of Milan's discovery of the two buried Saints, Gervasius and
Protasius) quo nemo fuit in odorandis ac cernendis sub terra quan*
tumvis alta llcliquiis sagacior et acutior."
( 104 )
resy to which they belonged. The task was puzzling:
— just as reasonably, indeed, might he have inquired of
me the particular form and colour of the motes in a sun-
beam. Not liking, however, to appear uncommunicative,
I at once invented a generic name for the whole assem-
bly, and told him the people he saw around us were Su-
ists,* — so called, from following each his own way in re-
ligion, and only taking care in forming his peculiar creed,
that it should "as little as possible resemble the creed of
his neighbour.
Unluckily for this definition of mine, the discourse of
the Reverend Rector happened to turn upon the one,
only point on which his auditors were entirely unanimous,
— namely, contempt and detestation for the ancient Ca-
tholic Church, its doctrines, observances, traditions, and
teachers. To describe the astonishment of the Angel at
the specimen of Ballymudragget Christianity now pre-
sented to him would be a task beyond my powers. When
he heard the solemn words of our Lord in instituting the
Eucharist, " Hoc est corpus," &c, profanely travestied
into "Hocus Pocus;"j when he was told gravely by the
preacher that to maintain the corporal presence of Christ
in the Sacrament is as absurd as to declare " an egg to
be an elephant, or a musket-ball a pike," J — I saw his ce-
lestial brow darken, at once, with sorrow and disdain,
and he was only roused from the though tfulness into
which such blasphemies plunged him on hearing the
preacher mention Luther as the Apostle of this new Gos-
pel he was expounding to them.-} ''Luther," muttered
the Spirit to himself; and then, turning quick round to
me, exclaimed, M Luther! — who is he]"
Somewhat startled to find the illustrious author of Pro-
testantism so entirely unknown to my angelic friend, I
* " No common name being to be found, fit to comprehend our sec-
taries, but that of a Suist,one that follows his own dreams or fancy
in choice of Scripture, and interpretation of it." — Dr. Carter's .Mo-
tives for Conversion to the Catholic Religion, 1649.
j It is no less a person than Tillotson, who, in one of his writings,
has descended to this ribaldry.
X " It might well seem strange if any man should write a book to
prove than an egg is not an elephant and that a musket-ball is not
3. pike." — Tillotson on Transubstantiation.
§ The Reverend Preacher, however, had done injustice to Luther,
who, as far as a belief in the Real Presence went (and without consi-
dering the nodus J was perfectly orthodox.
( 105 )
proceeded to inform him of the few particulars I myself,
at that time, knew of the great Reformer; — viz., that he
was a monk of the order of St. Augustin who, about the
year 1520, undertook to bring- back the primitive purity
of the Gospel ; — that one of his first steps towards this
object was to renounce his vows of chastity and marry a
run-away nun whose views of reform, it appeared, coin-
cided with his own; — that, still in fartherance of the
same pious design, he struck up, as he himself informs
us, an intimacy with the Devil; by whose friendly advice
he pronounced the ancient Sacrifice of the Mass to be a
nuisance, and abolished it accordingly ;* that 1 was
thus, to the infinite wonder and horror of my companion,
proceeding, when we both perceived that the portly
Preacher had concluded his discourse ; and all farther
communication between us was put an end to by the
scene that followed.
Immediately on the conclusion of the Reverend gen-
tleman's sermon, an Amen Chorus, — got up, it would
appear, in direct opposition to the symphonious strain we
had heard some fifteen centuries before, — broke forth
from the whole motley mass of Protestantism around us.
Heavens, what a crash ! — Not that celebrated pig-instru-
ment, invented for the special amusement of Louis XV.,
could, with all its scale of grunts and squeaks multiplied
a million-fold, f come, in the least degree, into compari-
* See Luther's own account of this famous conference, which he
evidently believed himself to have held, with the Devil, on the subject
of Private Masses, and the result of which was as above stated. — De
abrop. Miss. priv. Had we not the recital of this strange illusion from
the Reformer himself, who describes all particulars of the Devil's tone
of voice, his off-hand manner of arguing, &c, such an instance of
mental drivelling in so great a leader of human opinion would have
been altogether inconceivable. He tells us, too, that his scenes of this
kind, with the Devil, were frequent. — M Multas noctes mihi satis ama-
rulentas et ecerbas reddere ille novit."
t A sort of instrument, played with keys like a harpsichord, or
organ, invented, it is said, by some Abbe, for the amusement of Louis
XV., in which pigs of different ages and tones, from the youngest to
the oldest, were placed so as to form the treble and base of the scale.
According as the performer played, a spike at the end of each key pro-
duced the tones desired, while a muzzle was so contrived as to act the
part of Damper, and stop the mouth of each pig as soon as his note
was uttered. The whole was then covered in, so as to appear like an
instrument, and the Abbe ; it is stated, performed upon it, in the pre-
sence of the Court.
( loc )
Son with the varieties of discord in which this general
and prolonged Amen was uttered forth ; — the deep, dam-
natory growl of the Calvinist, and the exclusive shriek
of the Particular Baptist (shrill as the screaming of a
sea-fowl in the storm) forming the treble and base of this
most discordant scale. Every moment, too, some new
subdivision of dissonance was added to the original stock ;
till, at length, to so loud a pitch did the charivari swell,
that no powers of sleeping, however dogged, could with-
stand it. In an instant, the whole visionary assemblage
was put to flight; and, on awaking, I found myself lying,
with one of the controversial volumes of the Rev. G. S.
Faber, Rector of Long Newton, resting heavily on my
chest. I had been employed in reading the volume when
I dropped off to sleep, and its influence and superineum-
bence more than sufficiently accounted both for the long
and deep slumber into which I was thrown, and the sort
of Protestant nightmare under which I had awaked-
, .iik|t fttk 4jln r -
CHAPTER XXI.
Search after Protestantism suspended.— Despair of finding it among
the Orthodox.— Resolve to try the Heretics.— Dead Sea of Learning.
— Balance of Agreeableness between Fathers and Heretics.
I had, by this time, as my readers will easily believe,
got not a little sick and weary of my search after Pro-
testantism ; a search hopeless, I found, as that of the
Bramin, in the Eastern Tale, whose wife sent him all
over the world, on a fool's errand, to look for the Fifth
Volume of the Hindoo Scriptures,* — there never having
been but Four. Tired of my learned studies and morti-
fied to think how much time I had lost with them, I, for
some weeks, gave up sullenly all thoughts of conversion,
and was fast relapsing into what the Abbe la JVlen-
nais calls Indiffierentism, on the subject. It happened
* The Tirrta Bede, or Fifth Veda.— See, for this lively story, (a part
of which closely resembles Chaucer's January and May) the collection
called the Bahardanush.
( 107 )
just then, however, that some circumstances connected
intimately with that domestic secret to which I have so
frequently alluded, but which must a little longer re-
main veiled in mystery, occurred to rouse me out of
the listless apathy into which I had sunk, and make me
feel that, — no matter what my scruples or convictions, —
I must take to Protestantism, of some description or other,
immediately.
The thought of finding, among the orthodox of the
early Church, any creed but that of Popery was now, of
course, out of the question. I had still, however, a fond
hankering after those primitive ages, and knowing what
power there is in antiquity to lend a grace to error,
thought that if, even among the heretics of that venera-
ble period, I could discover a little of the primaeval Pro-
testantism I had been looking for, it would be, at all
events, no upstart heresy of a few centuries, but would,
at least, have that degree of hoary heterodoxy about it
which, if my conscience must give way, would throw
dignity round its fall. Nor had I much fears of being
disappointed in this object of my now crest-fallen ambi-
tion; for thus did I argue: — if the Catholic Church (as
has been but too clearly demonstrated) held, in those
early ages, the very same doctrines which she holds at
present, those who, at that period, dissented from, or pro-
tested against, her doctrines must have been, in so far,
Protestants ; and though it does not always follow that
two parties who differ with a third will agree with each
other, yet was it natural to hope that among the grounds
on which the Anti-Catholics of that time bottomed their
heresies might be found some of those which have since
furnished the basis of Protestantism. This glimpse of
hope again awakened all my inquisitive energies ; and,
like a return of lost scent to the beagle, sent me once
more, in full cry, after my game.
I have already remarked that the persevering Unity of
Faith, which the Catholic Church has, through all ages,
in pursuance of the Divine injunctions, maintained, could
by no other device of human policy have been preserved
than that which the See of Rome, as visible Head of the
Christian world, has ever adopted, — namely, the repres-
sion of all private interpretation of Scripture, and the
assertion to herself of the right of being at all times, and
( 108 )
on all points of faith, the guide to truth, the expounder of
Scripture, and the judge of controversy. " Truly," says
Gregory of Nazianzum, in speaking of the mischiefs that
arose from the exercise of private judgment, — " there
should have been a law among us, whereby (as, among the
Jews, young men were not allowed to read certain books
of Scripture) not all men, and at all times, but certain
persons only, and on certain occasions, should be permitted
to discuss the points of Faith." — Or at. xxvi. St. Jerome,
too, in a passage whose just sarcasm will be found to fit
some of the Bible- expounders of the present day as closely
as if they had been measured for it, thus speaks : — " In
all menial arts there must be some one to show the way:
— the art of understanding the Scriptures alone is open
to every reader ! Here, learned or unlearned, we can
all interpret. The tattling old woman, the doting old
man, the wordy sophist, all, all here presume ; they tear
texts asunder, and dare to become teachers before they
have learned." — Ep. L. T. iv. Pars. 11.
To look for Protestantism — whose very corner-stone is-
the right of private judgment, — in a Church whose sys-
tem it has been, from the first, to acknowledge no such
right, w r as, I now perceived, a gross mistake, — a mistake
into which nothing but my entire ignorance of the Rule
of Faith prescribed to the Primitive Christians could have
led me. For, after all, in this point, — in the latitude given
to private interpretation, — lies the broad and essential
distinction between the Catholic Church and her op-
ponents, under whatever forms or at whatever periods
such opponents may have appeared. The test, indeed, is
as true and as applicable to the respective parties in the
first century as in the nineteenth ; and in whatever age r
however early we find professed Christians, questioning
or rejecting the authority of the Church, and grounding
their opposition to her rites or doctrines upon the Scrip-
tures, as interpreted by themselves, we may be assured
that there is already at work the spirit of Protestantism.
Having come to this conclusion, I now, once more, be-
took myself to my folios, — once more plunged into that
Dead Sea of Learning which is so little suited to a diver
of light bulk, like myself,* and over which never hath the
* In explanation of these metaphors of my young friend, I may a*
( io^ )
wing of Fancy been known to fly without drooping. It
is true, my present course of study lay through a far more
varied line of road than that by which I had before tra-
velled. In my researches hitherto, I had kept chiefly to
what the Fathers call u the Royal Road of Orthodoxy ;"
— whereas I was now about to track Heresy through her
by-lanes and cross-ways; to beat up, as it were, the
haunts of Heterodoxy, and ascertain to what extent Pro-
tan tism had burrowed among her coverts. As far as
amusement goes, my readers will be, I should hope, gainers
by this change of route. Good company, says a French
roue, is a good thing, but bad is better; and just so did I
find the balance of agreeableness between my Fathers
and my Heretics, — the respectability being all, of course,
on the former side, while the amusement is on the latter;
there being, in fact, no conceivable freak or vagary of
opinion into which at the early periods of the Church I
am about to speak of, that will-o'-th'-wisp, Private Judg-
ment, did not lure his weak followers.
—»•►»© @ ©<**«•-
CHAPTER XXII.
The Capharnaites the first Protestants. — Discourse of our Saviour at
Capsrnaum— its true import.— Confirmatory of the Catholic doctrine
of the Eucharist.
It is melancholy to think how soon Heresy intruded
itself into the Christian fold ; and how, in the same
manner as the blessed abode of our first Parents was
scarcely called into existence before the Spirit of Evil con-
trived to enter and to darken it with his doubts, so Chris-
tianity had hardly opened her second Eden to mankind,
before the same Evil intruder, with the same tongue of
reasoning and heart of guile, came to question her mys-
teries and throw a blight over her blessings.
well state, that the difficulty of diving in the Dead Sea was noticed as
far back as Strabo's time ; and that the effect of its exhalations on birds
that fly over it is a common but, I believe, unfounded notion.
10
( no )
One of the first instances, and by far the most signal,
that occur in the History of Christianity, of this sort of
questioning spirit, this rising up of the judgment against
Faith, to which all the Herecies and Schisms that have
occurred since owe their rise, is to be found in the me*
morable speech of the Jews of Capernaum, when our
Saviour first announced the great mystery of the Eu-
charist: — " How can this man give us his flesh to eat!"
We have here, I repeat, one of the first recorded pro-
tests of Private Judgment against the mysteries of the
Church of Christ. It is, therefore, of importance to ex-
amine a little into the details of the great transaction it
refers to ; and we shall find, I think, that could the various
texts of Scripture, levelled against " the wisdom of
this world," have left us any room to doubt of the infinite-
ly low estimate at which human reason and its conclu-
sions are rated in the eyes of heaven, the little deference
paid by Christ, on this occasion, to the reasoning powers
of his auditors would be, in itself, a sufficient evidence of
the humbling truth ; would, of itself, sufficiently teach
the presumptuous Spirit of Private Judgment how sacred-
ly the precincts of Faith are meant to be guarded from
its intrusions.
Our Saviour had told them, "the bread which I will
give you is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the
world." Had the hearers of these words understood
them to have been used metaphorically by the speaker,
neither wonder nor scandal could possibly have resulted
from them. But it is evident the whole assembly under-
stood his language literally, and while the Apostles were
silent and, with implicit faith, " believed on him that
God had sent," the Jews and many even of his own dis-
ciples murmured at such hard doctrine. We can even
imagine, at that juncture, some Capharnaite divine, some
Tillotson of the Synagogue, thus addressing his flock: —
" Surely, my beloved brethren, it can never enter into
any of our minds that this man will literally hold him-
self in his hand, and give away himself, from himself, with
his own hands."* With far more grounds and decency,
* See Tillotson, on Transubstantiation, whose words are here re-
peated verbatim. It is not a little curious that the representation
which Tillotson gives of this miracle, for the purpose of throwing ri-
dicule on it, is the same that the Fathers did nut hesitate to put for-
( 111 )
indeed, might the Capharnaites have urged such an ob*
jection, seeing that they interpreted the promised eating
of the Lord's body in a carnal sense; even so much so
(says St. Augustin) as to suppose that he meant to cut
up his own flesh in bits and distribute it among be-
lievers,*
The Redeemer saw what was passing in their minds,
as well as in those of his disciples, f — who, however less
gross and carnal might have been their notion of the
mystery, not the less murmured at its incomprehensibi-
lity, and, in consequence, meditated that secession from
their Master, of which they were afterwards guilty.J
ward as an enhancement and proof of its stupendous nature. Thus
•St. Augustin, in a passage already cited, — "When, committing to us
his body, he said. This is my body, Christ was held in his own hands."
41 Our Lord gave his body (says St. James of Nisibis,) with his own hands,
for food. 1 '
* " Many who were present, not understanding this, were scan-
dalized ; for, hearing him, they thought of nothing but their own flesh.
He therefore said, ' the flesh profiteth nothing ;' that is, it profiteth no-
thing, as they understood it; for they understood it to mean flesh, as it
is in a dead body, or as it is sold in the market, not as animated by
life. ,, — August. Tract. 27.
It is supposed by other divines at these words, " The flesh profiteth
nothing, it is the spirit that quickeneth," had reference rather to the
agency of the Holy Spirit, by whose descent upon the elements, ac-
cording to the belief of the early Church, their transformation into
the body of Christ was effected, and the vivifying virtue commmu-
nicated to them.
t In remarking upon the exclamation of the Jew — "How can this
man give us his flesh to eat ?" Cyril of Alexandria says, " They re-
flected not that nothing is impossible with God. But if thou, O Jew,
continuest yet to urge this How, I will ask thee how the rod of Moses
was changed into a serpent? how the waters were changed into the
nature of blood ? For our parts, let us derive great instruction
from the iniquity of others ; and cherishing a firm faith on these mys-
teries, let us never, on so sublime a point, either in words express, or
in thoughts entertain, this How.''' Com. in Joan.
The following declaration, drawn up by St. Cyril and approved by the
Third General Council, may be considered as conveying the belief of
the Catholic Church on this subject:— We receive it (the Eucharist)
not as common flesh : far be this thought from us ; nor as the flesh
of a sanctified man, and united to the Word by an equality of honour,
or as having obtained a divine inhabitation ; but we receive it as the
truly vivifying and ownfiesh of the Word made man. For as the Word,
as God, is essentially life the moment it beeame one with its flesh, it
imparted to this flesh a vivifying virtue. Wherefore, although Christ
said — 'Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you shall not have life in you' (John, vi. 54,) we are not to imagine,
that it is the flesh of a man like to ourselves, but truly the flesh of him
[tfixv ax»5a>s yivcuivnv) who for us was made, and was called the
£on of Man."
X " From that time many of his disciples went back and walked no
Sioje with him."— John, vi. 66.
( 112 )
Here then was the important moment — important to all
eternity, — when, the divine teacher and his disciples be-
ing confronted with each other, the question between
Reason and Faith, between Private Judgment and Au-
thority, was, for the guidance of future ages, to be brought
solemnly to a decision. Here assuredly was the moment
when, if Christ had not truly and really meant what he
had spoken, — when, if there had been any figure of
speech or allegory in his words, on whose correct inter-
pretation no less a stake than the eternal life of mankind
depended, he had not only an opportunity, but, if I may
venture so to say, was bound by the conditions of his
high mission, to explain away any such perilous am-
biguity ; nor, mysterious as was the nature of the sacra-
ment itself, to leare also the needless mist of metaphor
hanging over it. If, in short, to conciliate human reason,
by smoothing away difficulties which must, to the end of
time, he knew, startle and alienate the " weak in faith,"
— if any such deference to human doubts and judgments
ever entered, but in the remotest degree, into his pur-
poses, then I repeat, would have been the moment for
him to evince such deference, and by so doing authorize
the jurisdiction of Reason over Faith for ever after.
But did our Lord thus act? did he indeed, show any
such consideration for the judgment of his hearers, or
attempt, in the slightest degree, to explain or soften down
his own startling announcement] Did he (as has been
done for him, in modern times,) confess that, on so solemn
an occasion he had made use of a most forced and unnatural
metaphor, and that, by eating his flesh and drinking his
blood, he meant nothing more than believing his doctrine !
Did " the great Proclaimer " of this miracle endeavour to
fritter away its wonders and bring them down to the low
level of the faith of his hearers, by averring, in the
language of the Sacramentarians, that the bread and wine
were but the signs or symbols of his body, or by assuring
them, with the Calvinists, that it was by a mere act of
faith they were to partake of his flesh, while the body it-
self would be, at the time, as remote from them as heaven
was from the altar? Did our Saviour, I ask, do thus?
Let the sacred text answer the question. So far from
offering such explanations, — any one of which would have
.sufficiently diluted away the difficulties of the doctrine to
( 113 )
render it easy and palatable to the stubborn judgment of
his auditors, — the Divine Master, as if to show how
easily he could " bring* to nothing the understandings of
the prudent," deigned no otherwise to answer their ob-
jections, or their murmurs, than by repeating, in still more
emphatic language, the declaration that had so astounded
them : — " Verily, Verily,* I say unto you, except ye eat
of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye
have no life in you."
The whole conduct, indeed, and language of our Sa-
viour, throughout this most memorable scene, stands as
an eternal rebuke to the presumption of human Reason,
in its vain attempt to fathom such " heavenly things ;"
while the awful announcement then made of the miracu-
lous Feast about to be instituted,! followed up, as it was,
on the solemn night of Institution, by those simple and
irrefragable words, " This is my Body," J from the grounds
of that implicit Catholic belief, which the Church of
Christ has, at all times, maintained, and which, however
* It is supposed by some that the word Amen, as repeated here, is a
positive oath; and Basnage is. if I recollect right, one of the authorities
lor its having been employed in that sense by the Jews. However
this may be, the word, doubtless, imports a very high degree of as-
severation ; and " to suppose (as Johnson remarks) that our Saviour
used it only to justify a i-ery catechrestical expression is to suppose
that a wise and humble teacher was so fond of a figure as, for the sake of
it, to give occasion to his hearers to desert him."
In the curious Conference represented to have passed between
Charles I. and the Marquis of Worcester at Ragland, the latter, in
remarking on the opinion of those who suppose Christ to have spoken
figuratively on this occasion, says justly, " There would not have been
so much difficulty in the belief if there had not been more in the mys-
tery ; there would not have been so much offence taken at a memoran-
dum, nor so much stumbling at a figure."
t So far were the ancient Christians from supposing that our Sa-
viour instituted so momentous and wonderful a rite without any an-
nouncement, any preparation of the minds of his followers for such an
event, that they accounted naturally for the calmness with which the
Apostles heard the awful words of institution by the previous know-
ledge of the nature of the Sacrament which Christ had, in his discourse
(John vi.,) communicated to them. Thus-St. Cfcryostom: — " He trans-
ferred them to another banquet, a banquet most tremendous, saying,
* Take, eat ; this is my body.' How was it that they were not seized
with terror, when they heard this ? Because he had previously dis-
coursed with them at large upon the subject."— Homil. lxxxii. in
Matt.
% " Let us not break (said Gaudentius) that most solid bone, ' This is
my body — this is my blood;' but if any thing remain in it which in-
dividuals do not understand, let it be burnt away by the ardent fire
#f Faith."— Tractat, ii.de Pasch.
10*
( 1H )
Gapharnaites may still scoff, and loose disciples still
murmur, will never as long as the one Catholic Church
endures, pass away.
— *H9® ©*«•—
CHAPTER XXIII.
The DocetEC, the earliest heretics.— Denial of the Real Presence. —
Simon Magus and his Mistress.— Simon a Protestant. — Delight at
the discovery.— The Ebonites. — The Elcesaites.
Thus far I had been as fully successful in my new line
of search as I could desire, — having found that great and
leading principle of Protestantism, the right of private
judgment, starting, as it were, into existence almost co-
evally with the birth-hour of our faith, and making the
first trial of its strength against the living words of our
Saviour himself. We have next to consider the work-
ings of the same headstrong principle, as manifested in
the various heresies that rose against his Church ; and it
is not a little remarkable that the very first sect of
heretics we meet with, the first instance of dissent from
Catholicity on record, should turn on the same trying
point that had already called forth the " How " of the
Kapharnaites, — that point which, as from the first it has
been a stone of stumbling to the weak in faith, so will it
continue, I have no doubt, to be a test of the true believer
in Christ's words to the last. The sect with whom this
Mother Heresy originated, was that of the Docetae, al-
ready mentioned, — a branch of the Gnostic Christians,
nearly as old as Christianity itself, who gave, as their reason
for refusing to join in worship with the orthodox, that they
could not acknowledge the bodily presence of Christ in
the Eucharist*
* It was put by some branches of the Docetae that the Eucharist was re-
jected; the greater number of them appear to have celebrated it, but only
in the Protestant sense, as a mere type or emblem. — " Professant tous
le Doketisme, les Gnostiques qui conservoient la Cene n'enseignerent
jamais l'union reelle de I'homme avec la chair ou le gang du Sauvcur;
( 115 )
Thus do errors, like comets, come and go, while Truth,
like the sun, remains always stationary. Though the
grounds on which these heretics denied the Real Presence
were different, of course, from those on which it was re-
jected by Protestants fifteen hundred years after, yet was
the result they arrived at precisely the same ; — insomuch,
that could one of those Gnostic Christians now reappear
upon earth, he would find nothing in the unreal and
fio-urative Presence, maintained, by Church of England
divines, that could, in the slightest degree, offend his
most anti-corporeal notions, or prevent him from being
conscientiously a partaker of their Sacrament.
At last, therefore, I had the pleasure of finding myself
in something like good Protestant company ; and, know-
ing that to the heretic, Simon Magus, is attributed the
high honour of being the head of the whole family of
Gnostic Christians, I proceeded forthwith to inform my-
self of all such particulars as are known concerning the
parent of so worthy a progeny. Undoubtedly, wherever
the presumption of human judgment is the theme, this
Arch-Heretic has a paramount claim to be remembered,
— seeing that he pretended to understand Christianity
better than Christ himself. There are, indeed, some
curious coincidences between his career and that of the
Arch-parent of the Protestant Reformation, to which,
though at the risk, of appearing illiberal, I cannot help
adverting. One of his first steps, for instance, in setting
himself up against Christ, was to take a young female
companion to be the enlivenerof his ministry,— declaring
(with a flight beyond Luther) that he himself was the in-
carnate Power, and his mistress the incarnate Wisdom,
of God.* Another point in which it may be said that the
cet acte qu'ils celebraient en presence de leurs catechumenes et qu'ils
rangaient dans la categorie des choses ex-oteriques, n'etoit pour eux
que Vcmbleme de leur union mystique avec un etre appartenant au
Plerome." — Hist, du Qnosticisme.
To the Marcionites of the next age, who had also their Eucharist,—
though believing, wi th the Docetee, that Christ's body was but apparent,
it was urged as~an areument, both by IrensBUS and Tertullian, that in
owning the Sacrament of the body and blood, they confuted their own
opinion. Will it still, after all this, be contended that the ancient
Christians did not believe in the Reality of the Presence ?
* This ladv's name was Helena; and, among the various steps of
that descending scale of transmigration through which she was re-
presented to have passed, before she sank into the capacity of Simon s
concubine, she had had the honour, it was said, of being, in her time,
( 116 )
two Reformers resembled each other lay in the alliance
formed by both with " the nether empire ;" Simon Magus
being well known to have had demons for his familiars,*
and the famous conference between Luther and his Devil,
on the subject of the Mass, being, as is well known, one
of the most memorable events of that great Reformer's
life.f
Having satisfied myself thus far, as to the practice of
Simon, I lost no time in inquiring into the nature of his
doctrine; and it may be imagined with what pleasure, on
opening the pages of the historian, Theodoret, I discovered
the following passages : — " He (Simon Magus) ordered
those who believed in him not to attend to the Prophets,
nor to fear the threats of the Law, but to do, as free per-
sons, whatever they wished; for that they would obtain
salvation, not by Good Works, but by Grace."\ Here
was, at least, Protestantism, in its fullest perfection, — the
very principle, in fact, on which the authors of the Re-
formation first started, however their followers, and even
some of themselves, saw reason to shrink from its con-
sequences afterwards ; here was the same Antinomian
spirit which dictated the declaration of the Lutherans in
1557, that good works are not necessary to salvation ;} —
and here was the basis also of Calvin's inamissdble grace,
which renders even the worst works no obstacle to the
eternal blessedness of the Elect. So rejoiced was I to
ho less a pefgon*ge than that celebrated Helen whose beauty provoked
t.e War of Troy.
* Hence the 5.1agia Demoniaca, or Black Art, is traced to Simon as
its inventor. It is but fair, however, to say that some learned persons
liave doubted whether the Simon mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles
ivas the same with the Heresiarch of the Gnostic Sects. Among others,
the learned Frieslander, Vitringa, is of opinion that they were two dif-
ferent persons.
t It is amusiRg to observe the irritation which any allusion to this
famous colloquy is sure to produce in the temper of most Protestant
controvertisis. Unable to get rid of Luther's own statement of tlie
matter, all that they have for it is to deny stoutly that this conference
had any influence on his opinions concerning the Mass. We are, in-
deed, assured gravely by Claude and others, that Luther had both
written and spoken publicly against the sacriti.ee of the Mass two years
before any of these suggestions of the Devil were made to him.
wetmQt&s. — Haer. Fab.
§ At the conference held, by order of Charles V., at Worms. We
know that Amsdorf, a warm disciple of Luther, even went so far as
to maintain that Good IVorte were an obstacle to salvation.
( W )
light, at last, on a sample of genuine Protestantism, —
from the same source, too, where the denial of Christ's
bodily Presence originated* — that I could not help break-
ing out in the language of Ulysses, when he, at length,
found himself in sight of Ithaca, after all his wanderings, —
Ao-7ra.<r lug tzov cvJW DtoLvo/uctt.
or, as I translated it, at the moment, in my rapture, —
Hail, Faith of Protestants! — thou home
To which so long I've sigh'd to come.
To seek thee need no longer plague us,
Thou'rt found, at last, in Simon Magus.
It may be suspected, perhaps, that one of the chief in-
gredients of my satisfaction at this discovery, was the ma-
licious pleasure it gave to certain Popish feelings still stir-
ring within me, at being thus able to trace two of the most
elemental and vital doctrines of Protestantism to such a
source as Simon Magus; and I had myself, I confess, cer-
tain misgivings as to the mixture of some such leaven
with my joy. Resolving, therefore, to be generous, I re-
pressed at once all unworthy triumph, and thinking it
better even to go without Protestantism altogether, than
to come by it in this suspicious and disreputable manner,
I dismissed Simon Magus entirely from my mind, and
hastened on in quest of some more respectable creed-
master.
Never yet has there been an extreme opinion started
in this world, that there was not an opposite extreme
ready to start at the same time. Thus, to the Docetse,
who held that Christ was entirely divine, there was op-
posed a counter-heresy, that of the Ebionites, who held,
with the Protestant Unitarians, that he was merely hu-
man. It was, indeed, by dividing the double nature of
our Saviour between them, that these two sects contrived
to make out their two heresies, — the Docetse allowing
* From Simon the doctrine of the Docetse, or Phantastics, took its
origin: — " Q-uoniam Christum Dominum (says Le Grand, under the
head of Simon) non veram carnem assumpsisse, nee ejusdem cum
nostra nature esse profitebatur, ejusdem in Eucharistia prcesentiam
coniiteri nolehat.— Ignatius ap. Theodcret. Dial. 3."
( lis )
that he was God, but not man,* and the Ebionites con-
tending" that he was man, not God.
Akin to the Ebionites, f in maintaining the simple hu-
manity of the Saviour, were the Elcesaites, a sect of he-
retics, half Jews, half Christians, and (if not very much
misrepresented,) entire maniacs. As if to make up to
Christ for depriving him of his divinity, they attributed
to him a human form ninety-six miles long, and twenty-
four broad; and this measurement they considered them-
selves authorized to make by the words of St. Paul (Eph.
iii. 18,) where he exhorts Christians to " be able to com-
prehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length,
and depth, and height, 1 ' of Christ. The Holy Ghost they
supposed to be a female, and of much the same dimen-
sions as Christ ; and the learned reason they gave for this
peculiar notion of the Spirit's sex, was, that Raouah, the
term in Hebrew for the Holy Ghost, is of the feminine
gender; besides (added these reasoning Christians,) the
inconvenience of having two Fathers for Christ, is, by
this interpretation, avoided.
Notwithstanding these blasphemous absurdities, the de-
scendants of the man from whom the sect was named, con-
tinued through a long course of time to be honoured as
44 the Blessed Race;" and, so late as the Reign of Valens,
we hear of two sisters of this hallowed breed being held
in such extravagant veneration by the people, that not
only the dust from their feet, but even the spittle from
their mouths were caught up with enthusiasm by the
crowd, and preserved in boxes as a charm against all ills.
* Some of those Gnostics, who held that Christ wore only the ap-
pearance of man, got over the difficulties of the crucifixion, as they
thought, by saying, that, on the way to Mount Calvary, he changed
shapes with Simon of Cyrene, who carried the cross, and that Simon
was the person really crucified by the Jews, while Christ stood by,
invisibly, laughing at their mistake.
t It was the opinion of the Ebionites that God had given the empire
of all things to two persons, Christ and the Devil; that the Devil had
full power over the present world, and Christ over the world to come.—
FUury, Hist. Ecclesiast.
( 119 )
CHAPTER XXIV.
Scriptur.il learning of the Gnostics— their theories.— Account of the
system of the Valentinians. — Celestial Family.— Sophia — her daugh-
ter. — Birth of the Demiurge.— Bardesanes.
To those who have observed how invariably through-
out the history of Christianity, the multiplication of here-
sies, schisms, and innovations in faith has been, at all
times, in direct proportion to the diffusion of the Scrip-
tures among the people, it will afford no surprise to learn
that the Gnostic heretics, by whom such a flood of fan-
tastic errors was let loose in the first ages, were of all
the Christians of that period the most versed in Scrip-
ture, and the most laborious in quest of texts to suit their
mischievous purposes.* So industrious, indeed, are they
known to have been in this line of research, that; not-
withstanding the blasphemies and extravagances with
which their writings abounded, Erasmus mourns, as a
biblical scholar, over the loss of their works, on account
of the wonderful stores of scriptural knowledge which
they contained.
To such as hold, in direct opposition to the Catholics,
that the Sacred Volume cannot be too widely thrown
open, — who call out for the Bible, the whole Bible, and
nothing but the Bible, for all classes of readers, it may
not be uninstructive to produce some examples of the use
heretofore made of this privilege, and more particularly
to show what were the recondite truths and mysteries
which those learned searchers of the Sacred Volume, the
Gnostics, professed to find in its pages.
To enter into any detailed exposition of the various
systems which these heretics put forth, — each new sys-
tem but presenting a different modification of the same
Magian theory of the Two antagonist Principles,! — would
be a task far beyond my present purpose. The solution
* " II ne'est guerc d'opinion dans leurs riches theories qu'ils n'aient
t ache d'appuyer de quelq ues passages des Ecritures."— Uistoire du Chios-
ticisme.
t These principles they called the Two Roots: fa Pi&C oi£* 9 otnh
Z*v Kou *yt$nv, — Dial, de recta fide.
( 120 )
of the great problem of the Origin of Evil was the object
at which all these elaborate, and, in some few instances,
poetical inventions aimed; and, in most of them, the the-
ory of a Good and an Evil Principle is combined with the
notion, also Eastern, of certain spiritual existences, or
iEons, supposed to have proceeded by emanation from the
one Supreme Fountain of Being.* In the system of Va-
lentinus, however, of which I am about to give some ac-
count, this process of emanation was, under the sanction
of the doctrine of Christ's Sonship, exchanged for that of
Generation; and how prodigal was the use made by the
heresiarch of this orthodox precedent the following sketch
of his system, collected from Irenseus and other writers
on ancient heresies, will show.
He supposed the unknown and inaccessible Father to
have dwelt, from all eternity, in silence and repose, ac-
companied only by a certain Power, or Intelligence, that
served him as consort, and by which, or whom, in the
fulness of time, he produced a son and daughter, bearing
the names of Nous and Aletheia. This pair, in their turn,
gave being to another couple called Logos and Zoe, and
these, again, to a fourth pair, Anthropos and Ecclesia.
All these eight iEons he pretended to find expressly
named in the opening verses of the Gospel of St. John.
This process of spiritual procreation having been thus
carried on, couple after couple, through fifteen genera-
tions, the number of thirty spiritual beings, or iEons,
came at last to be collected, forming altogether that Ple-
roma, or Plenitude, of spiritual existence, to which St.
Paul, said these heretics, clearly alludes in the Epistle to
the Colossians, i. 19, — " For it pleased the Father that in
him all Fulness should dwell." The exact number, too,
of Thirty /Eons is, said they, manifestly figured by the
thirty years of his life during which Christ remained
concealed from the world.
Of the last born of the fifteen couples that composed
this celestial family, the female, whose name was Sophia,
or Wisdom, happened, by some accident or other, to slip
out of the Pleroma into infinite space ; and there, alone
and bewildered, would infallibly, it is supposed, have been
* This perfect JEon, existing before all things, they described aa
dwelling on some "invisible and unnameable heights." & slopxtu;
( 121 )
lost, had not Horus, who seems to have acted as a sort of
watchman of the Pleroma, gone in quest of the stray Spi-
rit, and brought her safe back again. She had, however,
during her short absence from home, given birth to a
daughter, who, though spiritual like her mother, was,
from the peculiar circumstances under which she was
born, and her exclusion from the bright region of the
Pleroma, unformed and degenerate. The fall of this
twelfth iEon (Sophia) is, they allege, marked out in the
fall of Judas, the twelfth apostle, as well as by the disease
of the woman, in Matthew ix. 20, which had lasted twelve
years, and which the power of Christ, like that of Horus,
stopped and healed.
In the mean time, Nous, — by the especial foresight of
the Father, who wished to guard against any diminution
of the JEon family by the occurrence of such another ac-
cident as had happened to the Sophia, — added a new
couple of Beings, male and female, to their community,
namely, Christ and the Holy Ghost, by whom the secu-
rity of the Pleroma, and the union of its heavenly occu-
pants, was ratified. From Christ they all learned to know
the Father, or, rather, were taught to content themselves
with knowing that he is incomprehensible ; while, by the
Holy Spirit, they were instructed how to laud this great
Being, and to dwell together in perfect unity and repose.
In testimony of their gratitude for this state of blessedness,
the iEons agreed, with the full consent of the Father,
to produce, among themselves, by joint contribution, Je-
sus, or the Saviour, — each furnishing towards the pro-
duction of this new Being whatever was most exquisite
in their own natures, so as to render him the flower of the
whole Pleroma, and hence is it (said the Valentinians,)
that St. Paul declares of Jesus, the Saviour, that "in him
dwelleth all the Fulness of the Godhead.
While within the Pleroma all this joy prevailed, in the
dismal region without, the poor offspring of Sophia (her-
self distinguished by the name of Sophia Achamoth) was
left, a formless abortion, to wander through the void.
Once, pitying her distress, Christ stretched forth his cross
to aid her ; but though his touch gave form and life, it
imparted not science, and, accordingly, still was the lone
outcast abandoned to her fate, experiencing all the mise-
ry of desire without knowledge, and left a prey to the va«
( 122 )
rious passions of sadness, fear, and anguish, which have
since become, the lot of the humanity that sprung from
her.
In this state of suffering, she, at last, turned to him
who gave her life, and that one movement of conversion
changed her whole fate. Sent graciously down by Christ
to her aid, the Saviour came attended by his angels, and
releasing her from the yoke of the passions, without alto-
gether extinguishing them, bestowed upon her at last the
long-desired gift of knowledge. Her look of joy, we are
told, at this deliverance was felt through all Chaos, and
from that first smile of Sophia Achamoth the origin of
light is to be dated. From this moment, too, began that
series of creative and pro-creative operations by which
this world and all that it contains was produced. The va-
rious offsprings, spiritual, psychic, and material, to which
Sophia and her new friends, the angels, gave birth be-
tween them, it is not easy to describe and still less so to
understand. Suffice it to say, that out of this commerce
sprung that inferior God, or Demiurge, by whom, ac-
cording to all the Gnostic sects, this visible world was
created.
Such was the fanciful account given by Valentinus of
the events that happened, as he supposed, in the world
of the Unknown Father, before the creation of this ; —
such the wild tissue of fiction which its inventor boasted
to have derived from the secret communications of Christ
himself to his apostles, and which was, strange to say,
adopted by a large portion of the Christian world, extend-
ing even into Gaul and Spain, during the second and
third centuries.*
Had we only the vague and forced applications of
Scripture by which the Valentinians supported this fan-
tastic theology to assist us in judging of the Gnostics,! as
interpreters of Holy Writ, our opinion of their ingenuity
* It was not till towards the beginning of the fifth century that the
Valentinians may be said to have dwindled away. Gregory of Nazi-
anzum, who died towards the close of the fourth, represents them as
then among the almost extinguished sects.
t "Ces allegories et ces personifications se comprenaient encore
parfaitement au second siecle de notre ere ; cependant, des que les doc-
teurs orthodoxes se furent separes distinctement des partisans de la
Gnose, ils leur en firent des objets de reproche ; et S. Ephrem ne rap-
porte qu'en tremblant le blaspheme de Barclesanes, qui csoit donner
deu filles au Saint Esprit."— Histoirc du Gnoslieisme.
( 123 )
in this line must have fallen far short of their reputation.
Of the speculations, however, of some of their other sects
enough lias been preserved, — more particularly of the
Marcionites, on the subject of the Old Testament, — to
show that, in applying their wild theories to Scripture,
they were at least sufficiently acute to be mischievous ;
and, above all, to show at what an early period an open-
ing- was made for infidelity by the adoption of that proud,
Protestant principle, the right of Private Judgment, and
the desertion, in consequence, of those only true and safe
guides, the Apostolical Traditions and the Authority of
the Church.
Through all the other Gnostic sects the same system
iEonogony prevailed, the points of difference between
their theories lying more in the details than in the prin-
ciple. Thus Bardesanes, though adopting the same no-
tion as to the succession of the iEons by syzygies or cou-
ples, yet so far changed the order of their genealogy as
to make Christ the immediate son of the Father, by that
companion whom he had, in the silence of his solitude,
created unto himself. Next after Christ, too, in the order
of being, came the sister and spouse of Christ, the Holy
Ghost ; and a union having taken place between these
spiritual personages, two daughters, we are told, named
Maio and Sabscho, were their offspring.
— «*©® ©4«*«—
CHAPTER XXV.
The Gnostics, believers in Two Gods. — The Creator and the Unknown
Father.— Their charges against the Jehovah of the Jews.— Marcion
— his Antitheses. — Apelles. — Belief in Two Saviours. — Hatred of
the Jewish Code.— Ophites. — Marriage of Jesus with Sophia Acha-
moth.
However differing from each other in the superstruc-
tures of their respective theories, there was one funda-
mental principle upon which Valentinians, Marcionites,
Basilidians, &c, all built, namely, that the God of the
Old Testament, whom they held to be the Creator of this
( 124 )
World, is a wholly different being from the God of the
New ; — the latter being-, according to them, the Unknown
and unapproachable Father, of whom Christ was the son,
and by whom, in his mercy and goodness, Christ was
sent down to earth, to repair the evils which the Demi-
urge, or Creator, had caused. In support of this bold
theory they refer to the contrast, both in spirit and pre-
cept, which is so strikingly, they allege, exhibited be-
tween the Law and the Gospel, and maintain it to be im-
possible to believe that both could come from the same
hand. While the Being revealed by the Saviour, said they,
is a God of Mercy and Love, the Jehovah, or Demiurge,
was a God ignorant, unjust, vindictive, and inconsistent.
Of the ignorance of the Jehovah, one of the instances
they give is his not knowing where Adam was, when he
sought him in the garden, nor whether he had yet eaten
of the forbidden tree. " And the Lord God called unto
Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou 1 * * * * hast
thou eaten of the tree ? w But, though most of their ar-
ticles of impeachment against the Creator are either thus
frivolous, or fanciful, there are some that have appeared
sufficiently acute and searching to be thought worthy of
revival by modern infidels. For instance, his incapacity,
they say, as a Creator, was manifestly proved by his
having so ill-performed his task in creating Man, as to
be forced to repent him of his work, and even to resolve
on destroying all living things (Genesis, vi. 6, 7.) The
advice given by him to his chosen people, on their de-
parture from Egypt, to despoil the Egyptians of their
valuables, under the pretence of borrowing them, was
the ground of another of those daring charges against the
God of the Jews, in which these heretics but anticipated
the profane scoffs of Voltaire and his followers. In ridi-
culous consistency, too, with the name K*$-*/w, or Puri-
tans, which, like some modern Protestants, a few of these
sects assumed, one of the minor faults they objected to
the Jehovah, was, his habit of swearing, and — what ap-
pears to have been, in their eves, an aggravation of the
offence— swearing by himself. The only merit, indeed,
they seemed inclined to allow to this Being was that of
candour as to his own evil-doings, — he himself having, as
they said, acknowledged through his organ, Isaiah (xly,
?,) that darkness and evil were the work of his hands*
( 125 )
It was in support of this peculiar view of the two dis-
pensations that the Gnostic chief, Marcion, exerted par-
ticularly, as I have already said, his acumen and zeal.
To show how opposite were the characters of the Jewish
and the Christian God, and how much at variance with
each other, in spirit, are the Law and the Gospel, this
heretic drew up what he called " Antitheses,"* in which
the precepts of the two codes are brought in contrast
with each other. Observe, said he, the difference ; — by the
Creator the principle of fierce retaliation is inculcated,
" eye for eye and tooth for tooth" (Exod. xxi. 24,) while
by the Saviour we are forbidden to return even an insult
(Luke vi. 29.) Jesus cured the blind (John ix. ;) — David,
on the contrary, hated and ill-treated them (2 Samuel v.
8.) The messenger of the Supreme God suffered little
children to come unto him, and blessed them (Mark x.
14. 16 ;) — the messenger of the Creator cursed them, and
gave them to be devoured by bears (2 Kings ii. 24.)
With some ingenuity, too, he cited, as confirmatory of
his doctrine, the following verse from St. Paul's Second
Epistle to the Corinthians : — " In whom the God of this
world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not,
lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the
image of God, should shine unto them." By " the God
of this world" is to be understood, said Marcion, the De-
miurge, or Creator, in contradistinction to the good God,
Gr Father of Jesus Christ, who is the God of the Chris-
tians. So dangerously strong in his favour was this pas-
sage considered, that, in order to evade its force, Ter-
tullian and Irenseus were for putting a comma after
"God," so as to separate it from the words, "of this
world," and thus strain the structure of the sentence to
the following meaning : — " Tn whom God had blinded the
minds of the unbelievers of this world."
That Christ himself meant to establish an opposition
between the old and new order of things appears clearly,
this heretic said, from his discourses against the Law and
* It would appear that this sort of antithetical comparison was a
favourite weapon with the heretics even in St. Pauls time, who
warns Timothy to avoid the dLvrftirztz <rn; -^ivfavo/ucu yy/axnux; —
** the antitheses of the falsely-named Gnosis, or Gnosticism ;" for such,
it appears to me, ought to be the translation of the words, and not, as
now, " oppositions of science falsely so called,"
11*
( IS6 )
the Prophets, and such allusions to the incompatibility ot
the two dispensations as are conveyed in those sayings,
V no man putteth wine in old bottles," and " no man can
Serve two masters." A similar allusion to the Law and
the Gospel he professed to find in the words of the Apos-
tle, " the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," which
mean clearly, he maintained, that the code of Moses left
man in death, ignorance, and vice, while the sublime re-
velation of the Christos imparts the Pneuma, or breath*
of Divine life-.
He found also, as he thought, a precedent for his anti*
thetical theory in the language held by St. Paul to the
Judaizing Christians, and in the contrast drawn by that
Apostle between the Jewish and Christian Dispensations,
as being, the former but a type, the latter the substance;
— the one transitory and peculiar, the other universal
and permanent.
When once, in religion, a departure from the right line
commences, each succeeding step but increases the de-
viation ;-=—and this was remarkably exemplified in the
course of all the successors of these ancient heresiarchs-.
Apelles, one of the disciples of Marcion, improved upon
the daring criticism of his master, and, in a work similar
to the Antitheses, to which he gave the name of Syllo-
gisms) not only brought forth again all the alleged con*
tradictions between the Old and New Testaments,
but laboured to point out such inconsistencies and contra-
rieties between different parts of the Hebrew Scriptures
themselves, as, if proved, must have considerably weak-
ened, if not entirely overturned their authority**
One of the most instructive lessons we learn, perhaps,
from history is to know that the same principles, when-
ever acted upon, w r ill be found, almost invariably, to lead
to the same consequences. Just such results as we see
here brought about by the presumption of individual judg-
ment and the rejection of authority again flowed from
the unbridled outbreak of the same restive principles at
* The very same system has "been pursTied by Voltaire, in his at*
%acks on the Old Testament (See Diction. Philosoph. &c. :) — " En effet,
{says the author of the Histoire du, Onosticis7ne) Marcion artieula con-
tre les codes et les institutions Judaiques plus d'accusations ou, si Ton
Veut, plus de blasphemes qu'il n'en est sorti de la bouchy des libres
ptn-srurs su des csprits forts du l£e siecle "
{ 127 )
the Reformation ; heresy being, in both cases, the pioneer
of infidelity, and the fancied triumphs of reason but end-
ing, at last, in the death of all faith.
Having established two Gods, these Gnostic heretics
could not be long in finding out that their system would
be incomplete and inconsistent without having also two
Saviours; — the attributes of the promised Messiah of the
Jews, being, according to their view, wholly different from
those that characterized the Son and Messenger of the
Supreme Father. The one had been announced as a
conqueror, and as the restorer of the Jewish Empire, while
the other came to bring peace and salvation to all people.*
The Saviour of the Demiurge was (according to the
Creator's prophet, Isaiah,) to be called Emmanuel, which
was not, said they, the name of Christ; and while the
former had been promised as the Son of David, the latter al-
together disclaimed the relationship. The solution which
they gave of the whole difficulty was, that the real Sa-
viour, unknown and unannounced as he had been to the
world, was not unwilling to take advantage of the hope
•of a Messiah which the Prophets of the Creator had
diffused among mankind, in order that by passing himself
off as the Deliverer expected so long, he might the more
effectually perform the great mission intrusted to him and
emancipate this world from the yoke of the Demiurge.
Leaving, therefore, the supreme Heavens of his Father,
and traversing those of the Creator, he assumed, on ap-
proaching earth, the outward semblance of a man (with-
out having recourse, said they, to the unworthy expedient
of human parentage and an incarnation) and made his ap-
pearance, for the first time, among men, in the syna-
gogue of Capernaum, in the fifteenth year of tbe reign
ofTiberius.
Entertaining notions so dark of the God of the Israelites,
and of his Code, it was but consistent in these heretics to
nold all connected with the Jewish Dispensation in the
utmost horror. To such a length was this antipathy
carried by them, that the Marcionits, who made it a rule
* The Rabbins supposed, in the same manner, that there would tre
two Messiahs : the one poor, miserable, and devoted to death ; the other,
\he restorer of the Jewish Empire. To Josephus, too, has been at-
tributed the absurdity of believing that Christ was one Messiah a«^
the Emperor Vespasian the ot£er>
( *#8 )
to fast on a Saturday, professed to do so from a mere feel-
ing- of spite to the Creator who had commanded the Jews
to hold a feast on that day ; and a branch of the Gnostics,
called Antitactse, did not hesitate to acknowledge that
they infringed the commands of the Jewish God, solely
because they were his.
But the sect which most systematically, and, consider-
ing the principle on which it was founded, most con-
sistently followed up these views of the Old Testament,
was that of the Ophites, or Serpentinians, by whom all
persons who had, since the creation of the world, been
known to have suffered for their opposition to the Creator's
will, were regarded with affection and veneration as
victims of an unjust God, and as martyrs to the hope of a
better order of things under the Supreme Being- and his
son. Cain, for instance, was revered by them with peculiar
fervour, and over the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah they
mourned most religiously. But the great object of their
worship, and that from which they derived their name,
was no other than the original Serpent himself, who, so
far from being, as the world supposes, a tempter and de-
ceiver, was, according to these dreamers, man's earliest
and best benefactor. The command given to our first
parents not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge was but a
device, said they, planned by the jealous Jehovah to de-
tach man from his protectress, the heavenly Sophia, and
debar him from all knowledge of celestial things. That
good iEon,* however, ever watchful over her charge,
resolved to baffle the Creator, and sending Ophis, one of
her Genii, in the form of a serpent, into Paradise, ordered
him to persuade Adam to break this capricious law, and
to eat of the fruit that would open to him all heavenly
knowledge. According to some of the Ophites, too, this
Serpent was no other than the Saviour himself, — as was
manifest, they said, from the life-giving effects attributed
to the brazen serpent in Numbers, xxi. 9, and the ap-
plication of that type to Jesus, in John, iii. 14.
* Among the titles given by the Valentinians to their Sophia was
that of K.yg/o;, or Lord ; and Tertullian ridicules them with, perhaps,
somewhat more facetiousness than beseems a grave Father of the
Church, on the confusion which, in this, and in other instances, they
fell into, respecting her sex: — " lta," he says, " omnem illi honorem
contulerunt fceminae puto et barbain,— ne dixerim cetera. ""—Ada..
Valentin.
( l&* )
On the same principle, and with no less daring ab*
surdity, did a branch of this sect single out Judas from
all the Apostles of our Lord, as the only one sufficiently
deep in the counsels of Heaven, to know of what infinite
importance it was that Christ should be sacrificed by the
Jews. Apprized secretly, said they, by the heavenly
Sophia that the consequence of this death would be the
downfall, for ever, of the Zabaoth, or Jewish God, he felt
himself bound to accelerate so blessed a result, and thus,
by betraying his Master, helped to save mankind.* For
this insight into the true nature of the transaction they
professed to be indebted to a Gospel written by Judas,
which had descended to their sect, and was the only one,
in their opinion, worthy of any credit, f
With respect to the ultimate result that was to arise
out of all this complex agency which the Gnostics sup-
posed to be at work in the supernatural world, the con-
summation to which the Valentinians looked forward, as
the crowning of the whole, was that finally all spiritual
creatures shall be restored to their primitive nature, and,
reaching at last the full maturity of perfection, shall as-
cend together into the Pleroma, there to dwell with the
spiritual mates allotted to them, following, in this respect,
the example of the ^Eon, Jesus himself, who shall then
resume his high station in the celestial abode, linked for
ever with his beatified bride, Sophia AehamothlJ
* These were also among the opinions held by the Cainites, or
venerators of Cain, who proceeded exactly upon the same principle,
and, in most points, agreed with the Ophites. As all of these sects
pretended to some special sources of information, the Cainites professed
to have founded their peculiar tenets upon certain revelations made
to them of those unutterable things which St. Paul had seen in his
flight, or rapt, to the Third Heayens,
t The sect of the Ophites is said to have been in existence so late as
the sixth century; and that they were numerous and flourishing in
the time of EphremSyrus, appears highly probable from the pains taken
by that Saint to denounce and curse them.
X In the Acts of the Apostle Thomas (one of the apocryphal books of
the Encratitee and other heretics,) we find an Ode expressly relating to
this celes,tial marriage.
( 130 )
CHAPTER XXVI.
Catalogue of Heresies. — The Marcosians, Melchisedecians, Montanists,
&c. — Wby noticed. — Clemens Alexa'ndrinus inclined to Gnosticism
— Tertullian, a Montanist. — St. Augustin, a Manicheean.
m
Having dwelt so long on these few branches of the
luxuriant stem of Gnosticism, I have but little claim on
the reader's patience for more than a hasty glance at
some of the other forms of this and its kindred heresies;
and the most compendious way, perhaps, will be to lay
before him a short catalogue raisonnee of a few of the
most remarkable of these sects that occur to me.*
The Marcosians, as if to outdo the Trinity, established
a sort of Quarternity in the Supreme Father, and main-
tained that the plenitude of Truth was to be found in the
Greek alphabet^ grounding their fancy upon these words
in the book of Revelation — " I am Alpha and Omega."
Their founder, Mark, too, not only asserted that God had
had several children, but spoke of these children (says
St. Iranseus) with as much confidence as if he had been
present at all their births.
The Melchisedecians, as their name imports, selected
* To those who are curious in the study of ancient heresies, I beg to
recommend a work which, though compiled by a man of but little sound-
ness of judgment, as regards his own opinions, is rich in information
and references respecting the opinions of the heretics, — the Elenchus
Htreticorum omnium of Prateolus. For a more concise account of the
differed sects, Le Grand's Historia Hceresiarcharum may be consulted ;
and those who prefer seeing the subject treated in a Protestant sense,
will rind it ably done by^the learned Ittigius, Be Haercsiarchis cevi
JJpostolici. $c.
t Allowing his fancy to be carried away by a false notion of the
Logos, or Word, the founder of the Marcosians supposed those emana-
tions from the Deity which composed the heavenly Pleroma to have
proceeded from him originally as Words, consisting each of a certain
mystic number of letters. Thus the first word which the Supreme Be-
ing pronounced was a syllable of four letters, every one of which be-
came a distinct being, and composed what Mark called the first Tetrad.
The second word was also of four letters and formed the second Tetrad,
completing that amount of spiritual entities to which the Valentinians
gave the name of the Ogdoad. The third word was often letters, and
so on,— through an infinite series of arithmetical and inconceivable
nonsense.
( 131 )
Melchiscdec as the object of their worship, holding that
he was a Dynamis, or divine power, — superior to Jesus
Christ as being mediator between God and the Angels,
whereas Christ was only mediator between God and
Man.
The Massalians, having read in Scripture that " the
Devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he
may devour," and not content with a single prowler of
this kind, imagined that the whole atmosphere was brim-
ful of devils, and that people inhaled them with the vital
air. In consequence of this idea, their whole time was
passed in spitting and blowing their noses, in the intervals
of which latter exercise, they imagined that they caught
glimpses of the Trinty.
The Pereans, with a prodigality of divine means not
very philosophical, established in their system three Fa-
thers, three Sons, and three Holy Ghosts; and it is sup-
posed to be against these sectaries that the Athanasians
of the present day are called upon to protest when they
say that " there is but one Father, not three Fathers; one
Son, not three Sons; and one Holy Ghost, not three Holy
Ghosts."
The Monlanists, a most numerous and long flourish-
ing sect, took it on the word of their founder that he was
the very Paraclete promised by the Redeemer to perfect
his new Law of the Gospel. These heretics (who are
not to be accounted any branch of the Gnostics) held that
God had already made two unsuccessful attempts to save
mankind, first through the medium of Moses and the
Prophets; and, secondly, by his- own manifestation in the
flesh. Both these plans, however, having failed, he was
at last obliged to descend by the Holy Ghost, and divide
himself, by a sort of triple inspiration, between Montanus
and two ladies of quality, of no very reputable characters,
who lived with him.* A particular branch of this sect,
the Ascites, used to place near their altar a kind of bladder,
well blown up, and dance round it, regarding the bladder
as an emblem of that spiritual inflation with which they
* Prisca and Maxirailla. Montanus boasted that to himself and his
two Prophetesses had been given the fulness of God's spirit, whereas
to St. Paul it had been but imperfectly communicated,— that Apostle
himself having confessed, (I Cor. xiii. 9) that he but ,: knew in part
and prophesied in pail.
( 132 )
themselves had been favoured by the Holy Ghost. Ano-
ther branch, the Tascodrugitce, or PattalorinchitiB^ made
it a point of devotion to put their fingers upon their noses,
or into their mouths, during prayer, professing therein,
says St. Augustin, to imitate David; — "Set a watch, O
Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. n *
(Ps. cxli. 3.)
The Manichees. — On the heresy of Manes, which be-
gan to flourish towards the end of the third century, the
departing spirit of Gnosticism seems to have let fall its
dark mantle. In imitation of Christ, the founder of the
Manichees professed to have been born of a virgin, and
also attached to himself twelve apostles, by one of whom
false Acts were fabricated, and fathered on the Apostles
of our Lord.
It may appear to some persons but an idle task thus to
rake up such blasphemous follies ; but, as showing the
wantonness with which Private Judgment has, in so
many instances, careered through Scripture, and the
"fantastic tricks before high heaven," which in these
moods, it plays, such historical examples cannot be deemed
unuseful. It should be recollected, too, that follies, how-
ever gross, become, when adopted by large portions of
the human race, matters of grave import; and there L3
hardly one of the wild, senseless systems I have here
enumerated that did not occupy the boasted reason of
mankind, whether in supporting or refuting it, through
a lapse of many centures. The Gnostic sects had each
their special Gospels, either forged or corrupted from
those of the Evangelists;! and each also adopted a pecu-
liar Canon of Scripture, rejecting (as did Luther after-
wards, in the case of the Epistle of St. James,) whatever
happened not to suit their respective purposes. The
* Another wise sect, the Discalceati, in order to show the accuracy
of their spiritual knowledge, always went without shoes,— God
having said to Moses, fExod. iii. 5) "" Put off thy shoes from off tby
feet." -
t Thus the Ebionites made use of the Hebrew Gospel of St. Mat-
thew, leaving out, however, as contrary to their belief in the simple
humanity of Christ, the three first Chapters. Marcion composed a
Gospel for himself by mutilating and altering that of St. Luke :— and
a question as to which was the most authentic, Marcion's Gospel or
St. Luke's, has long been contested among the German Rationalists.
The heretic, Talian, instead of choosing, like the rest, some one of the
four Evangelists, or some apocryphal relation, made a code out of the
f'jur Gospels, which he called the Harmony of the Gospels.
( 133 )
Marcionites, too, of whose wild system of Christianity 1
have just given some account, were able to boast not only
martyrs, but a long succession of bishops.
Nor can we wonder that light, ordinary minds should
have been whirled into these great Maelstroms of heresy,
w 7 hen, even among the Catholic Fathers themselves,
some of the ablest were sucked into the vortex. In the
Clementine Homilies, a work which, though not of that
high parentage its assumed name imports, seems ac-
knowledged to have been the production of some eminent
Christian of the second age, it is said of the Sophia of the
Gnostics, that God himself rejoices in her alliance. The
language in which Clement of Alexandria speaks of the
Gnosis breathes all the spirit of that sect;* and, so late
as the beginning of the fifth century, we find in the Odes
of the Bishop Synesius such a display of Gnostic thoughts
and phrases as renders them far more like the composi-
tions of a Valentinian or Marcosian than of a Catholic
Pastor.
Of the catching influence of some of the other great
heresies, we have yet more signal examples. The shrewd
Tertullian was induced to believe in Montanus as the Pa-
raclete promised by Christ, and, for a time, surrendered
his strong mind to the gross delusions of that impostor
and his two inspired women of quality. St. Augustin
remained attached to the sect of the Manichees till his
thirtieth year; and through him has the dark infection of
this heresy been transmitted to succeeding ages, — even
to the tinging of the sacred waters of Catholicity with its
stain. A history, indeed, of the errors and extravagances
of heresyf is but too closely connected with that of the
human mind itself, as showing what derangements even
the soundest intellects are exposed to by such extravasa-
* Tbe author of VHistoire du Gnosticisme goes so far as to assert
that, " Plus on examine les opinions des premiers siecles plus la Gno-
sis y apparaitcomme philosophie dominante."
t H«vv curiously, if not always usefully, an investigation of this
kind may be made subservient to the illustration of the Sacred text
itself, has been shown in those elaborate researches into the history
of Gnosticism with which Dr. Burton has, in his Bampton Lecture,
enriched the learned world.
In looking over this laborious work, I find a remark which I have
hazarded some pages back, p. 125, (respecting the allusion contained in
1 Tim. iii. 20. to Gnosticism,) anticipated and confirmed.
12
( 134 )
tions of the life-blood of Faith out of those regular chan-
nels in which God designed it steadily and healthily to
flow.
—••♦►►3 © ©4W'*—
CHAPTER XXVII.
Discovery, at last, of Protestantism amongr the Gnostics.— Simon Ma-
gus the author of Calvinism.— Calvmistic doctrines held by the Va-
lentinians, Basilidians, Manichaeans, &c.
Though I may have been tempted, in the preceding
chapters, by the curious nature of my subject, to indulge
in somewhat more lengthened details, respecting the
Gnostic sects, than the immediate purpose of these pages
required, it must also, I think, have been observed that,
in those apparently excursive inquiries, the main object
of my pursuit has been seldom, if for an instant, forgot^
ten. Nor, even thus far, had I any reason to complain
of a want of success in my researches; since, as furnish-
ing precedents for the free exercise of that great Pro-
testant privilege which entitles every man to interpret
the Scriptures according to his own judgment and fancy,
the worthy believers in Sophia Achamoth had come up
to the full pitch of all that my most independent tastes
could desire. Promising, too, as all this looked, it was
but the dawn of what I had yet to discover among these
heretics. In taking thus such independent and self-willed
views of Scripture, they but started on a principle com*
mon to all manner of heresies; — but I soon found that, as
models for my purpose, their example did not stop here.
In short, I discovered, to my great joy, that, in some of
their leading doctrines, the Gnostics were essentially and
radically Protestant.*
* I can answer confidently for my young friend that at the time
when this discovery presented itself to him, he was not, in the least
degree, aware that the late Bishop Tomline had, in his Refutation of
Calvinism, put forth the same curious fact;— one of the Chapters of
the Bishop's work being entitled as follows: M Opinions of earliest He-
retics bearing resemblance to Calvinism."
The fact, however, of Calvinism being but a reproduction of the
( 135 ,
My readers, no doubt, will remember the exceeding
joy and surprise with which, at the close of my long-
search after Protestantism in the first ages, I at length
stumbled on a stanch Calvinist in the person of Simon
Magus. " Not by virtuous actions (said this heretic) but
by Grace is salvation to be attained" It will also, per-
haps, be recollected that, from certain generous scruples,
I then hesitated to take advantage of such disreputable
authority; and, though long foreseeing that my Protes-
tantism must be of heretical descent, yet felt anxious, for
the honour of all parties, that it should be of some better
breed. To say the truth, too, I was not quite sure that
this glimpse of genuine Calvinism might not be, after all,
but a chance sparkle, and that I should see nothing more
of it. On passing on, however, from the Arch-heretic to
the numerous sects that sprung from him, I found this
feature of the parent faithfully reproduced in all his off-
spring ; I found that they all, in some point or other, an-
ticipated the Reformed lights of Geneva and Wittem-
burgh; and that if I had, at once, designated Simon Ma-
gus as the fount and wellspring of some of the most
boasted of the Protestant doctrines, I should have as-
serted no more than it was in my power indisputably to
prove.
The utter depravity of man's nature, — the insufficien-
cy, or rather nullity of good works towards salvation, —
the powerlessness of the human will, — the doctrines of
election, reprobation, and perseverance, — such are the
great points of what is now called " Vital Christianity,"
on which I found the very spirit of the Reformation reign-
ing throughout these sects; and could I have been con-
tent to receive my Protestantism at the hands of Chris-
tians who believed in two Gods, two Saviours, and a ma-
ternal Holy Ghost, I might from these Evangelical repo-
sitories have provided myself to my heart's content.
In each of the Gnostic sects, for instance, there was a
distinct class of persons, who alone were thought suffi-
ciently spiritual to be certain of salvation, while all
Gnostic, and other heresies is too obvious not to have struck learned
observers, long before the time of Bishop Tomline. The illustrious
Dutch divine, Lindanus, in his Dialogues on the revival of ancient
heresies, enforced ably and incontrovertible the same point ; and by
the celebrated scholar, Petavins, in the Preface prefixed by him to the
works of Epiphanius, it is no less strongly asserted.
( 136 )
others were considered reprobate and incapable of saving
themselves. These chosen few the Valentinians called
the Elect Seed, holding that their faith did not come by-
instruction, but by nature and election. " They affirm,"
says Irenaeus, " that they themselves shall be entirely
and completely saved, not by their own conduct, but be-
cause they are spiritual by nature."*
The same doctrine of Election was maintained also by
Basilides, — coupled with that other Calvinistic doctrine
whieh necessarily results from it, the slavery of the hu-
man will : — " He tells us (says St. Clement of Alexan-
dria) that faith is not the rational consent of a mind en-
dowed with free-will. The precepts then, both of the
Old and New Testament are superfluous, if any one be
saved by nature, as Valentinus maintains, and if any one
be faithful and elect by nature, as Basilides thinks." By
another also of these heresiarchs, Bardesanes, it was, in
like manner, asserted, that man can do nothing of him-
self, being a creature wholly without freedom, and im-
pelled by irresistible decrees.f
The high Calvinistic tenets of the inamissibility of
Grace and Perseverance of the Elect were maintained as
resolutely by the Valentinians as by the Synod of Dort
itself.| " Gold," said they, " though fallen in the mire,
is still gold, and loses nothing of its original lustre or na-
ture. Even so is it with the Elect; — let their conduct
be what it may, they can never forfeit their high dis-
tinctive privilege." — (Irenceus.) The natural conse-
quences of such dangerous doctrine showed themselves
then, as on its revival, at the Reformation. " Where-
* Avrov; & /uh fon 7rgt^iociQ ctx\& £i± to <pv<ru7rvevjux.rtKCVs ttvctt
t In the accounts given of the opinions of this heretie there is some
apparent inconsistency. Though he was the author (as we know
from Eusebius)ofa work against Destiny, he is yet represented as
having been an advocate for the doctrine of fatality. The truth seems
to be that he considered souls as exempt from the laws of destiny, but
looked upon all connected with bodies as under the control of fate and
the stars.
X " Such as have once received that grace by faith can never fall
from it finally or totally, notwithstanding the most enormous sins
they can commit." — Synod of Dort, Art. 5. Even the canting phraseo-
logy of our modern Saints is manifestly derived from the same source.
Thus, St. Justin tells us of some of these Elect persons who said of them,
selves that, " though they were sinners, yet if they knew Qod ) the Lord
would not impute to them Bin."
( 137 )
fore," says the same writer, " those of them who are the
most perfect do without fear all things which are forbid-
den." " I speak," says Clement of Alexandria, " of the
followers of Basilides, who lead incorrect lives, as per-
sons authorized to sin because of their perfection ;* or who
will certainly be saved by nature, even though they sin
now, because of an election founded in nature."
The Man ichseans, from whom more directly was trans-
mitted to our heretics the gloomy doctrine of the utter
depravity of man, held also many of the other precious
tenets that have descended with this bequest. " Mani-
chseus asserts (says St. Jerome) that his Elect are free
from all sin, and that they that could not sin if they would."
The same Father says, " Let us briefly reply to those
.slanderers who reproach us, by saying that it belongs to
the Manichseans to condemn the nature of man and to
take away free-will."
Here, then, had T, at last accomplished the discovery,
not only of a single sect, but of whole tribes and genera-
tions of Protestants ; — a discovery as unlooked for, and
certainly far more authentic than that of the snug nest of
Presbyterians, which Ledwich found out among the wilds
of Tipperary, in the middle of the sixth century.f Could
I have detected but a millesimal part of this high Pro-
testantism among the orthodox of the first ages, how my
heart would have rejoiced ! how my conscience would
have been soothed by the discovery ! One particle, one
drop of such true Geneva doctrine would have sent me to
my pillow in comfort. But, no — base, indeed, was the
resource to which I now found myself reduced ; and ac-
cordingly, urgent as were my motives for conversion, I
came sturdily to the resolution that, rather than exchange
the bright, golden armour of the old Catholic Saints for
this heretical brass, lackered over by modern hands, I
would submit to the worst doom my worldly fate could
have in store for me.
* Some of these sects, not unworthy forerunners of the Anabaptists,
declared that a community of goods and of wives was the just and
true happiness of their Elect : — 'H 7rxo-&v cu<rtw tati yvvdmcm 7r»yn
ths But; ttrnri JiKctiotruvH?: — which words form the commencement of
one of those curious Inscriptions, said to have been found-near Cyrene,
and first published by the learned Rationalist, Gesenius.
fTheOuldees.
12*
( 138 )
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Another search for Protestantism omong the orthodox as unsuccessful
as the former.— Fathers the very reverse of Calvinists.— Proofs. —
St. Ignatius, St. Justin, &c. — Acknowledged by Protestants them-
selves.
On returning again to the train of thought which had
thus occupied me, and reflecting how lucky I should have
accounted myself, could I have detected, among the or-
thodox of the Primitive Church, any such specimens of
Protestantism as I was here furnished with by the
Gnostics, I could not help asking myself, with some anx-
iety, was I, after all, so sure that no such specimens could
be found'? had I, in fact, sufficiently examined into the
dogmas of the early Church to have been fully satisfied
that no such opinions as I have been detailing were
among them ; or could it, indeed, be possible that the doc-
trines of election and reprobation, of the inefficacy of
good works towards salvation, the slavery of the human
will, the utter inability of man to do the will of God, — that
that all these doctrines, now dignified with the name of" vi-
tal Christianity," so far from being sanctioned by the au-
thority of the early lights of the Church,* are to be found
only in the distempered dreams of those heretical sects
against which the Church had, from the first dawn of her
existence, to combat ]
Such were now the questions I put to myself, and,
strange to say, unsuccessful as I had hitherto been in all
my exploratory journeys into the region of orthodoxy, a
last, feeble hope sprung up, that possibly, on a little far-
ther search, I might discover that the Gnostic heretics
had not kept all the Calvinism to themselves, but that
some foretaste of this sour fruit was to be found also among
the Fathers. Seldom, I will do myself the justice to say,
has any instance occurred of a chase followed up, through
* "What is that to us of the Church (says Origen) who condemn
those who maintain, that there are some persons formed by nature to
be xaved, and others formed by nature to perish?" — Oontr. Crfs.
( 139 )
all reverses, with such unbaffled ardour ; — but, alas, this
new hope was as fallacious as any of its predecessors. In-
stead of finding-, in the works of the Fathers, the least
shadow of a sanction for the horrible * notion, assumed
alike by Gnostics and Calvinists, that a select portion of
mankind has been singled out for salvation, while all the
rest of the human race has been created but to be damned,
I read in those authorized expounders of our Faith the
very reverse of all this. I found in the excellent St.
Justin the far different assurance that the seeds of the
Divine Word are implanted equally in all men, and that
all who have the will to obtain mercy from God are gift-
ed also with the power.
Still earlier did I read in the apostolic St. Ignatius,
that " if any one be pious, he is a man of God ; but if any
one be impious, he is a man of the Devil, being made so,
not by nature, but by his own will." Instead of the pic-
ture drawn of human nature by Bardesanes and Calvin,
who describe man as a chained slave of destiny, without
power or free-will, I saw him represented in the pages of
these same Fathers, a free, responsible agent, endowed
with a self-determining power towards good or ill,f and
having eternal happiness or misery dependent on his
choice. " I find that man (says Tertullian) was formed
by God with free-will, and with power over himself, ob-
serving in him no image or likeness to God more than in
* The very epithet which Calvin himself applies to his doctrine of Re-
probation : — M Decretum horribile fateor." " Is it not wonderful," says
Bishop Tomline, " that any one should ascribe to the God of all mercy
a decree which he himself confesses to be horrible?"
That the weapons of most modern heresies are but those of the old
ones refurbished, is a remark which has been more than once suggest-
ed in these pages; and, as an illustration of it, we may observe that
the very same texts now relied upon by the Calvinists, for the support
of their favourite doctrines of election and reprobation, were those
referred to, for the very same purpose, by their predecessors, the Gnos-
tics, no less than sixteen or seventeen hundred years ago. After quoting
several of these texts, (Gal. i. 15, 16 ; Rom. i. 1 ; Jerem. i. 5; Ps. li. 5,
xxii. 10, Iviii. 3,) St. Jerome says, " The Heretics who pretend that
there are different natures, and that the one is saved and that the
other perishes, maintain from these passages that no one would be
understood to be just before he did some good, or would be hated as a
sinner before some crime was committed, unless there were a different
nature of those who perish and of those who are to be saved."
t " He (St. Justin,) speaks of a self-determining power in man,
(awTijZouo-tcv,) and uses much the same kind of reasoning on the ob-
scure subject of free-will as has been fashionable with many since the
days of Arminius,"— Miner's Ifistory of the Church.
( 140 )
this respect The law also itself, which was
then imposed by God, confirmed this condition of man.
For a law would not have been imposed on a person who
had not in his power the obedience due to the law; nor
would transgression have been threatened with death, if
the contempt also of the law were not placed to the ac-
count of his free-will.
Again, instead of depreciating, — as Simon Magus, and,
after him, Luther and Calvin have done, — the efficacy of
Good Works, thus triumphantly did I find a contemporary
of the apostles extolling their high value. " Let us hasten
with cheerfulness and alacrity to perform every good
work Let us observe that all just men have
been adorned with good works. And even the Lord him-
self with good works, rejoiced. Having, therefore, his
example, let us fulfil his will; let us work the work of
righteousness with all our strength. We must ever be
ready in well doing; for from thence all things are de-
rived." — St. Clement.
But it is unnecessary to refer any farther to the nume-
rous citations I had collected to prove that, in none of the
Fathers of the Church, before the time of St. Augustin,
is any trace of those Protestant doctrines, now called
Evangelical, to be found;* but that, on the contrary,
while Simon Mag-iis and his followers were enofen-
dering that dark brood of fancies, which, in later ages,
were to be again quickened into life by Calvin and
Luther, the Catholic Church was, through the tongues
of her great orators and teachers, asserting eloquently
the Universality of the Redemption by Christ, the Free-
dom of the Human Will,f the precious efficacy of Good
Works and Repentance, and the ability of every Chris-
tian to work out his salvation. It is unnecessary, I re-
peat, to take any pains to prove this fact, as already a
host of Protestant divines, of all schools of divinity, have
conceded it.
* From a passage in the Institutes, (Lib. ii. c. 5, sect. 15,) it is evi-
dent that Calvin himself considered Augustin to be the only one of all
the ancient Fathers that could be cited as favourable to his doctrine.
f "The Soul is endowed with free-will," says Origen, "and is at li-
berty to incline either way." To prove that " man has a free-will to
believe or not to believe," St. Cyprian quotes Deuteronomy xxx. 19:
" I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore
choose life, that thou and thy seed may live."
( HI )
The Lutheran, Flacius, for instance, accuses those Fa-*
thers, who wrote soon after the Apostles, of being totally
ignorant of man's natural corruption, and other such mys-
teries since discovered in the Gospel ;* while the Calvin-
ist, Milner, pretending to find, in the first century, some
glimpses of his own doctrines, confesses, that, after that
period, these evangelical truths faded away, and were by
almost all the succeeding Fathers denied or forgotten.
Of Irenseus and St. Justin, who wrote in the second cen-
tury, he says: — "They are silent, or nearly so, on the
Election of Grace; and defend the Arminian notion of
Free-will.'" After taxing St. Clement of Alexandria
with a similar want of vital Christianity, he thus, (with
the arrogance so hereditarily characteristic of a sect of
which Simon Magus, the self-constituted rival of Christ,
was the parent,) cavalierly dismisses that learned Father:
"On the whole, this writer, learned, laborious and inge-
nious as he was, may seem to be far exceeded by many
obscure and illiterate persons at this day in true scriptural
knowledge, and in the experience of divine things."
Well might the judicious Lardner, in noticing some
similar instance of presumptuous judgment upon the Fa-
thers, with happy irony, exclaim, — " Poor, ignorant, pri-
mitive Christians, I wonder how they could find the way
to heaven. They lived near the times of Christ and his
Apostles. They highly valued and diligently read the
Holy Scriptures, and some of them wrote Commentaries
upon them; but yet, it seems, they knew little or nothing
of their religion, though they embraced and professed it
with the manifest hazard of all earthly good things, and
many of them laid down their lives rather than renounce
it. Truly, we of these times are very happy in our or-
thodoxy; but I wish that we did more excel in the virtues
which they and the Scriptures likewise, I think, recom-
mend as the distinguishing properties of a Christian."
* In the same manner Basnage, too, complains (Hist, des Eglises Ref.)
that the ancient Christians expressed themselves M maigreraent " on,
these subjects.
( 142 )
CHAPTER XXIX.
Return to Heretics. — Find Protestantism in abundance. — Novatians
Agnoetre, Donatists, &c. — Aerius, the first Presbyterian. — Accusa-
tions of Idolatry against the Catholics. — Brought forward by the
Pagans, as now by the Protestants. — Conclusion of the Chapter.
I had now taken my last, positively last, trip into the
old orthodox world in quest of Protestantism; and weary
as I was of so fruitless, so wild-goose a chase, it was
with an ill zest I again returned to the study of my he-
retics, of whom I now began .to be as much ashamed as
FalstafT was of his regiment. Having imposed upon
myself, however, the task of tracing Heresy through the
first Four Ages, I was resolved to go through with my
work ; and the same run of good luck in finding Protes-
tants, — if good luck it could be called to find them where
I did not want them, — among the heterodox and schis-
matic, still continued to attend me. Far less amusing,
however, were these later acquaintance than my old
Calvinist friends, the believers in Sophia Achamoth ; and,
whatever indulgence I might have been inclined to feel
towards Private Judgment, in her skittish moods, I now
found that to be dull, as well as heterodox, is a sort of
supererogation not to be tolerated. I shall content,
therefore, myself with singling out, from the heresies of
this period, a few of those which, from their peculiarly
Anti-Catholic doctrines, may be regarded as the chief
channels through which the elements of Protestantism
have been transmitted, in full Gnostic perfection, to mo-
dern times.
And first, to begin with the Novatians : — these secta-
ries, who flourished about the middle of the third centu-
ry, and whose founder is described by St. Cyprian as "a
deserter from the Church, a teacher of pride, and a cor-
rupter of the truth," were nevertheless, in their way, as
good Protestants as need be, seeing that they denied
stoutly to the Church the power of absolving penitent
pinners, refused peremptorily to acquiesce in her au-
( 143 )
thority and traditions, and made their appeal, as all
other heretics have done, before and since, to Reason.
The language, indeed, of St. Parian,* in addressing one
of these sectaries, may, with the simple substitution of
the words placed between brackets, be applied with
equal point by a Catholic of the present day to Protes-
tants.
" Who was it (he asks) that proposed this doctrine 1
was it Moses, or Paul, or Christ ; No ; it was Novatian
[Luther.] And who was he'? was he a man pure and
blameless, who had been lawfully ordained Bishop'? . . .
* . And what of all this, you will tell me ; — it suffices
that he has thus taught. But when did he thus teach ]
was it immediately after the passion of Christ ] No ; it
was nearly three hundred [sixteen hundred] years after
that event. But did this man follow the Prophets 1 was
he a prophet? did he raise the dead] did he work mira-
cles'? did he speak various tongues] for to establish a
new Gospel he should have done some of these things."
The Saint then stating explicitly the Protestant princi-
ple upon which these heretics proceeded, " You say, we
do not acquiesce in authority ; we make use of reason"
adds, " As to myself, who have been hitherto satisfied
with the authority and tradition of the Church, I will
not now dissent from it."
Our next sample of good Protestantism is found among
the Eunomians, a branch of the Arian heresy, and in-
fected, as was Arius himself, with Gnosticism. The
founder of this sect held also, with Valentinian, Basilides,
&c, the convenient doctrine of the Perseverance of the
Elect, maintaining that all who embraced the truth
(meaning thereby his opinions) would never fall from a
state of grace. Among these saving opinions the princi-
pal was, that Christ is not consubstantial with the Fa-
* Of this writer, who flourished in the fourth century, Mr. Clarke
[Succession of Ecclesiastical Literature] pronounces that he " was no
less pious than eloquent ;" adding, that " there are more errors of the
Romish Church, supported in a bolder way and with more direct evi
dence, in this Father, than perhaps in any other of double the bulk."
With all these " blushing" errors "thick upon him," how comes it,
let me ask, that St. Pacian was not considered as an innovator by his
contemporaries, but, on the contrary, had the reputation of being one
of the most acute and orthodox divines of his day ? The solution is
not difficult.
( 144 )
ther.* This excellent Protestant opposed himself also to
the old Catholic practice of paying reverence to relics,
and invoking the intercession of Saints; calling, as St.
Jerome tells us, by the facetious name of " Antiquarians,"
all those who attached any value to the bones and relics
of Martyrs.
The Agnoeta, or Ignorants (as from their peculiar
opinion they were called,) afford another strong exam-
ple of that sort of heir-loom of error which heretics trans*
mit to their successors, from age to age ;— our Saviour's
professed ignorance of the time of the day of Judgment
(Mark, xiii. 32) on which these sectaries founded their
cavils against his Godhead,f having also furnished to
that large class of Protestants, called Unitarians, one of
the most plausible arguments for their still more exten-
sive unbelief. And such is the cycle which errors seem
ever destined to perform, — vanishing away, from time
to time, and then darkly reappearing. The very same
arms with which the detracters of Christ's divinity as-
sailed the Catholic Doctors of other times, are but again
furbished up by the Priestleys and Belshams against the
Trinitarian Divines of our own.
The sect of the Donatists, which may be accounted ra-
ther a seism than a heresy, and which laid claim to ex-
clusive orthodoxy for Donatist churches, — saying that
* The shrewd argument, as Cave pronounces it, by which Euno-
mius supported this position is as follows:— a simple Essence, such
as is the Divine Being, cannot contain within itself two principles of
which one is begetting and the other begot ; or, — as I take to have
been his meaning, in somewhat plainer terms,— a simple Being,
like God, cannot be at once the Begetter and the Begotten.
t Among those texts which the dangerous ingenuity of Private
Judgment has contrived to wrest into evidence against the Divinity
of the Saviour, this referred to by the Agnoetce seems to have been
found by the Fathers the most difficult to unravel. Some answered
that the Son of God meant only that he had no experimental know-
ledge of the matter. St. Augustin endeavours to get rid of the diffi-
culty by the very forced explanation that by not knowing, in this pas-
sage, is meant his not making others to know. Some more modern
theologians have contented themselves with the very simple solution
that " when Christ told his apostles he did not know on what day
precisely the general judgment would take place, he very possibly did
not give any actual attention to the circumstance." — Forbes, Inst.
Theolog. I. 3, c. 21.) The distinction of the two natures, established
by the Council of Chalcedon, affords the only explanation of this and
other such difficulties. While as God, Christ knew all things ; there
was much of which, as Man, he may be supposed to have been igno-
rant.
( 145 )
11 God was in Africa, and not elsewhere," — have in so fa?
a claim to be mentioned honourably in Protestant annals
that they were the first Christians, I believe, who con-
ferred upon the Catholic Church the polite title of
"Whore of Babylon."
We next come to a worthy precursor of the Presbyte-
rians, Aerius, who, having in vain tried to be appointed
a Bishop himself, took his revenge by making war on all
Bishops whatsoever,* declaring that they had no right to
any superiority or jurisdiction over Presbyters. This
early champion of the Kirk opposed also the Catholic
practice of praying for the dead, and denied to the Church
the power of instituting Fasts, saying that every one had
a right to choose his own time of fasting. In the reason
given by him for this latter claim of independence,
namely, that it might be thus shown we were no longer
living under the Law, but under Grace, may be observed
the woi&ings of that same antipathy to the Law and its
precepts, which has been transmitted, through a regular
succession of heretics, from the Christian Gnostics down
to our modern Antinomians. My chief motive, however,
for referring to the sect of the Aerians has been for the
sake of the valuable testimony which their heresy affords
to the antiquity of the solemn Catholic rite of prayers
for the dead, — their dissent from which, in the middle of
the fourth century, could never have drawn upon them,
so decisively and generally, the brand of heresy, had not
this practice descended to those times hallowed by an-
cient recollections, and sanctioned by the traditions of
the Primitive Church.
The same remark will be found applicable to some of
the doctrines of Vigilantius, who, though belonging pro-
perly to the commencement of the Fifth Century, may
be allowed as a single exception to the rule I have im-
posed upon myself of not extending these researches be-
yond the close of the Fourth. This heretic, who holds a
high rank among the Protoplasts of Protestantism, was a
* In disappointed ambition may most frequently be found the
source of those movements by which restless spirits have agitated
mankind. Thus Marcion became a heretic on being denied Church
preferment; and, with the same feeling, Vanini wrote to the Pope
that, if his Holiness did not give him a benefice, he would, in twelve
month 4 ? from that time, overturn the Christian religion.
13
( 146 )
writer of what, in the present day, would be called smart
anti-popery pamphJets, — laughing, with some degree of
humour, at the reverence paid by Catholics to Relics,
and at the prayers of Invocation which they addressed to
their Saints. " They light up," says he, " large tapers
at mid-day, and proceed to kiss and adore a small hand-
full of dust. It must, no doubt, be a mighty service to
the Martyrs thus to light up a few bad candles for those
whom the Lamb, seated upon his throne, illuminates
with all the splendour of his majesty."*
We may here see how far from modern is the disinge-
nuous trick of charging Catholics with being adorers of
Relics and Images, in the very teeth of their own re-
peated disclaimers of such idolatry. The flat denial
given by St. Jerome to the ribald charge of Vigilant ius
was, no doubt, as little listened to by the followers of that
heretic as are similar declarations of the Catholics of our
own days by the implicit readers of the lucubrations of
the Rev. G. S. Faber and Co. — " We do not worship,"
says the Saint, " we do not adore either the relics of
Martyrs, or Angels, or Cherubim, or Seraphim,— lest we
serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed
for evermore. But we honour the relics of the Martvrs,
that our minds may be raised to Him whose Martyrs
they are. We honour them, that this honour may be re-
ferred to Him who says, 'He thatreceiveth you, receiveth
me.' (Matt x. 40.") Again, he exclaims indignantly,
" Thou madman ! who ever yet adored the Martyrs \
who ever yet fancied that a mortal was a God t"
But this unfair policy of the adversaries of the Catho-
lics is of a still more ancient date than even the times of
St. Jerome ; and, like almost every other point in the re-
lative position of the two parties, may be traced back as
far as the Apostolic age. Even then was the same spirit
of misrepresentation alive ; even then was the homage
offered to the enshrined relics of an Ignatius or a Poly-
carp denounced by scoffers at the Faith as being an idola-
trous transfer of that worship to the creature which be-
* In his answer to Vigilantius St. Jerome says—" The Bishop of
Rome, then does wrong, in offering sacrifice to God over the venera-
ble bones of those dead men Paul and Peter,— according to you, but
vile dust,— and in regarding the tombs of tluse Saints as altars."
( 147 )
longs only to the Creator. That tills was the case, in
the instance of Poly carp, appears by a Letter from the
Church of Smyrna, of which he was Bishop, giving to
the Faithful an account of all the circumstances of his
martyrdom. " It was suggested," say they, " that we
would desert our crucified Master and begin to worship
Polycarp. Foolish men! who know not that we can
never desert Christ, who died for the salvation of all
men, nor worship any other. Him we adore as the Son
of God ; but we show deserved respect to the Martyrs,
as his disciples and followers. The Centurion, therefore,
caused the body to be burnt. We then gathered his
bones, more precious than pearls and more tried than
gold, and buried them. In this place, God willing, we
will meet and celebrate with joy and gladness the birth-
day of his Martyr, as well in memory of those who have
been crowned before, as by his example to prepare and
strengthen others for the combat." — Euseb. Hist Ec-
cles. I. 4, c. 15.
Thus it is, as I have already observed, that the rela-
tive position of the two parties, — the Catholic Church on
one side, and the protesters against her doctrine on the
other, — has been, from the first, and through all ages,
virtually the same; the old truths remaining still un-
changed, and the old errors, like often detected delin-
quents, reappearing again and again, under other names,
so that, in fact, the Calvinism, Antinomianism, &c. of
modern times, are little else than aliases of the Gnosti-
cism and Manichseism of times past.
Stil] more evident might this remarkable fact be made
to appear by a yet farther inquiry into the history of past
heresies ; but, I have already sufficiently tried my read-
er's patience on this subject. Enough too has, perhaps,
been said to show what fantastic gambols the various and
ever-teeming spawn of Heresy have, at all times, played
around the venerable ark of the Church in her majestic
navigation through the great Deep of Ages ; — while in
vain attempting to sully or perplex her path, shoal after
6hoal of these monsters have descended into darkness,
leaving the one, bright, buoyant Refuge of the Faithful
to pursue unharmed, to the end of time, her Saving way,
( 148 )
CHAPTER XXX.
Brief recapitulation.— Secret out, at last.— Love affair.— Walks by the
river.—" Knowing the Lord.' 1 — Cupid and Calvin.
I had now closed my vain search after Protestantism
through the first ages; and the whole process and results
of my inquiry may, in a very few sentences, be recapitu*
lated. As Protestants profess to have restored Christi-
anity to its primitive purity, it was but natural to expect
that among primitive Christians I should find the best
Protestants. Accordingly, betaking myself, as has been
seen, to the Apostolical era of the Church, I continued
my search from thence downwards, through those four
first ages which, like the steps of Jacob's ladder nearest
heaven, may be said to have caught most directly and
freshly upon them the effusions of divine light. And
what, after all, were the fruits of this most anxious and
conscientious search 1 where, let me ask, through that
whole pure period, did I find one single Protestant —
where even the smallest germ of anti-Catholic doctrine 1
Was it in the Good Works and Weekly Fasting of Bar-
nabas and Hermas, or in the Corporal Presence and
change of the elements maintained by St. Ignatius and
St. Justin 7 Was it in the reverence paid by the former
to the oral Traditions of the Church, or the veneration
in which his ashes and those of Polycarp were held by
the Christians who immediately succeeded them ! Did
St. Ireneeus speak in the spirit of Protestantism when he
claimed for the See of Rome " Superior Headship " over
all other Churches, or when he pronounced the oblation
of the body and blood on the altar to be the Sacrifice of
the New Law 1 — But it is needless to go again, however
cursorily, through all the stages of that evidence; which
must have proved, I think, to even the least candid read-
er, that there is not a single one of those doctrines or ob-
servances, now rejected by the Protestants, as Popish,
that was not professed and practised, on the joint authori-
ty of the Scriptures and Tradition, by the whole Church
of Christ, through the first four ages,
( 149 )
While thus I found Catholicity — or, if you will, Po-
pery — among the orthodox of those times, among whom,
and among whom alone, was it that I found the doctrines
of Protestantism! Let the shade of Simon Magus, that
great father of Calvinism, stand forth and answer; — bring
the Capharnaites, with their presumptuous questioning
as to how our Lord could give us his flesh to eat ; — let
the Gnostic believers in the marriage and progeny of the
Holy Ghost bring forward their doctrines of Election,
Perseverance, Immutable Decrees, &c. ; — let the Mani-
chaeans come and assert the utter depravity of human na-
ture and the utter slavery of the human will ; — bid the
Docetae, and Marcionites produce their bodiless and blood-
less Eucharist ; — call Novatian, Aerius, Vigilantius and
the like, to protest against Tradition, Prayers for the
Dead, Invocation of Saints, and Reverence of Relics ; —
let, in short, the entire rabble of heretics and schismatics,
who, during that time, sprung up in successive array
against the Church, come and club their respective quo-
tas of error towards the work, and, I shall answer for it,
such a complete body of Protestant doctrine may be there-
from compiled as might have saved the Reformers of
Wittenberg and Geneva the whole trouble of their mis-
sion.
Such, then, being the view I had taken of this most
important matter, — a view adopted, after much delibera-
tion, and with very sincere reluctance, — it will naturally
be concluded that, however imperative might have been
my motives for turning Protestant, I had now abandoned
all thoughts of undergoing so retrograde a metamorphosis.
Marvellous, however, as it mMwell appear, this was by
no means the case. On the contrary, I felt myself still
drawn on, as by the hand of destiny ; and with a sort of
fascinated feeling like that of persons standing upon the
edge of a precipice, so long had I now been gazing into
the misty gulf of Protestantism, that it was with difficulty,
I found, I should be able to forbear the leap.
And this brings me, at last, to the explanation which I
have so long promised my readers, respecting the mo-
tives, which independently of those mentioned at the
commencement of this work, impelled me to smother, as
far as lay in my power, all religious scruples, and to re-
solve, — even should I find the features of Protestantism
13*
( 150 )
not such as would stand the light of day, — to embrace
her in the dark. Though foreseeing that my change of
faith would be, in a spiritual sense, infinitely for the
worse, I yet tried to persuade myself that it was, after
all, but fair, that, having suffered so much in the service
of a good religion, I should now try to recompense my-
self by a little of that prosperity which I saw attached to
the profession of a bad one. In short, my voyage was,
like that of Jason, after a Golden Fleece; nor was there
wanting, as will appear from the following narrative, a
fair Medea to assist me to the acquisition of it.
The house in which my father resided, on his own
small estate, in the county of , was situated in the
neighbourhood of part of the property of Lord * * * one
of our most considerable absentees, whose agent, a sort
of second-hand Lord himself, was left to manage all the
concerns of those immense possessions, as though they
were entirely his own. About two miles from the house
where we lived, lay the residence of this agent, and a
close intimacy had, for a long time, subsisted between
the two families; — that of the agent consisting but of
himself and a rather elderly maiden sister, whose fate it
was, as will be seen, to have considerable influence over
my destinies, spiritual as well as temporal. The lady
and her brother were, it need hardly be said, Protestants,
the noble owner of the property being of that class of or-
thodox persons who would have thought it unsafe to bring
any religion in contact with their pounds, shillings, and
pence, save only Protestantism.
It was a frequent boast with Miss * * that her family
had been all of this domimnt faith since the time of the
Reformation; though by some of the older neighbours, it
was, indeed, hinted, that this Protestantism of hers, if
hereditary, had been, for some generations, to their know-
ledge, in at least a latent state. That it had again broken
out, however, in Miss * *, in the most decided form, was
allowed by all ; — her case being of that species called the
Evangelical, or Vital.
This spinster had early expressed a warm interest in
my salvation, and having, like all persons of her school,
a strong taste for proselytism, would frequently propose
to me a walk, along the banks of the river, for the chari-
table purpose of conversing with me upon religious sub-
( 151 )
jects, and teaching me, as she expressed it, to " knew the
Lord " as intimately as she did. What with phrases, in-
deed, such as I have just quoted, and the exceeding pride
she at all times took in talking of her brother's noble pa-
tron, the word " Lord," in one shape or the other, was
hardly ever out of her mouth, — producing equivoques oc-
casionally, between the spiritual and the temporal, which,
though diverting, it would not be quite reverential to
mention.
Whether, in these efforts for my conversion, the lady
had, originally, any farther view than merely to gratify that
love of interference, which in Saints is so active, I will
not pretend to determine. But it was not long before I
perceived that feelings of another description had a good
deal mixed themselves with her anxiety for my spiritual
welfare ; nor could I help observing that, in proportion as
I approached the marriageable time of life, and as she
herself receded from it, a more tender tone of interest be-
gan to diffuse itself through her manner; — our walks be-
came, through her management, more frequent and pro-
longed ; and even her religious discourses came to be so
"rosed over" with sentiment, that never before were
Cupid and Calvin so undistinguishable from each other.
Though it was impossible, as I have already said, to be
blind to what all this indicated, there were yet circum-
stances, setting aside the lady's advantage in years, which
rendered me incredulous as to her having the least no-
tion of a matrimonial union between us. To become the
wife of a Papist, I had frequently heard her declare,
would be, on her part, such an act of base and wilful de-
generacy as might well make her Protestant ancestors
start from their graves with indignation ; — in addition to
which, having, as was generally believed, no fortune, ex-
cept what her brother, out of his bounty, might be dis-
posed to give her, it seemed the most improbable thing
in the world that she should run the risk of incurring his
displeasure by forming an alliance, in other respects so
injudicious, with one so ill off in worldly means as my*
self.
( 152 )
CHAPTER XXXI.
Rector of Ballymudraeget. — New form of shovel. — Tender scene in the
shrubbery. — Moment of bewilderment. — Catholic Emancipation Bill
carried. — Correspondence with Miss * *.
Thus stood my views of the matter, when, during a
visit of a few days to my family, there occurred a circum-
stance which removed all doubts, as to our fair neigh-
bour's object, and opened a vista into the future which at
once dazzled and perplexed me. I have already, in the
preceding volume, made my readers acquainted with ano-
ther of my father's neighbours, the rich Rector of Bally-
mudragget. — So closely, indeed, from my very infancy,
was the figure of this portly personage connected with
all my notions concerning matters of religion, that were
I now to be blessed with visions as beatific as those of
St. Teresa herself, the corpulent shadow of this Rector
would be sure to bustle across the light of my dreams.
His vast importance in our neighbourhood, — his eter*
nal tithes, of which I had no other notion, as a child, than
that they were a peculiar sort of delicacy on which Rec-
tors lived — his awful hat, which used to be seen moving,
like a meteor, along our roads, affrighting the poor and
exacting homage from the rich,— the select fewness of
the auditory to whom he all but soliloquized his Sunday
discourses, — every thing, in short, connected with him
concurred to give rne a strange and confused notion of
the religion of which he was minister, and to make me
look up to him as a sort of Grand Lama enshrined at Bal-
lymudragget. As I grew older, I came, of course, to un-
derstand the matter more clearly, and to know that, under
the mock title of Minister of the Gospel, the old gentle-
man was but the fortunate holder of a good sinecure of
some 2000Z. per ann., to which the father of the present
Lord * * had, some twenty years back, appointed him.
At the period of my visit, just alluded to, the Rev.
-Gentleman was rather dangerously ill, and, except as a
matter of gossipping conversation, the circumstance ex-
( 153 )
cited but little interest in the neighbourhood. A change
of hat, was, indeed, all that most persons speculated on,
in the event of his death, and it was generally acknow-
ledged that, as a variety, some new form of shovel would
be acceptable. If rumour, however, was to be credited,
our snug neighbour, the agent, had a far more substantial
interest in the good Rector's demise ; the present Lord
having, it was said, promised, on succeeding to the title,
tbat the next presentation to the living should be at his
agent's disposal.
How far this rumour was founded, I had never even
taken the trouble of asking ; but, one memorable morn-
ing, when a report, it appeared, had got abroad, that the
old Rector was so much worse as to be given over by his
physicians, Miss * * proposed to me a walk to the Par-
sonage House to make inquiries. On our arrival at the
door, we were admitted, and while the servant took up
our message, my companion and I sauntered through the
trellised conservatory which opened from the Rector's
well-furnished study into the neat lawn and shrubberies
by which his mansion was surrounded. Having never be-
fore seen the place by daylight, I happened to ejaculate,
as we walked along, " What luxury ! what comfort I"
when my fair companion, as if unable to contain her feel-
ings any longer, turned to me with a look of the most
languishing tenderness, and, laying her hand gently upon
my arm, said, " How should you like to be the master of
such a residence I"
It was impossible to misunderstand her ; — the look, the
tone of voice, the question itself spoke volumes. I saw
the power of presentation in her eyes ; felt the soft pres-
sure of induction in her hand ; and was already, in the
prospective dream of my fancy, her husband and a Rec-
tor ! That chasm which, but a few seconds before, had
seemed to yawn between Popery and the Thirty-nine
Articles, was now, by a sudden bound of my imagination,
eleared without difficulty, and, had not our conversation
been providentially interrupted, I was on the point, I
fear, of committing myself to some engagement of which,
both as man and as Christian, I should have repented.
To the significance of the few broken sentences, which,
in this short interval, fell from her, I should in no respect
do justice by merely repeating them. Brief as they were,
( «4 )
they conveyed summarily to me the important intelli-
gence, that her brother, through whose recommendation
the next incumbent was to be appointed, had placed the
benefice at her sole disposal, as a marriage portion, with
whomsoever she might find ready and worthy to share it
with her ; — that to her selection of me, as the happy oc-
cupant of both these blessings, my unlucky religion was
the whole and sole obstacle, and that it depended but
upon myself, should the Rector die to-morrow, to embrace
Protestantism, and her, and Ballymudragget together!
Though dazzled at first by this prospect, there needed, I
must say, but a moment's reflection to restore my mind
to the balance it had been on the point of losing. Put-
ting the religious part of the question wholly out of con-
sideration, I saw instantly what a mark of dishonour must
for ever attach to my name, if, in the apparently hopeless
state of the Catholic prospects, at that moment, I should
desert the fallen faith of my fathers, and for so glaring a
bribe.
From the task of explaining all this to the lady herself,
the speedy recovery of the old Rector saved me ; — but
that unlucky scene in his shrubbery had given an entirely
new character to our intercourse. The bewilderment
into which she had seen me thrown by her few pregnant
sentences was interpreted by her in the sense most fa-
vourable to her own wishes; and, without expressly re-
turning to the subject, there was in all our intercourse,
from that moment, an evident impression, on her part, of
a sort of tender understanding between us,— an impres-
sion, which, partly from an habitual unwillingness to
give pain, and partly, perhaps, from a little vanity in this
my first conquest, I took no pains to remove.
In about two or three months after this period, the
Emancipation Bill was carried ; and of some of the effects
which that great event produced upon my mind, the
reader has been already told. During the time I was em-
ployed in pursuing my course of sacred studies, I found
myself unable to afford an opportunity of paying a visit
to home; and my intercourse, therefore, with my fair
converter was, unluckily for me, confined solely to let-
ters. I call this mode of communication, in my instance,
unlucky, because the object addressed being out of sight
and at a distance, my imagination was left free to invent
( 155 )
her with all sorts of agreeable attributes, without having
its pictures brought disturbingly to the test of reality, or
its spells weakened — perhaps, broken — by the idol's voice
and presence. The consequence was, that my fair cor-
respondent still more and more brightened upon my ima-
gination, the longer she continued absent from my sight;
and in proportion as I forgot what she really was, I be-
came but the more deeply enamoured of what I fancied
her to be. How far the prospect of a rich rectory, with
its tithes, great and small, might have had a share in pro-
ducing and nurturing up this dream of sentiment, I must
leave to others to conjecture. That such rectorial reali-
ties may have helped to give substance to the vision, I
will not entirely deny ; but still in imagination, the re-
sult was not the less tender and sentimental ; and, could
I have been well secured against the casualty of ever
again seeing, or speaking with the lady of my love, there
is no saying to what extraordinary lengths of time and
ardour my passion might have persevered.
-*«wte q ©4<«—
CHAPTER XXXII.
Miss * * 's knowledge of the Fathers.— Translation of her Album from
St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory, St. Jerome.— Tender love-
poem from St. Basil.
Though I had not yet mustered up sufficient courage
to make Miss * * acquainted with the result of my searches
after Protestantism, she knew, and, of course, duly appre-
ciated the efforts I was making to render myself worthy
of her hand. Not that this evangelical lady's learning
extended so far back as to give her the least notion of the
existence of any such persons as the Fathers; — her read-
ing having chiefly lain in such New-Light paths as the
Evangelical Magazine and Morning Watch, where au-
thorities such as the Rev. E. Irving, and the reputed Eli-
as, Mr. Louis Way,* would be sure to carry the day tri-
* The honour, which this pioua gentleman has now for some time
enjoyed, of being looked upon as no less a personage than Eliaa incog.
( 156 )
umphantly against all the St. Justins and St. Ambroses of
antiquity. She was, however, courteous enough to give
me credit for having adopted the most effectual mode of
Protestantizing myself; and only hinted, now and then,
affectionately, that she thought me a long time about it.
By way of keeping her in good humour, as well with
the Fathers as with myself, I occasionally translated into
verse some of the many florid passages which occur in
these writers, and laid them, in double homage, at once,
of poetry and piety, at her feet. With these half tender,
half saintly strains, the lady was, as may be supposed, in-
expressibly delighted. To the task of copying them out,
her most delicate crow-quills were devoted ; and it was
the first time, I dare swear, in the annals of gallantry,
that the names of St. Basil, St. Gregory, and St. Jerome
were fated to shine forth in the pages of a morocco-co-
ve-red Album.
The pathetic remonstrance addressed by St. Basil to a
Fallen Virgin, (of which Fenelon has said, " On ne petit
vien voir de plus eloquent,") abounds w r ith passages to
which, though in the form of prose, such poetry as the
following does but inadequate justice.
ST. BASIL TO A FALLEN VIRGIN.
Remember now that virgin choir*
Who loved thee, lost one, as thou art,
was attributed also, I find, by some sectaries of the last century, to &
devout Captain of dragoons, whom they singled out, I know not why,
for the same mysterious distinction. In a similar manner, the Seek-
ers, by whom. St. John, the Apostle, is expected back again upon earth,
gave out, some time ago. that he was actually arrived and living re-
tired in the County of Suffolk. See Honori Reggi de Statu Ecclesia.
BritanniccB.
* In a note on the words. " Ad Christi contendit alt aria," in the
Treatise of St. Ambrose De Mysteriis, there is a description given, by
the Benedictine Editor, of some of the forms usual, in the time of that
Father, on the admission of the young neophytes into the sanctuary,
to receive the sacrament. In describing their procession from the bap-
tistery to the altar, bearing each a lighted taper in his hand, as is the
manner of the Catholic Church, to this day, he makes mention also of
the young maidens who had lately been professed and who likewise
formed a part of this innocent train:— Si qua? pueTlee virginitatem in
Paschatio festo essent professap, ipsa etiam inter hos innocentes greges
deducebantur."
Those who have been taught to consider Nuns as among the crea-
tions of modern Popery, will see, from all this, that such dedication of
young virgins to God was customary in the high and palmy age of the
( 157 )
Before the world's profane desire
Had warm'd thine eye and chill'd thy heart.
Recall their looks, so brightly calm,
Around the lighted shrine at even,*
When, mingling in the vesper psalm,
Thy spirit seem'd to sigh for heav'n.
Remember, too, the tranquil sleep,
That o'er thy lonely pillow stole,
While thou hast pray'd that God would keep
From every harm thy virgin soul.
Where is it now — that innocent
And happy time, where is it gone ?
These light repasts, where young Content
And Temperance stood smiling on;
The maiden step, the seemly dress,
In which thou went'st along, so meek;
The blush, that, at a look, or less,
Came o'er the paleness of thy cheek;
Alas! alas! that paleness too,f
That bloodless purity of brow,
More touching than the rosiest hue
On Beauty's cheek — where is it now?
From one of the Homilies of St Chrysostom, who, it ig
known, particularly distinguished himself by his severe
strictures on the gay dresses of the Constantinopolitan
ladies^ the following specimen of his style of rebuke, on
such subjects, is selected: —
Christian Church. Even the runaway nun whom Luther married might
have found some precedent for her escapade in those good old times, as
we read, in one of St. Jerome's Epistles (xciii.) of an attempt to cany
off a nun from a convent.
* St. Basil represents the virgins as dancing round the altar:—
fAWoSnTt Tcturaiv x.ctt etyytxiKtis tt^i <rov &eov /usr* txuvaw X c i uaL ^*
Such sacred dances, in imitation of those of the Hebrews, were per-
mitted, on great festivals, among the early Christians, and the Bishops
and dignified Clergy (as we are told by Scaliger) used to join in them.
t My young friend's translation here falls short, I must say, of the
beauty of the original :— ft^goTjjc koli warns tv^ow x*£wrngov wri°
X One of the persecutions raised against him was headed, we are
told, by three widows, who could not forgive (says Gibbon) a preacher
who reproached their affectation of concealing, by the ornaments of
dress, their age and ugliness."
14
( 158 )
Why come ye to the place of prayer,
AVith jewels in your braided hair?
And wherefore is the House of God
By glittering feet profanely trod,
As if, vain things, ye came to keep
Some festival, and not to weep ?
Oh! prostrate weep before that Lord
Of earth and heaven, of life and death,
Who blights the fairest with a word,
And blights the mightiest with a breath 1
Go — 'tis not thus in proud array
Such sinful souls should dare to pray-*
Vainly to anger'd Heaven ye raise
Luxurious hands where diamonds blaze;
And she who comes in 'broiderM veil
To weep her frailty, still is frail.
The same Homily also furnished me with rather a cu-
rious passage, showing how just were this Saint's notions
of female beauty, and how independent of the aid of or-
nament was its natural power, in his eyes.
"Behold," thou say'st, " my gown is plain,
My sandals are of texture rude ;
Is this like one whose heart is vain }
Like one who dresses to be woo'd?"
Deceive not thus, young maid, thy heart,!
For far more oft in simple gown
Doth Beauty play the tempter's part,
Than in brocades of rich renown;
And homeliest garb hath oft been found,
When typed and moulded to the shape, t
To deal such shafts of mischief round
As wisest men can scarce escape.
* T* K^TfjLUt ravmr; cia wra rdum SMenwunc <r± cyjijusLrx.
m yi* XfffoQf** ^>-r fajtgiMtffieci in. — Homil 8, in 1
Ep. ad Tim.
\ M» STitTA Tdtnmf i',i7TlV, GTIg l^H7 9 SiA TCVTUY /Uu£gVOC{ X.X.K-
could express muie knowingly ihe perfection of a well fitted gown.
( 159 )
Poetical as was, in general, the prose style of the
greater number of the Fathers, St. Gregory of Nazian-
zum was, I believe, the only one among those of the four
first centuries, who wrote actual Poems ; and of these I
extracted and translated a considerable portion for the
album of my fair friend. The following, however,* in
which the Saint Poet somewhat unconsciously requires,
that both the eyes and lips of his young virgins should be
motionless, is the only specimen from his works with
which I shall here trouble the reader.
Let not those eyes, whose light forbids
All love unholy, ever learn to stray,
But safe within thy snowy lids
Like timid virgins in their chambers, stay,f
Keeping their brightness to themselves all day.
Let not those lips by man be won
To breathe a thought that warms thy guileless breast,
But, like May -buds that fear the sun,
Shut up in rosy silence, ever rest, — >
Silence, that speaks the maiden's sweet thoughts bes^
From a letter of St. Jerome, in praise of the young
widow, Blesilla, — one of those patterns of female holiness,
those gems of sanctity, who formed what Prudentius calls
"the necklace of the Church,-' — the following passage is
paraphrased :*
* From his 'TttoB-waj II'JLg&erotc, ™ Precepts to Virgins.
t There is a pun here rather implied than expressed, which the fol-
lowing passage from St. Chrysostom will explain : — Kogu 7r^o<ra.yc^iui^
TCLI G@$Z\jUGC, IVCt m tWVH V7T0 S~VU) @Xl<pct£6eV 'dog iV TIVI XOvGoVK-
Xitoo ctTrocvcKHTctif ovtcd x.xi « 7rag&ivos Ji&utiVH. — Homil. 77, de Pceni-
tent. " The eye is called **g» (a young girl, J in order that, as the for-
mer is curtained up by two eyelids, as in a bedchamber, even so may
the maiden herself remain."
* The whole passage is so much more eloquent and vigorous in the
original, that I must, in justice, give it here : — " Dum spiritus nos re-
get artus, dum vitss hujus fruimur commeatu, spondeo, promitto, pol-
liceor, illam mea resonabit lingua, illi mei dedicabantur labores, illi
sudabit ingenium. Nulla erit pagina, quse non Blesillam resonet ; quo-
cunque sermonis nostri monumenta pervenerint, ilia cum meis opus-
culis peregrinabitur. Hanc mea rnente defixam legent virgines, vidua?,
mouachi, sacerdotes, et breve vitaB spatium sterna memoria compjn-
sabit nunquam in meis moritura est libris."
( ICO )
She sleeps among the pure and blest,
But here, upon her tomb, I swear,
That, while a spirit thrills this breast,
Her worth shall be remember'd there.
My tongue shall never hope to charm,
Unless it breathes Blesilla's name;
My fancy ne'er shall shine so warm,
As when it lights Blesilla's fame,
On her, where'er my pages fly,
My pages still shall life confer,
And every wise and brilliant eye
That studies me shall weep for her;
For her the widow's tears shall fall,
In sympathy of wedded love;
And her shall holy maidens call
The brightest of their saints above.
Throughout all time, the priest, the sage,
The cloister'd nun, the hermit hoary,
Shall read, and reading bless the page
That wafts Blesilla's name to glory,
One more versified extract from a Treatise of St. Basil,
and I shall then have done with Miss * * 's saintly Album,
So warm a tribute to the beauties and allurements of wo-
man, from a pen so grave as that of the eloquent Bishop
of Caesarea, may w 7 ell be found startling ; and the trans-
lation, I must say, in point of ardour, does but faint jus-
tice to the original. In fairness, however, it should be
premised, that the authenticity of the work from which
this extract is taken has been questioned, and that, among
others, the Saint's learned biographer, Hermant, doubts
its genuineness.
There shines an all-pervading grace,
A charm, diffused through every part
Of perfect woman *s form and face,
That steals, like light, into man's heart.
Her look is to his eyes a beam
Of loveliness that never sets;
Her voice is to his ear a dream
Of melody it ne'er forgets;
( 161 )
Alike in motion or repose,
Awake or slumbering 1 , Bure to win,
Her form, a vase transparent, show9
The spirit's light enshrined within.
Nor charming only when she talks,*
Her very silence speaks and shines;
Love gilds her pathway when she walks,
And lights her couch when she reclines.
Let her, in short, do what she will,
'Tis something for which man must woo her;
So powerful is that magnet still
Which draws all souls and senses to her.
^■*>t>r© ^^ ©40'*"
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Difficulties of my present position. — Lord Farnham's Protestants.—
Ballinasloe Christians. — Pious letter from Miss * *. — Suggests that I
.should go to Germany.— Resolution to take her advice.
The position in which I now found myself was not a
little embarrassing. By this unlucky correspondence, in
which I had been, for some months, engaged, and which
— being, on my side a mere indulgence of fancy, at the
least possible cost of reality or feeling, — might have gone
on thus, under the fostering influence of absence, for ever.
I had not only deluded my mature friend, Miss * *, into
the fond certainty that I was in love with her, but had even,
by dint of fine sentences, which, " like chariot-wheels,
kindled as they ran," brought myself, in some slight de-
gree, to indulge in the same delusion. While between
the lady and me, too, this ideal approximation was taking
* Kxt ov KAXoycA yuvH /aovov k-s.1 oganrdL^ etxxct x.cti und-v/tAm nan
K'JLl (ZdufrlfyvTCL, eft* TUV eVCU^O-V KZTH <TOV Ct^iVOC CLUTH? ^UTtKHV (ft/l/-
fAxyyctvivii. — Be vera Virginitate.
14*
( 162 )
place, that unlucky Protestantism which was to form the
indispensable basis of our union, seemed farther off from
me than ever; and had a vacancy occurred in the R.ec-
tory of Ballymudragget, at this moment, the unprovided
state in which it would have found me, in the important
article of religion, would have been perplexing in the ex-
treme.
In addition to the repugnance I could not but feel to
the adoption of a new creed, from the conviction forced
upon me, at every step of my inquiries upon the subject,
that in the Catholic Church alone was to be found genuine
Christianity, there had been also a ridicule, at this time,
brought upon all conversions to Protestantism, by the
utter failure of a late saintly farce, called the Second
Irish Reformation, to which, in no possible circumstances,
could 1 have had the courage to expose myself. The
wretched absurdity of that last effort of Protestant As-
cendency,— the parade made about a few scores of hungry
Papists, who consented to become Protestants on the
same terms on which Mungo consents to tell truth,
" What you give me, Massa ! — and, finally, the uncere-
monious speed with which all these Ballinasloe Chris-
tians* relapsed, laughing in their sleeves, into Popery and
Idolatry. — the whole of this grave farce will long be re-
membered, to the signalization of my Lord Farnham's
wisdom, and the no less honour and glory of the Reverend
wise-acres of the British Critic, who sounded the ram's*
horns of triumph in his pious Lordship's rear.
To the fear of, by any chance, being mistaken for one
of Lord Farnham's Protestants, I was myself, perhaps,
more peculiarly alive, from a consciousness, but too well
founded, alasi that, between the poor wretches who ex-
changed their faith for " the Friday's bacon/' and myself,
who was about to barter it for the rich rectory of Bally-
mudragget, the amount of the bribe constituted the whole
* They who are amused with such foolery cannot do better than
turn to the numbers of the British Critic for that period (towards the
latter end of 1627.) where they may trace the whole ludicrous course
of this New Light mummery from the first triumphant announcements
of the advanceof " the Reformation " through the benighted regions
of Ballinasloe, Loughrea and Ahascrah. till, "coming in contact"," as
these gentlemen express it, " with the darkness of the land in Sligo,"
its evangelical light began to wax fainter and fainter, and at last, in
the aptly-named district of Kilrnummery, expired!
( 103 )
and sole difference. Feeling, however, that I was bound,
in courtesy, to communicate to my fair correspondent
some little insight into the real state of my mind, on the
subject, I ventured to intimate to her, in one of my letters,
that the impression left on my mind by the perusal of the
Fathers was, I grieved to say, not quite so favourable to
the cause of Protestantism as, in her zeal for my speedy
conversion, she might desire ; and that a yet farther course
of time and study would be requisite, before those scruples
which I entertained, as to the adoption of a new faith,
could be removed.
The lady's answer to this was in her accustomed tex-
tuary style. After declaring pathetically that she had,
as I could well conceive, "wearied the Lord with her
words," (Malachi, ii. 17,) in my behalf, and assuring me
of her unceasing anxiety, night and day, to pluck that
11 dear firebrand " (as she tenderly and scripturally called
my soul) out of the fire, she proceeded to say that, from
the very first, she had felt serious apprehensions that in
seeking "the word of the Holy One " (Isa. v. 24) among
the Fathers, I was but trying to " gather grapes of thorns,
and figs of thistles " (Matt. vii. 16.) The only acquain-
tance she herself had ever formed among the Fathers
was at the table, as she reminded me, of my own family,
where it had been her fortune, on more than one occasion,
to meet the Reverend Father O'Toole and Father
M'Loughlin ; and the less, in her opinion, that was said of
such Fathers of the Church, the better.
After a little more of this display of learning, respect-
ing the Fathers, Miss * * continued to say that, were she
to speak her own desire, on the subject, it would be, that
I should, for a time, " separate from that filthiness of the
heathen " (Ezra, vi. 21) with which my family connexions
would, as long as I tarried in the land, be sure to compass
me; and sorely as it would afflict her, even for a brief
space, to lose me, yet so anxious was she that " the soul
of her turtle (meaning me) should not be delivered unto
the wicked" (Psalm lxxiv. 19) — so strong was her desire
to " cause mine iniquity to pass from me and clothe me with
a change of raiment " (Zech. iii. 4,) that until the arrival
of that happy moment when we were to " cleave one to
another" (Daniel, ii. 43,) she counselled earnestly that ]
should betake myself unto some "land of uprightness"
( 164 )
(Psalm cxliii. 10) — even the land of Luther, or of the
immortal Calvin, — and there, out of the reach cf the
* Mother of Harlots " (Rev. xvii. 5) continue to "nourish
myself up in the words of faith and of good doctrine " (1
Tim. iv. 6,) so as to become worthy, at last, of that " fat
portion " (Hab. i. 16) which was in store for me, and
which should be " rendered double unto me, as unto the
prisoners of hope " (Zech. x. 12.) — namely, herself and
Bally mud rag-get.
In a postscript to this piece of scriptural patch-work, the
fair writer added that, in the event of my going abroad,
she meant to commission me to procure for her a copy of
that edifying book, Luther's Table Talk ;* and would, at
the same time, recommend to me, for my own particular
edification, a pious foreign work, called Pastor Fido,f
written by one Guarini, and accounted, as she understood,
one of the best possible manuals for the instruction of
young Protestant divines in those duties which, as faith-
ful Pastors, they were to perform towards their flocks.
Whatever may be thought of this last learned sugges-
tion, the project hinted to me by my fair converter of a
visit to the hand of Luther, — the birth-place of the Re-
formation, — the boasted well-spring of the thousand and
one streams of Protestantism, — flashed like a ray of new-
born light across my fancy, " To Germany ! — yes, to
Germany will I assuredly go," exclaimed I, once more
striding Protestantly through my two-pair-stair chamber,
and marvelling that so compendious a mode of attaining
my object had never before occurred to me. In the ex-
citement of the vague hope that now opened upon me,
■added to the exhilarating prospect of foreign travel and
* This? " edifying book " of Luther contains the conversations of the
jovial Reformer over his cups, as reported by Rebenstok, one of his
most attached disciples, and published, after his death, with cruel
kindness by his friends. Great efforts were, of course, made to dis-
credit the authenticity of this work. — but without success. The zealous
Dutch divine, Voet. allowed its genuineness, and even the Reformer's
partial historian. Seckendorf, could do no more than lament the im-
prudence of the friends who published it. The ribaldry, indeed, with
which this book, in its original state, abounded, might well awaken,
in those who were solicitous about the Reformer's fame, deep regret at
its publication.
- In this mistake respecting the Pastor Fido the lady was not
singular; for. already had the" poet Guarini, from the same misap-
prehension, been placed in the rank of ecclesiastical writers by Aubert
le Mire.—** Querelles Litter aires, Tom. i,
( 165 )
adventure, the whole course of my late studies was, at
once, lost sight of and forgotten. Fathers, Councils,
Primitive Church, all receded into the back ground, and
already did I begin, in the true pride of a Reformed
spirit, to persuade myself that every thing which had
passed during the first fifteen hundred years of Chris-
tianity was but an idle dream, and that not till the year
of our Lord 1530* did the Gospel of our Lord come purely
and evangelically into operation.
■ ■•H^^ ^^ N/"** w—
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Apostolic antiquity of the Catholic doctrines allowed by Pro-
testants themselves.— Proofs : — from the writings of the Reformers,
Luther, Melancthon, &c— from later Protestants, Casaubon, Scaliger,
&c— from Socinus and Gibbon.
In the fit of delirium which, at the close of the pre-
ceding chapter, I have described, I was, in fact, but jump-
ing to a conclusion into which all thinking Protestants
who have examined fairly into the history of primitive
Christianity, and yet are satisfied with their own religion,
must deliberately have settled. By their manual, the
Book of Homilies, they are informed that, more than eight
hundred years previously to the Reformation, the whole of
Christendom lay drowned in all the darkness of Popery;
and a fair inquiry into the writers of the early Church
must have convinced them that the same religion which
existed during the eight hundred years specified in the
Homilies had also flourished through all the preceding
centuries, up to the first birth-hour of the Church. They
have, therefore, no other alternative left them than the
conclusion to which, in my delirium, I came, — that, until
the year of our Lord 1530, the Gospel of our Lord had
* The year in which the Augsburg Confession of Faith was drawn
up by Luther and Melancthon.
( ICG )
never been truly promulgated; and that, accordingly, his
Church, that only visible Church of Christ on earth, to
which God himself so solemnly declared, " Lo, I am with
you alway to the end of time/' had yet been suffered by
him, for a space of more than fifteen hundred years, to lie
drowned as the Homily tells us, in " abominable idola-
tiy," — the vice " most detested of God and most damna-
ble to man !"
The position, indeed, which it has been my chief aim
to establish in these pages, — namely, that the doctrines
and observances taught by the Catholics of the first ages
were the same as those professed and practised by the
Catholics of the present, — has long, I find, by all dis-
passionate inquirers, even among Protestants themselves,
been virtually, and, in most instances, expressly acknow-
ledged ; and had this important admission been somewhat
earlier known to me, it might have spared both my readers
and myself the infliction of some heavy reading.
It is true, that at the period of the Reformation, and for
some time after, when it was naturally an object with
those who originated such violent changes to invest them,
as far as they could, with some semblance of authority,
both the ingenuity and the effrontery of the innovators
were exerted to press the sanction of the ancient Fathers
into the service of their new enterprise. But the avowals
of some of the most eminent among the Reformers them-
selves showed how conscious they were of the hollowness
of their pretensions to such authority. The deep con-
cern with which the considerate and conscientious Me-
lancthon viewed each successive deviation from the an-
cient standard of the Faith is frequently and with much
earnestness expressed in some of his letters. Thus, in a
letter cited by Hospinian, he says — " It is not safe thus
to depart from the general opinion of the ancient Church;"*
and, in another place, " it is, in my judgment, great rash-
ness thus to spread abroad doctrines without consulting
the Primitive Church."f
From Luther's own confessions, it is well known how
long and anxiously he struggled to get over the testi-
*" Neque verd tutum est a communi sententia veteris Ecclesi© dis-
redere."
" 1 Meo quidem judicio magna est temeritas dogmata serere incon.
eulta Ecclesia veteri."
( 167 )
monies, in favour of the Real Presence, which he found
both in the text of Scripture and in the writings of the
Fathers; and with what exceeding reluctance lie, at last,
retained a doctrine which it would have been so decidedly,
as he felt, for the interests of his cause to repudiate. In
a letter to his followers at Strasbourg, he declares the
pleasure which it would afford him, could they suggest
to his mind some good grounds for denying the Real
Presence, as nothing could be of more service to him in
his designs against the Papacy.*
So admitted is this struggle of Luther's conscience,
upon the subject of the Eucharist, that Bayle deduces from
it an ingenious argument in favour of toleration, on the
ground that the most erroneous opinions may, as in this
case, be the result of the most sincere and anxious search
after truth. " Who does not know," says Bayle, " that
Luther was passionately desirous not to believe in the
Real Presence, persuading himself that so long as he
should continue in that belief, he would thereby be de-
prived of one great advantage towards the object he had
in view of destroying Popery. His wishes, however,
though founded upon what he believed to be strongly his
interest, were unavailing. He was not able, though en-
deavouring with all his might, to discover that figurative
sense which to us is so visible, in the words of Christ,
" This is my body."f
With little less throes of conscience did another Re-
former, CEcolampadius, succeed in surmounting the testi-
monies of the ancient Fathers, on the same point ; nor
was it till he had made up his mind to renounce their au-
thority altogether, — " semota, hominum auctoritate,"J —
that he could bring himself to adopt the Sacramentarian
doctrine.
Were we to collect, indeed, the different Catholic doc-
trines of which some one or other of the Reformers them-
selves acknowledged the antiquity, we should rind almost
the whole of their- own new system of belief surrendered
by them in detail. Thus the antiquity of the doctrine of
a Corporal Presence was maintained by Luther against
* Epist. ad Argcntin.
t Supplement du Commentaire Philosophiquc, CEuvres, Tom. 2.
X Lavater.
( 16S )
Calvin and Zwingli ;* and Melancthon even expressed
himself respecting that mystery " in the very strongest
terms (says Moshiem's Commentator) that the Roman
Catholics use to express the monstrous doctrine of Tran-
substantiation; adopting those remarkable words of Theo-
phylact, ' the bread was not a figure only, but was truly
changed into flesh.' "
The Centuriators of Magdeburgh admit, reluctantly and
angrily, the antiquity of the Sacrificial Offering. Prayers
for the Dead were acknowledged by Calvin to have been
an ancient and pious usage :f and the Lutherans not only
conceded this point in the Defence of the Confession of
Augsburg, but professed their dissent, in the same docu-
ment, from the opinion of the heretic Aerius, who main-
tained, in the fourth century, that Prayers for the Dead
were useless.
While Calvin rejected this usage, which he yet allow-
ed to be of high antiquity, he, on the other hand, con-
fessed, or rather boasted, that his system of Election and
Grace was wholly unknown to all the Fathers of the four
first centuries ;$ and Melancthon, with all his reverence
for the authority of the early Church, could yet, — hurried
away, like the rest, by a factious spirit of Reform, — adopt
new-fangled doctrines such as that of Imputed Justice,
wholly unknown, as he himself allowed, to the ancient
Christians. 5
By Luther the use of Images and of the sign of the
Cross, || as well as Confession and the Sacrament of Abso-
* This did not, of course, escape the observation of some among their
own followers. For instance, Dudith (who is said to have ended his own
course in Socinianism) thus asks of Beza, in one of his letters to him,
" On what dogma do those who have declared war against the Pope
agree among themselves? If you take the trouble to look over all the
articles, from the first to the last, you will not find one that is not ad-
mitted by some, and condemned by others."
| Vetustis ecclesiae scriptoribus pium esse visum suffragari proMor-
tuis.
1 Instit. Lib. 2. c. 2.— By Gomarus and other such followers of Calvin
it is even admitted that the doctrines of their master, as explained by
them, are not to be found in the Gospel.
§ See one of his Letters, (Lib. 3. Ep. 126.) in which he acknowledges
that he could rind nothing like this doctrine among the Fathers.
|| "The Father of the Reformation, Luther, (says De Starck) wrote,
that, on getting out of bed in the morning, one ought to sign oneself
with the Holy Cross."
A learned and famous Lutheran, Gerhard, has even so far racked
his wits in defence of this sign, as to produce the following strained
( icy )
lution were retained; while Melancthon, Bucer, and
other high authorities of the Reformation, acknowledged
the antiquity and importance of the Supremacy of the
Roman See. The proofs of this latter concession are nu-
merous. Thus Melancthon says : — " There is no dispute
on the superiority of the Pope, and the authority of bi-
shops ; the Pope, as well as they, may keep this authori-
ty." — Again, " The monarchy of the Pope would also
contribute much to preserve the unity of doctrine among
different nations; if other points could be settled, we
.should soon agree respecting the supremacy of the Pope.*
Bucer, too, who was invited to England by Cranmer, to
assist in forming the Anglican Church, writes thus strong-
ly on the same point : — " We confess that, in the opinion
of the ancient Fathers, the Roman Church did hold the
Primacy, having the Chair of Peter, and that her bishops
have been accounted his successors."! But the most
striking testimony on this point, because wrung from
him by the confusion he saw around him, is that of the
Reformer Capito : — " The authority of the clergy (ho
says, in a letter to Farel) is entirely abolished. All is
lost, — all is going to ruin God now makes me
feel what it is to be a Pastor, and what mischief we have
authority for its use :— " The patriarch Jacob, laying his hands upon
his grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh, cross-wise, formed, as it were,
a Cross, and so admonished them concerning the cross of Christ." —
Loci Theolog. T. 4. de Baptism.
* Resp. ad Bel.-— This opinion of Melancthon is thus referred to by
the illustrious Grotius, who was himself a strong advocate for the
Primacy of the Roman See, as the only means of preserving unity in
the general Church of Christ. " Ideo optat (Grotius) ut ea divulsio quae
everiit. et causae divulsionis tollantur. Inter eas causas non est Pri-
matus Episcopi Romani, secundum Canones, fatente Melanethone,
qui eum Primatum etiam necessarium putat ad retinendam unita-
tem." With Grotius, too, may be associated, as another authority in
favour of the Primacy of Rome, the no less illustrious name of the
philosopher Leibnitz. See his Systema Theologicum.
In a yet more recent Protestant writer than any here referred to, —
the Baron Senkenberg, Professor of Law in the Universities of Gotten-
gen and Giesen, and Aulic Counsellor, &c, under the Emperor Fran-
cis I. — we find the following strong opinion on the same subject : —
" It is right that there should be a system of government among Chris-
tians, and it is right that there should be a head to preside over it ;
and none else can be more qualified for this office than the Vicar of
Jesus Christ, the representative of the Blessed Peter through an until
terrupted succession." Method. Jurisprud, 4, do libtrtatc Ecclesix
Herman.
| Prop, ad Cotu,
15
( iw )
done to the Church by the rash judgment, the inconside*
rate vehemence with which we rejected the Pope."*
At a somewhat later period, we find the learned Pro-
testant, Casaubon, lamenting over those deviations from
the ancient faith into which the violence of the Reforma-
tion w T as, he saw, betraying its followers. In writing to
his friend Uittembogardt, who had, in a conference held
between them, endeavoured to relieve his mind from
some apprehensions on this head, he says : — " Why
should I conceal from you that this so great departure
from the faith of the ancient Church not a little disturbs-
me7"t — and, in the same letter, after remarking that, on
the subject of the Sacraments, Luther differed from the
ancients, Zuinglius from Luther, Calvin from both, and
others from Calvin, he adds, " If we go on in this way f
what will at last be the end of it!"J By Scaliger, too,
another eminent scholar, and a mature convert to Pro-
testantism, it is, without reserve, admitted that, on the
important subject of the Lord's Supper, we should in
vain endeavour to prove the Reformed Doctrine from the
Fathers. J
While these and a number of other such enlightened
Protestants have thus candidly acknowledged, — what,
indeed, only the party-spirit of sectarianism could deny,
that the weight of ancient authority is all on the side of
the Church of Rome, the Socinians, who, from being in-
dependent of such authority themselves, could the better,
of course, afford to be candid on the subject, have in ge-
neral been found to agree in the same important admis-
sion. In the well-known controversy respecting the Eu-
charist between Smalcius and Franzius, the Racovian
pastor gave up freely to his Lutheran antagonist all the
Fathers of the fourth century, as stanch Transubstan-
tiationists. And Socinus himself declared that, if the
Fathers are to be made umpires between the disputants,
the Church of Rome cannot fail to win an easy triumph.
It is by those, indeed, who are not in communion with
* Ep* ad Farel Inter Ep. Calv.
t Mene quid dissimulem heec tantadiversitasa fide veteris Ecclesice
non parum turbat?
X Si sic pergimus, quis tandem erit exitus?
§ Non est quod conemur ex Patribus hunc articulem demonstrare
de Caena. Scaligerana.
( 171 )
-either of the contending parties, that the question be-
tween them has the best chance of being disinterestedly
decided; and, on this principle, the testimony of Gibbon
may be thrown into the same scale with that of Sicinus,
— the infidel, no less than the heresiarch, having pro-
fessed his inability " to withstand the weight of historical
evidence, that, within the first four or five centuries of
Christianity, most of the leading doctrines of Popery
were already introduced, in theory and practice."*
-■ »>Q Q Q4<«<*—
CHAPTER XXXV.
French Calvinists.— The Fathers held in contempt by the English
Cal vinists.— Policy of the Church of England Divines. — Bishop Jewel.
— Dr. Waterland.
Some strenuous efforts were, it is known, made by the
French Calvinist, Claude, to prove that, on the subject of
the Eucharist, the Fathers of the first ages were in perfect
accordance with the doctrine of the Reformed Church.f
Far the greater number, however, of Calvinists, both of
France and England, held the .authority of these venera-
ble teachers in the most sovereign contempt.^ " Rely-
* Posthumous Memoirs.
f The utter failure, notwithstanding his learning and ability, of the
French controvertist, Claude, — particularly in his unlucky appeal to
the Eastern Churches against the doctrine of transubstantiation, —
left a clear field, on this subject, to M. Arnaud and his brother cham-
pions.
X One of the sources of Calvin's contempt for the Fathers is to be
found, perhaps, in his ignorance of them: — "Calvin (says Longerue)
avoit la S. Augustin et S. Thomas; mais il n'avoit pas lu les autres
Peres."
In a satire against the Calvinists, by Bishop Womack, called " The
Examination of Tilenus," the propensity of that sect to depreciate the
Fathers is thus ridiculed from the lips of one of the Examiners: —
li The man hath a competent measure of your ordinary, unsanctified
learning. But you may see he hath studied the Ancient Fathers, more
than our modern divines, such as Mr. Calvin and Mr. Perkins. And,
alas! they [the Ancient Fathers] threw away their enjoyments, — and
their lives, too, some of them,— for they knew not what. They under-
stood little or nothing of the Divine Decrees, or the power of grace
and godliness: this great light was reserved for the honour of after-,
ages."
( 172 )
ing," says the Protestant Casaubon, " on the authority
and reputation of one individual (Calvin) who was truly
a very great man, though not free from liability to er-
ror, these persons cannot endure the bare mention of the
names of those Holy Fathers whose most felicitous ser-
vices the immortal God was pleased formerly to employ :
but whom these writers wish to represent as
half heathens, unskilled in the Scriptures, silly, foolish,
stupid and impious persons. It is on this account they
attack the errors of the Papists in such a manner as very
frequently to inflict, through their sides, a mortal wound
on the ancient Church"*
The same contempt for the early Fathers, as authori-
ties in doctrine, prevailed, at the same period, among
the high Calvin istic party in England ; and the following
passage from a work of the famous Archbishop Bancroft,
(hi3 "Survey of the pretended Holy Discipline,") will
show the lengths to which this feeling of slight towards
the Church's Ancients was carried : — " In a certain col-
lege in Cambridge when it happeneth that, in their dis-
putations, the authority either of St. Augustine, or of St.
Ambrose, or of St. Jerome, or of any other of the ancient
Fathers, nay, the whole consent of them all together is
alleged ; it is rejected with very great disdain ; as, ' What
tell you me of St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, or of the rest]
I regard them not a rush.' "
While thus the Calvinists of England, in the true spi-
rit of their master, made light of and even disdained the
authority of the Fathers, a far different course of policy
led the High-Church Divines, not only to profess the
highest feelings of reverence for those writers, but to en-
deavour to extort, by all means, from their pages some
sanction for their own Protestant doctrines. With that
sort of rash vapouring which was to be expected from
the craven spirit he had already displayed, Bishop Jewel
went so far as to challenge publicly, all the Catholics in
the world to produce a single clear testimony from the
writings of the Fathers in support of any of those tenets
on which the Protestants differed from them.f But the
* Letter to Daniel Heinsius, 1610.
t The passage of the Paul's Cross sermon in which this rash chal-
lenge is enounced, may be considered in one respect, valuable, inas-
much as it acknowledges most fully the authority of that concurrent
( 173 )
only effect of this absurd vaunt was, as the Bishop's bio-
grapher, Humphrey, confesses, to "give scope to the Pa-
pists," and do injury to the cause it was meant to benefit.
For a long period, however, did this effort, on the part
of the Church of England divines, to enlist antiquity on
the side of their schism, continue, with more or less zeal,
to be carried on ; and upon all occasions do we find them
appealing, with the utmost reverence, to the Fathers, —
though having, at the same time, the avowal of the ever
candid Chilling worth before their eyes, that it was the
opposition which he himself remarked between the doc-
trines of the Fathers and those of Protestantism that
formed one of his leading motives for embracing the Ro-
mish faith; or, as he himself states his reason, " Because
the doctrine of the Church of Rome is conformable, and
the doctrine of Protestants contrary to the doctrine of the
Fathers, by the confession of Protestants themselves."
It has been thought by some that this professed defe-
rence of the divines of that period for the authority of
writers whose every page breathes rebuke to Protestant-
ism, is to be accounted for by the evident leaning towards
Popery, which the reigns of the two first Stuarts be-
trayed ; and there is no doubt that this circumstance,
combined with the aid derived from the testimony of tho
Fathers, in those contests respecting Church government
in which they were engaged with the Puritans, had con-
siderable share in moving the High-Church divines to
this otherwise so anomalous a coalition. But there was,
also, another cause, of at least equal importance, to which
this feature in the policy of the Church of England is to
be assigned.
I have before remarked that those Fathers who upheld
most strenuously the doctrine of Transubstantiation, (as
well as every other doctrine classed under the head of Po-
pish errors,) were also those who most distinguished them-
selves by maintaining the dogma of the Trinity in its
Rule of Faith,— concurrent with, and illustrative of the written Word
of God,— which the Catholics derive from their old Doctors and Coun-
cils, and from the traditions and examples of the early days of their
Church- Thus begins the challenge of the Bishop : — " If any man
alive were able to prove any of these articles, by any one clear or
plain clause or sentence, either of the Scriptures or of the old Doctors,
or of any old General Council, or by any example of the Primitive
Ciiurch," &c. &c.
15*
( 174 )
purest, most amply developed, and "bright, consum-
mate" form. To secure the aid of such witnesses, at a
time when the spirit of Anti-Trinitarianism was abroad,
in defence of a mystery, which the Reformation itself
had spared, but which seemed in danger of falling before
some of its progeny, was thought to be an acquisition well
worth some sacrifice of sincerity ; and, for the sake of pro-
fiting thus by the testimony of the Fathers on one of the
few doctrines common to both parties, the Protestant di-
vines either wilfully shut their eyes to the wide diversity,
on other points, between them, or else endeavoured to
evade these differences by glosses and explanations, of
whose utter futility and deceptiveness it is impossible
that they should not themselves have been aware.
Of this very intelligible course of policy we find a
striking exemplification in the labours of one of the most
eminent of these divines, Dr. Waterland. Hence was it,
that, in his exceeding zeal for the triumph of Trinitarian-
ism, he was induced to uphold, with so high a hand, the
authority of the Fathers, — denominating the Three first
centuries " the golden age of the Church," and even in-
clining, for the honour and glory of his idol, Athanasius, to
extend that laudatory distinction so far down as the
Fourth.* Hence, rather than risk the consequences of
the impolitic admission that allies so useful to the cause
of orthodoxy, on one great point of Christianity, were, on
every other, no better than unreformed Papists, he thought
himself bound to endeavour to prove that, on the equally
vital doctrine of the Eucharist, the opinions held by these
ancient teachers were no less in accordance with those
maintained by the divines of the Established Church.
The work, in which the learned Doctor has attempted
this task I have already had occasion to refer to, and shall
here only add that, for vague and forced interpretation,
for unavailing struggles against the stream of testimony,
and the betrayal of conscious weakness under an assumed
aspect of strength, it is, considering the acknowledged
talents and erudition of the writer, unexampled, perhaps,
in the whole annals of theological controversy.
■
* Whiston, on the other hand, whose controversial interest drew
him in quite an opposite direction, makes the power of performing
miracles stop at Athanasius, giving, as his reason, that " the forgeries
of Athanasius, by their prevalence in the Church, provoked God to
withdraw his miraculous powers!"
( 175 )
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Pretended reverence of the English divines for the Fathers unmasked,
—Dr. Whitby's attack on the Fathers: followed by Middleton.—
Early Christians proved by Middleton to have been Papists.— Re-
flections.— Departure for Hamburgh.
It was not possible that such a system of evasion and
casuistry as I have, in the last chapter, described should
be carried on much longer ; and the first great breach
made in it was by the honest, however mistaken, Dr.
Whitby, in his work " concerning the interpretation of
Scripture after the manner of the Fathers." In this
Dissertation, which the translator of Mosheim* repre-
sents as " the forerunner of the many remarkable at-
tempts that were afterwards made to deliver the right of
private judgment, in matters of religion, from the re-
straints of human authority" the evidence of the Fa-
thers on points of faith, is set aside with a degree of un-
ceremonious freedom, which even the advocate for the
right of private judgment, just cited, allows to have been
unwise and unsafe.
But, rash as it was, this assault by Whitby was but
the forerunner of outbreaks still rasher. The same
Church which had produced a Jewel and a Waterland
was sure, in the natural course of reaction, to produce
also a Middleton. Impatient of such hollow pretensions
* The usual consequences of such bold speculations were, indeed,
exemplified in the case of Whitby himself, who, in a posthumous
work entitled, " the Last Thoughts of Dr. Whitby," thus expresses
himself respecting the Trinity : — " An exact scrutiny into things doth
often produce conviction that those things which we once judged to
be right were, after a more diligent inquiry into the truth, found to be
wrong ; and truly I am not ashamed to say, this is my case. For
when I wrote my Commentaries on the New Testament, I went on
(too hastily, I own) in the common beaten road of other reputed or-
thodox divines, conceiving that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in
one complex notion, were one and the same God, by virtue of the
same individual essence communicated from the Father. This con-
fused notion, I am now fully convinced, by the arguments I have
offered here, and in the second part of my reply to Dr. Waterland, to
be a thing; impossible and full of gross absurdities and contradictions.*
( w* )
to the sanction of antiquity, nor much scrupling, in his
attacks upon what he deemed to be Superstition, how
far Religion herself might be endangered by the onset,
this divine brushed away boldly all that film of mock
reverence which his brethren had been so long weaving
round the memory of the Fathers, and at once held up
these ancient teachers not only as Papists, in doctrine,
hut, (his main object being, at all risks, to villify Roman
Catholicism,*) as Papists of the most superstitious and
drivelling description.
In utter defiance, too, of the deductions which might
be drawn from such a theory, Middleton hesitated not to
reverse the ordinary view of the subject, and by assert-
ing the first ages of the Church to have been the least
pure, risked, heedless of all consequences,! the startling
conclusion, that the fountain of the Christian's faith was
most corrupt near its source. In this reckless paradox,
however, was conveyed an undesigned tribute to the an-
tiquity of the Catholic Church; since identifying, as he
did, all superstition and error with Popery, it is plain
that, in pronouncing the first ages of Christianity to have
Leen the least pure, he had no other meaning in his
mind than that they were the most Popish.
* This object he by no means scruples to avow. " Whereas Popish
Christianity (he says) which possesses much the largest share of tha
Christian world would be undone at once if the authority of the Primi-
tive Fathers and primitive miracles should be rejected in common by
all Christians." — Remarks on Observations, &cc. Vol.2.
t Some of those consequences are thus significantly shadowed out
by one of his opponents : — The author must either renounce his argu*
ment or the Gospel.— Those who believe the Fathers of the second and
third centuries to be more credulous than those of the fourth, may
fancy the Apostles, to have been the most eredulous of them all.— if
the world were so credulous immediately after the Apostles, it will not
be easy to comprehend how it should have been much less so in the
Apostles' times: — the author's charge, indeed, stops with the Fathers,
but his arguments do not stop there ; for if the Fathers can be proved
to have been forgers of lies, the consequences may go a great way."
A friend and correspondent of Middleton, the Archdeacon of Car-
lisle, seems to have been fully as little aware, or as reckless, of the
obvious consequences of depreciating these early teachers as was
Middleton himself. " Christianity (says this wise divine) was in its
infancy, at most in its childhood, when these men wrote, and, there-
fore, it is no wonder that they spake as children, that they understood
as children, that they thought as children." In another place, the
Archdeacon, under an evident feeling of impatience at the testimony
which Viae Fathers bear to the truth of what are called Popish doc-
trines, exclaims — " Let me not be censured, though I should be so
bold as to say, that we should have understood the Scriptures much
better, if we had not had the writings of the Fathers!"
( 1" )
How unreservedly, indeed, Dr. Middleton let out the
whole of that inconvenient fact, which it had been so long
the policy of his brother divines to keep veiled in the back-
ground, — namely, that primitive Christianity was neither
more nor less than modern Popery, — will appear from
some Remarks of his upon a Catechism professing to be
by a Protestant, and giving an account of the chief arti-
ticles of belief of the early Church: — " We may now see
(he says) from a clear deduction of facts and circum-
stances, as they are set forth in this piece, how directly
the authority of the Primitive Fathers tends to lead us
into the Church of Rome; we see it ascribing a supreme
and independent power to the Church, asserting that
Popish Sacraments, a propitiatory sacrifice of Christ's
body and blood, both for the living and the dead ; Prayers
for the Dead, to procure some relief and improvement of
their intermediate state; Exorcisms, Chrisms, Conse-
crated Oil, Sign of the Cross, Penances, Confessions to a
Priest, Absolutions, Relics of Saints, &c. &c."
This rash sally from the sanctuary,* whatever mis-
chiefs it may have otherwise occasioned, by giving the
signal, as it were from the church-top, to all sceptics and
infidels for a general assault on the earliest witnesses of
the Christian faith was, in one respect, at least, produc-
tive of good by putting to shame all that pretended defe-
rence to the Fathers which it had been so long the po-
licy of the Divines of the Church of England to adopt.
Their manifest object in this was to produce an impres-
sion, among all who knew no better, that those ancient
teachers of Christianity lent a sanction to the Reformed
doctrines. By the imprudence of Middleton, however,
this instrument of delusion was rendered powerless in
their hands ;f for, however calumnious and false were, on
* " Dr. Middleton (says the Norrisian Professor, Hey,) does not
seem to fall far short of Mr. Hume on Miracles." 1
t In the following passage from one of the Lectures of Dr. Hey, we
find the motives of both the parties, in these two opposite views of the
Fathers pretty fairly stated: — '.' Those who defend the pretensions of
the fathers do it through fear^ lest, if they should appear indefensible,
the cause of Christianity should suffer by the condemnation of its early
propagators. Those who accuse the Fathers of superstition, weak-
ness, or falsehood, consider what indelible disgrace they shall bring
upon Popery by showing the impurity of the source from which all its
distinguishing doctrines have taken their rise."
With respect to the accusations, here mentioned, against the Fa
( l78 )
most points, his representations of the Fathers, he had, at
least, abundantly succeeded in showing that they were,
in faith and practice, any thing but Protestants; and that,
therefore, to refer to them as authorities for Protestant
doctrines was a deception which, once well exposed, was
not likely to be often, or with any success, repeated.
Accordingly, we have seen that, from that period, —
with the exception now and then of a Daubeny, or a Fa-
ber, who still resort to the old battered armoury for wea-
pons, — the Church of England divines have, for a most
prudent reserve, left the Fathers, as auxiliaries, undis-
turbed on their shelves: and the few departures from this
safe policy* into which they have been tempted must
serve, more and more, to confirm them in the advised-
ness of their rule. The late Bishop Tomline, for instance,
in calling in the aid of the Fathers against the Cal-
vinists, only showed how totally misapplied and peri-
lous was their alliance in such a cause ; — the very same
testimonies which he thus brings to bear against the te-
nets of modern Calvinism being no less fatally efficient
against the doctrines of the first Reformers, as well as
thers, of" superstition, weakness, &c." they are the same that have,
for centuries, been brought forward against the religion which glories
in having followed them; and the best answer to all such attacks on
the early teachers of Christianity is to be found in those wise and sar-
castic words which I have once before quoted from Lardner : — " Poor
ignorant Primitive Christians. I wonder how tbey could find the way
to heaven. They lived near the times of Christ and his Apostles. They
highly rallied and diligently read the Holy Scriptures, and some of them
wrote. Commentaries upon them; but yet it seems they knew little or nothing
of their religion! Truly, we of these times are very happy in
our orthodoxy.'*
* The two very interesting works of Bishop Kaye, relating to St.
Justin and Tertullian, are hardly to be accounted" exceptions to the
system of policy here noticed, as this accomplished scholar has ap-
proached his subject far more in the spirit of a Dilettante than a di-
vine, and treated the Fathers very much as he might the classics of a
barbarous age, making their works subservient to the illustration of
the peculiar customs and opinions of their times. How coolly his
lordship deals with some matters of opinion and evidence which, in
the days of the chivalry of controversy, would have made a thousand
folios leap from their shelves, will appear by the following specimen.
Referring to the opinions of Tertullian respecting the Eucharist, the
Bishop says that this Father " speaks of feeding on the fatness of the
Lord's body, that is, on the Eucharist,' and ' of our flesh feeding on the
body and blood of Christ, in order that our soul may be fattened of
God.' These are, it must be allowed, (adds the Bishop,) strong ex-
pressions." Strong, indeed !— though forming, as his lordship ought to
know, but one of a countless host of such proofs, that Tertullian'? doe-
trine of"' feeding on the Lord's body." really and corporeally, was the
■universal belief of the early Christian Church."
( 179 )
against the predominant spirit of the articles of his ovvri
Church.*
I have now satisfactorily, I trust, — though far more at
length than I had, at starting, anticipated, — succeeded in
establishing the very material position which I had laid
down, namely, that the antiquity claimed by the Catho-
lics for the doctrines of their Church, or, in other words r
the identity which they maintain exists between their
system of belief and that which the first teachers of Chris-
tianity promulgated, has been long, by Protestants them-
selves, reluctantly, but still most effectively, admitted.
On finding thus remarkably corroborated the conclu-
sion to which I myself had come, that what is now called
Popery was, in fact, the whole and sole faith of the pri-
meval Christians, I know not whether the prevalent feel-
ing in my mind was that of triumph or mortification. In
the first place, had these important concessions been
somewhat earlier known to me, I might have been spared
all those pains of parturition which the first volume of thia
work so unnecessarily cost me; — my situation now being
something like that of the famous Cardinal Sfondrata, of
whose book on Predestination it was said, " que s'il avoit
commence son ouvrage par la seconde partie, il se seroit
ejKirgne la peine de composer le premiere." In the se-
cond place, I had, I confess, flattered myself, as do the
self-taught in all lines of study, that the results which I
had thus lighted upon were of my own peculiar and ex-
clusive finding out. The discovery, therefore, that so
many others had arrived at exactly the same point before
me, gave to my task a degree of triteness for which I was
by no means prepared, and not a little dimmed, in my
eyes, the glory of my research and scholarship.
On a review of the whole, however, the effect of all
these inquiries upon my mind was still farther to stimu-
late me to the prosecution of the pursuit in which I had
* " The Evangelical Clergy (says the Bishop's able opponent, Mr.
Scott) do not contend that our Articles, Liturgy, &c , are in every tit-
tle exactly coincident with the sentiments of Calvin ; but that they con-
tain, in a more unexceptionable form, all that they deem essential in his
doctrine."
Dr. Maclaine, too, (the translator of Mosheim) says of the Ultra-Cal-
vinist proceedings of the Synod of Dort, " Its decisions, in point of
doctrine, were looked upon by many, and not without reason, as
agreeable to the tenor of the Book of Articles established by law in
the Church of England."
( isu )
Ei j*ed ; my strong persuasion being that there must,
after all, be something more in the nature of the Protes-
tant Church, than I was yet aware of, to enable her to
hold her ground, even so long as a constituent portion of
the Christian world, notwithstanding her thus acknow-
ledged defection from most of the doctrines of the early
Church, as well as of that mark of the great Father of
Heresies which I have shown to be branded on her brow.
" In Germany," exclaimed I to myself, " if any where, I
shall be sure to find her in her first, genuine shape, with
all the associations, too, which such antiquity as it is in
her power to boast, combined with the influences of the
1 Genius Loci,' are able to shed around her birth-place."
After taking leave, therefore, in an affectionate letter,
of my fair Calvinistic friend, and promising faithfully to
attend to her commissions respecting Luther's Table
Talk and the Pastor Fido. I set out from Dublin on the
twentieth of August, and staying but a few days in Lon-
don, on my way, arrived at Hamburgh about the end of
the month.
©@
CHAPTER XXXVII,
Hamburgh.— Hagedorn.— Klopstock and his wife Mela. — Miss Anna
Maria a Schurman, and her lover Labadie. — Account of them for
the Tract Society.— Forwarded through the hands of Miss * *.
From a traveller starting upon a tour so purely theo-
logical in its object, the reader will hardly be prepared
to expect much of that variety of observation which, in
general, constitutes the chief charm of the wayfarer's
narrative. With the neighbourhood of Hamburgh I found
some names and recollections associated in which, as a
lover of poetry, and of literature in general, I could not
but feel interested. How far this city has cause to take
pride for having been the birth-place of Hagedorn, my
entire ignorance of that Anacreontic poet's writings for-
bade me to judge ; but of the merits of Klopstock the va-
( 181 )
rious translations of his writings had enabled me to form
some notion, and I accordingly visited the tomb of this
famous poet with all due reverence; — though less, I am
ashamed to confess, on account of his renowned Messiah,
than for the sake of the memory of his devoted and inte-
resting wife, Meta.*
In the mood of mind, however, into whieh my late
studies had thrown me, neither poets, nor the fair idols
of poets, had much chance of occupying any great por-
tion of my attention ; and the only little romance I could
get up, illustrative of the neighbourhood of Hamburgh,
had for its heroine the learned and once famed Miss
Anna Maria a Schurman, a lady celebrated by the pens
of Vossius, Beverovicius, and other erudite Dutchmen,
but to whose fame and name I was now for the first time
introduced.
The history of this fair Savante, from the time when
she first undertook (as one of her biographers expresses
it) " to be, like Luther and Calvin, the architect of heT
own faith," till she became the disciple and, it is said,
wife of the notorious Labadie, would afford, in a small
compass, as edifying a picture of the effects of the Re-
formation as could be desired. Her lover Labadie who,
at last, rose to the " bad eminence " of being at the head
of a sect of Protestant fanatics, was one of those preach-
ers of piety and practicers of profligacy, who knew so
well and artfully how to avail themselves of the excited
fancies of the female Reformers of that period ; and one
of the precious doctrines which he is known to have held
was that " God could and would deceive^ and that he
had sometimes actually done so !"
A member of tire Catholic Church till his fortieth year,
Labadie saw what a field was opened by the outbreak of
the Reformation, as well for the license of private
passion as for the freaks of private opinion ; and, having
first distinguished himself in his own church by endea-
* The wide difference there is between the selfish sensibility of a
man of genius and the warm, devoted, unconscious generosity of a
natural-hearted woman, is most characteristically exemplified in the
respective characters of Klopstock and his wife, as exhibited in tlteir
Memoirs.
The grave of this poet is at Ottenson, a smart village near Hamburgh,
where he lies buried in the church-yard, beneath a large linden- tree
under which he used to sit.
16
( 182 )
vouring to corrupt a whole convent full of nuns, he
abandoned the Catholic faith and turned Calvinist
minister. The popularity which, in this new charac-
ter, he attained,* as a preacher, was almost without
example; and the contrast known to exist between
the spiritual doctrines which he taught, and the very
anti-spiritual tenour of his private life was not without
its attraction for many of his fair disciples. Of the man-
ner in which he still ventured to instruct his female fol-
lowers, an instance is given by Bayle, in rather an amu-
sing anecdote, which only a philosopher like Bayle could
well venture to tell ; — and, after a career, not unlike
that of some of the old Gnostic heresiarchs, this worthy
off-shoot of the Reformation died at Altona, in the arms
of his last love, the pious and learned Anna Maria a
Schurman, in the year 1674.
Out of all this,-— difficult as were some of the particu-
lars to manage, — I contrived during my leisure moments
at Hamburgh, to make out a plausible, and even decent
little religious story which I despatched to Miss * *, as
the first fruits of my foreign inquiries after Protestantism,
begging her to present it to the Religious Tract Society,
of which I knew her to be one of the most distinguished
members.
The account given of her own early life by Miss Schur-
man, in a work published at Altona, furnished me fortu-
nately with some anecdotes, respecting her infant days,
which could not be otherwise than interesting to the
evangelical world. We find recorded here, for instance,
the first young stirrings of that piety which shone forth,
in afler days, so signally, under the auspices of the "John
of Jesus/' as her lover, Jean Labadie, styled himself;
and, among other things, we are told of the effect pro-
duced upon her, when she was a little girl not quite four
years old, by the first Question and Answer in the Hei-
delburgh Catechism, which filled her, she assures us,
with "so deep a sense of love for Christ, that not all the
* " It is remarkable enough (says Mosheim's Commentator) that al-
most all the sectaries of anenthusiastical turn were desirous of enter-
ing into communion with Labadie. The Brownists offered him their
Church at Middleburgh, when he was suspended by the French synod
from his episcopal functions. The Quakers sent their two leading
members, Robert Barclay and George Keith to Amsterdam, while he
resided there, to examine his doctrine."— Vol 5.
( 183 )
years passed, since then, had been able to efface the
lively recollection of that moment." She then informs
us* of her early taste for making babies, in wax, as well
as the singular propensity which she had, through life,
for eating spiders.
From this interesting part of her history I was enabled
to trace her to the full meridian of her fame, when, mis-
tress of twelve languages, and writing fluently in four of
them, — besides being a proficient in music, painting,
sculpture and engraving, — she had the Spanheims, the
Heinsiuses, the Vossiuses at her feet, and returned
learned answers to the Epistolic Questions of the Dutch
Doctor, Beverovicius.* The literary memoirs, indeed,
of this lady might be made to include within their range
some of the names of most celebrity on both sides of that
controversy to which the doctrines of the famous Synod
of Dort gave rise. Thus with Rivetus, the bitter oppo-
nent of Grotius, she held a long correspondence of which
the object was to discuss the often agitated question
" Whether it was proper to instruct a Christian woman
in the Belles Lettres;" — and it is not difficult, through
all the civility of her Calvinist correspondent, to perceive
that this Champion of " Immutable Decrees," could he
have had his own will, would not suffer one of the sex
to soar an inch above the work-bag.
While such homage was paid to her fame by this high-
flying Calvinist, she boasted also some warm admirers in
the Arminian line ; of which number was Gaspar Bar-
Iobus, the celebrated Latin poet, whom the Gomarists
ejected from all his employs in the Church for no other
reason than that he refused to believe, with the Synod
of Dort, that God had created the greater portion of man-
kind for the sole purpose of damning them. Among the
works of this Arminian poet we find some verses to our
erudite heroine, the concluding lines of which may be
* Pectus meura tam magnogaudio atqueintimo amoris Christi sen
su fuisse perfusum, ut omnessubsequentes anni istius momenti vivam
memoriam delere potuerint nunquam. — ^vkKh^ia^ seu melioris partis
Eleclio,
* Epistol. Qusest. Roterod. 1644. There is also among the " Re-
sponsa Doctorum," published by the same writer in 1G39, an Answer
by Miss Schurman. To the illustrious list of her correspondents the
names of Salmasius and Huygens are to be added.
( 134 )
cited as a specimen of the free and rakish style in which
learned ladies used at that period, to be addressed by
learned gentlemen : —
Scribimus hsec loquimurque tibi.
Sin minus ilia placent, et si magis oscula vester
Sexus amat, nos ilia domi debere putabis,*
The change from this brilliant, but, as Miss Schurman
afterwards deemed it, vain-glorious period of her life,f to
that stage when religion and Labadie took possession of
her whole soul, opened a field for Tract eloquence of
which I was not backward, as may be supposed, in avail-
ing myself; — that saintly time, when instead of bending
over the profane pages of a Horace or a Virgil, she had
no longer eyes or thoughts but for such Evangelical
writings as the " Herald of King Jesus,*' " the Scng-
Royal of Jesus," and other such lucubrations of her spi-
ritual lover; and when looking back with shame to the
praises which the learned world had heaped upon her,
she solemnly, and in the presence of the Sun, as she tells
us, cast away and renounced all such objects of her for-
mer vanity .|
* Heroic— As a Reformed Minister did not think it unbecoming of
him to write these gay verges, one who is neither a minister, nor Re-
formed, may, I presume, venture thus to paraphrase them:
Now, perhaps, having taxed my poetical art,
To indite you this erudite letter,
You've enough of the sex, after all, in your heart,
To like a few kisses much better.
And in sooth, my dear Anne, if you're pretty as wise,
I might offer the gifts you prefer,
But that Barbara tells me, with love in her eyes,
I must keep all my kisses for her.
It should be mentioned, for the better understanding of these verses,
that Barlsus had never seen his fair correspondent, and that Barbara,
whom he here mentions, was his wife. Thermal fate of this poor poet
was melancholv. Whether from the triumph of the Gomarists, or the
loss of all his Church preferment, his mind became at last so deranged
that he fancied himself to be made of butter, and lived in constant fear
of approaching the tire.
t There is an edition of her works, in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and
French. Lugd. Batav. Elzevir. 1648.
X li Eoque omnio mea scripta, quee ejusmodi turpem animi mei laxi-
tatem vel mundanum et vanum isium genium redolent, hoc loco, do-
( 185 )
In this state of pious self-abasement did Miss Schur-
man pass the remainder of her days; — fully recompensed,
however, for her sacrifice of the Beveroviciuses and Ri-
vetuses by those inward illuminations of the spirit and
familiar communings with God by which she supposed
herself to be favoured ; and having received, as has been
already mentioned, the last sigh of her Apostle, Labadie,
at Altona, she departed this life, not long after him, in
the year 1678.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Blasphemous doctrine of Labadie— held also by Luther, Beza, fee-
Reflections. — Choice of University. — Gottingen :— Introduced to
Professor Scratchenbach. — Commence a course of lectures on Pro-
testantism.
Though it was my fate thus, at the very entrance into
my new field of research, to be encountered by so strong
a specimen of the effects of German Protestantism, I
must beg the reader to rest assured that it was by no
means my wish to attach undue importance upon any
such insulated instances of fanaticism or absurdity, well
knowing that there never existed a system of doctrine so
pure as that, among those professing it, some such ex-
amples of un worthiness might not be found.
The only point fairly to be considered is, whether
there were not, deep-laid in the very principles of the Refor-
mation itself, the seeds of all such extravagancies as we
have been just now considering ; and whether the pro-
fligate and but too successful apostleship of Labadie and
the fantastic devotion of his disciple, Anna Maria, were
not as naturally and necessarily the result of that un-
bounded license which was accorded to private judgment,
ram Sole (ad exemplum candidissimi Patrum Augustini) retracto ; nee
amplius pro meis agnosco : simulque omnia aliorum scripta et potis-
sirnum Carmini Panegyrica que vanae gloria atque istee impietatis
charactere notata sunt, tanquam a mea conditione ac professione
aliena procul a me removeo ac rejicio."
16*
( 186 )
&t the time of the Reformation, as the similar excesses of
most of the early heretics were the fruits of the same
principle equally by them asserted and put in practice.
And here, I must beg especial attention to a fact,
which, to most readers, will, I have no doubt, appear as
startling and almost incredible as it did, when first I hap-
pened to light on it, in the course of my studies, to my-
self. The blasphemous doctrine held by Labadie, that
" God could and would deceive mankind, and that he
had sometimes actually done so," is one that with diffi-
culty we can conceive admissible, for a single instant,
into any sane mind. But, once admitted, there is no ex-
tent of demoralization and corruption to which, under
the shelter of God's own example, it might not be made
to lend a sanction. What then will be said, by those
who now, for the first time, learn the fact that such was
the impious doctrine of most of the leading Reformers,
and that it is in short asserted, in express terms, by Lu-
ther himself!
In order to get rid of some of the difficulties which be-
set the doctrine of Election and Reprobation, and recon-
cile those passages of God's Word wherein the wicked
are invited to repentance with those predestinating de-
crees by which he has already fixed and sealed their
doom, the first Reformers found it necessary to adopt the
monstrous supposition that, in such addresses to the re-
probate, the Almighty is not serious, nor, in thus inviting
them to repentance and amendment, really means what
he says! — " He speaks thus," said they, " by his revealed
will, but, by his secret will, he wills the contrary,"— or,
as Beza expounds it, u God occasionally conceals some-
thing which is contrary to that which he manifests in
his Word!"*
But it is by Luther himself that this gross blasphemy
has been brought forward in its most prominent and most
revolting relief. In commenting on Gen. xxii. and on
the conduct of God, a3 there represented, towards Abra-
* Celari interdura a Deo aliquid ei quod in verbo patefacit repug-
nans.— Resp. ad Act. Colloq. Mompel— The Calvinist Piscator, too,
equally charges God with this rick : " Deum interdum verbo signifi
care velle, quod revera non vult, aut nolle quod revera vult." {Disp.
Contra Schafm.) " In his word God sometimes intimates that he wills
what he really does not will, or that he does not will , what he in re-
alty does will."
( 187 )
ham, (which is one of the instances given of this alleged
opposition between the revealed and the secret will 01
the Almighty) Luther thus w r rites : —
" Such a species of falsehood as this is salutary to us.
Happy indeed shall we be if we can learn this art from
God. He attempts and proposes the work of another,
that he may be able to accomplish his own. By our af-
fliction he seeks his own sport and our salvation. Thus
God said to Abraham, ' Slay thy son,' &c. — How 1 In
tantalizing, pretending and mocking.* He likewise occa-
sionally feigns, as though he would depart far away from
us and kill us. Which of us believes that this is all a
pretence? Yet with God this is only sport, and (were we
permitted thus to speak) it is a falsehood.] It is a real
death which all of us have to suffer. But God does not
act seriously, according to his own showing or represen-
tation. It is dissimulation, and he is only trying whe-
ther we be willing to lose present things and life itself
for his account. "
It may be questioned whether, among all the blasphe-
mies that have ever been written or spoken, any thing
more revoltingly blasphemous than this has ever yet
fallen from the tongue or pen.
Had I at the moment, indeed, when I was setting out
from Hamburgh, been shown but the few unhallowed
sentences just cited, they would have spared me, I think,
all the trouble and disappointment of my journey ; being
sufficient, of themselves, to have convinced me (though
nothing more of this Reformer's doctrines had been
known to me,) that, from a mind capable of forming such
notions of a Divine Being as are there expressed, nothing
worthy of supplanting a particle of the ancient faith could
* Deua dixit ad Abrahamum, ' Oceide Filium, &c.'— Qiuomodo? Lu*
dendo, simulando, ridendo.
t Atque apud Deura est lusus, et, si liceret ita dicere, mendacium est.
—We find a similar view taken of God's conduct, respecting Isaac, by
a Rationalist or rather infidel writer of the 17th century, who founds
upon it a theory for the solution of such mysterious doctrines as Ori-
ginal Sin, Imputed Righteousness, &c— All these mysteries, he main-
tains, are but a sort of legal fictions, by which God, who prefers such
sinuous and mystic ways to the direct and natural modes of proceed-
ing among mankind, chooses to work out his designs. — " NolnitDeus
opus hoc perficere directo illo et naturali ordine, quo pleraeque res ge-
runtur apud homines, sed per sinuosos mysteriorum anfractus, &c." —
Prceadamitw, sive Erercitatio, ftc.
( 188 )
have emanated. I was, at that time, however, but slightly
versed in the theological part of the history of the Refor-
mation, and regarding the doctrine, therefore, of Labadie
as his own peculiar blasphemy, without any sanction for
such impious trifling from the chief leaders of his sect, I
dismissed the circumstance wholly from my thoughts,
and, with renewed zeal of research, prepared cheerfully
and even sanguinely for my projected tour.
After some deliberation with myself as to the particu-
lar university, which it might be most advisable for me
to select as the first scene of my studies, I at last decided
for the school memorable in theological annals, as having
produced a Mosheim, a Michaelis, an Ammon, an Ei-
chorn, and proceeded direct, without any delay in the
course of my route, to Gottingen.
It would have been my wish, — and I had made a pro-
mise, to that effect, to Miss * *, — to put my mind in a
sort of training, for the reception of Luther's Gospel, by
a pilgrimage to some of those places which are now con-
nected immortally with his name. The cell at Eifurth,
for instance, where as an humble Augustinian monk, he,
in whom the Vatican was so soon to meet with a counter
thunderer, used to solace his lonely intervals of devotion
with the flute; — the picturesque ruins of the Wartburg,
under whose roof he lay concealed from his enemies, and
to which, (in the modesty of his heart, comparing him-
self to St. John,) he gave the appellation of " his Patmos ;"
— these and a few more such romantic visits would, I
felt, have wound me up to the true Lutheran pitch, and
besides have furnished me with materials for such a let-
ter to Miss * * as would have delighted that future Rec-
toress of Ballymudragget prodigiously.
It was while at the Wartburg, by the way, and while
occupied with his famous translation of the New Testa-
ment, that Luther was frequently, as he thought, visited
by the Devil, in the shape of a large blue-bottle fly. His
well-known visiter, however, did not succeed in giving
much interpretation to his biblical toils; for Luther,
*' who (to use the words of an intelligent traveller) knew
Satan in all his disguises, rebuked him manfully, and at
length, losing all patience, as the concealed devil still
huzzed round his pen, started up, and, exclaiming ■ Willst
( 189 )
du dann nicht ruhig bleiben! 1 hurled his huge ink-bottle
at the Prince of Darkness."*
To have visited all the scenes of such characteristic
displays would have been, I was well aware, the most
edifying mode of preparation I could adopt for the nearer
acquaintance I was about to form with the doctrines of
the chief actor in them. As it was, however, the only
initiatory regimen to which I doomed myself was the
swallowing down a cup of that famous beer of Eimbeek,
which was counted so orthodox a drink among the Ger-
man Reformers, and over flagons of which most of their
new plan of Christianity was settled. That the great
Luther himself was no foe to this beverage,f appears
from the fact, which is on record, that the good citizens
of Eimbeek sent him, in token of their admiration, a pre-
sent of some of their best; and " as he could not (says my
authority) go to Eimbeek himself, to give the words of
salvation for the liquor of earthly life, he is said to have
despatched thither two of his most faithful and thirsty
disciples."J
It must not be thought, from the tone of banter in
which I here speak of the state of my mind, on leaving
Hamburgh, that the turn of my views at that period, par-
took in any degree of the same mocking character. We
are often apt, in referring to scenes or feelings that are past,
to invest them with a colouring not originally their own,
but reflected back upon them from the experience which
* Russell's Germany.
t To this beer he no doubt alluded, m his famous sermon at Wit*
tenburg, when, in impressing upon his hearers that it was not by
force of hands the reform of abuses could be effected, he told them that
words had hitherto done every thing for them : — " It was words (said
be) that, while I myself lay quietly asleep, or was drinking, perhaps,
my beer with my dear Melancthon and Amsdorf, — it was words that
were, in the meantime, shaking the Papacy as no Prince or Emperor
ever could have done."
In this same sermon it was that he so far outraged all respect both
for his cause and his followers as to threaten that, if his advice was
not followed, he would, without hesitation, retract his whole course,
unsay every thing he had written or taught, and leave them to them-
selves ; — adding, in a taunting manner, " This I tell you once for all."
— " Non dubitabo funem reducere, et omnium quae aut scripsi aut do-
cui palinodiam canere, et a vobis desciscere ; hoc vobis dictum esto."
Serrru) docens abusus non manibus, S^c.
% The traveller (Williams) from whom I have taken this extract,
after stating that a barrel of this beer was, in the fifteenth century, a
present for a Prince, adds that if it was at all like the specimens of it
which still remain, the Princes must have had " execrable tastes and
strong stomachs."
( 190 )
we have since acquired. It is true, with my present
knowledge of the life and the doctrines of Luther, I
should find it nearly as difficult to speak with seriousness
of his pretended Reformation as it would be to discuss
gravely the claims to apostleship of a Montanus or a
Manes. But it was under a far different aspect I con-
sidered the subject at the time of which I have been
speaking. My limited acquaintance with the details of
that strange jumble of creeds, out of which the multifa-
rious monster, called Protestantism, arose, left me, to a
great extent, ignorant of the system of faith I was about
to espouse; while the anxiety I felt to discover in it such
points alone as might in some degree justify my intended
apostacy, made me comparatively blind to all that was
of an opposite description, and even lulled, for the time,
my natural sense of the ridiculous into inaction.
On arriving at Gottingen, I lost not a moment in
availing myself of a few letters of introduction, with
which the private tutor of a young friend of mine, who
had passed some months at this university, had furnished
me. It was through the means of one of these letters, I
became acquainted with the chief Professor of Theology,
M. Scratchenback, nor was it possible for me to have
lighted upon an introduction more fortunate for the im-
mediate object of my visit. Besides the great and ac-
knowledged eminence of this gentleman, in the walk of
learning where my inquiries now lay, there were also
circumstances, at that moment, connected with the actual
state of religion in Germany, which led him to regard
with more than ordinary interest the particular object I
had at heart in applying to him. Neither to him, in-
deed, nor to any one else had I made a secret of my in-
tention to become a member of the Protestant Church, in
case, on examining its doctrines, I should find them to be
such as I could conscientiously approve.
In consequence of a long-laid train of causes, which I
shall attempt briefly, in the course of these pages, to
trace, there had been, of late, numerous instances of de-
fection to the Roman Catholic faith, from both the Lu-
theran and the Reformed branches of the Protestant
Church of Germany. These desertions, which seemed to
some persons to be but the commencement of a current
setting in towards Popery, had a good deal broker*
( 191 )
that spell of indifferentism which had, for some time,
hung round the theologians of the University. Fearful
only of excesses in belief, the faintest prospect of any
return to that faith of which their forefathers had taken
such pains to strip themselves, even to nudity, struck
alarm through all their ranks ; nor could the example,
which it was now expected I was about to present, of a
conversion in the opposite direction, have offered itself at
any apter or more propitious moment.
With the utmost promptitude did my new friend, the
Professor, undertake to put me fully in possession not
only of the present state and prospects of Protestantism
in Germany, but also of that purifying process by which,
as he said, the whole system of Christianity had, in the
course of the last half century, been lightened of much
of its ancient alloy, so as to assume, at last, that compara-
tively pure and rational form, in which it is adopted by
most enlightened German Protestants at the present
day.
As I was well inclined to be an humble and unreply-
ing hearer, my course of instruction took the shape rather
of lecture than conversation ; and my rule being, to note
down, after each of our sittings, such portions of the
Professor's discourse as had remained in my memory, I
was enabled thus to preserve pretty accurately their sub-
stance, — allowing, of course, for such casual and, I trust,
slight errors as, from my previous unacquaintance with
the subject, may have stolen into my reports.
+►►©©©«««♦«
CHAPTER XXXIX.
First Lecture of Professor Scratchenbach. — Heathen philosophers. —
Rationalism among the Heretics. — Marcion, Arius, Nestorius, &c.
all Rationalists.— -The Dark Ages. — Revival of Learning.— Luther.
It was, as I well recollect, on the eighteenth of
September, that my course of Lectures under the learned
Professor Scratchenbach commenced. As I was, at the
( 192 )
time, rather indisposed, (no doubt, in consequence of th#
Lutheran beer on which I had ventured) the Professor
offered, most condescendingly, to lecture me at my own
odgings — a small apartment which I had, looking upon
the canal; where, on the day above mentioned, taking
his seat gravely opposite me, my instructor thus began: —
"Between the Priest and the Philosopher, — or, in
other words, between the assertor of the authority of
Faith, and the vindicator of the free exercise of Reason,
— there must, at all times, and under all systems of be-
lief, exist a principle of variance, which can only be pre-
vented from coming to an open and a violent struggle,
either by the interposition of the strong arm of the State
in favour of one of the two parties, or by some mutual
compromise or coalition among themselves. For the first
of these modes of establishing religious peace, the alliance
between Church and State has been always found the
most efficacious contrivance. The plan of conniving at,
and compounding with established superstitions was the
policy adopted by the sages of Greece and Rome; and
the practicability of a coalition between Theology and
Philosophy is exemplified in the present state of German
Protestantism.
" The exclusion of Reason from all interference in
religious concerns was as strongly inculcated, it must be
confessed, by the great philosophers of antiquity as it has
ever been, at any period, even by Papists themselves. In
fact, an implicit and uninquiring acquiescence in the re-
ligious rites handed down from their forefathers was re-
garded by them as one of the most exemplary duties of
all good citizens. 4 When religion is in question,' says
Cicero, 4 I do not consider what is the doctrine thereon of
Zeno, Clean thes, or Chrysippus, but what the Chief Pontiffs
Coruncanus, Scipio, and Scasvola say of it From
you, w T ho are a philosopher,. I am not unwilling to re-
ceive reasons for my faith ; but to our ancestors I trust
implicitly, without receiving any reason at alL'*
* Cum de religione agitur T. Coruncanum, P. Scipionem, P. Scaevo-
lam Pontifices maximos, non Zenonem, aut Cleanthem, aut Chrysip-
pum sequor . . . . A te philosopho rationem aeeipere debeo religionis:
majoribus autem nostris, etiam nulla ratione reddita, credere. Cic.
Lib. 3. de Nat. Deorum.
Another heathen philosopher thus speaks, in the same spirit : " When
( 193 )
"So little, indeed, of a Rationalist, in our German
sense, was Cicero, that, though acknowledging the art of
augury to be a fiction and cheat, we find him denouncing,
as worthy of the severest punishments, all who opposed or
disturbed the popular belief in that rite.*
" In a state of things where a Cicero could speak thus,
or, still stronger, where an Epicuru3 went, for decorum's
sake, to prayers,f neither the Latin nor Greek priests had
much to dread from philosophers; and, accordingly, in
their respective periods, the most irrational superstition
continued to flourish under the very shelter of the Gar-
den and of the Academy. But, though so tolerant of their
own established and time-hallowed absurdities, We may
see, in the zeal with which Porphyry, Celsus, and Lu-
cian, assailed, each in his own fashion, the Christian
faith, that, towards what they accounted a new and in-
trusive superstition, these philosophers were by no means
so tolerantly disposed ; — being, in this, no doubt, of the
opinion of your English divine, Warburton, that 'non-*
sense for nonsense, the old should keep its ground, as
being already in possession.'
" It was far less, however, of the hostility of Philoso-
phy than of her amity and alliance that the Christian
Church, at that period, had any reason to complain; — the
efforts made by some of the most learned of the Fathers
to graft the tenets of Paganism upon Christianity having
more than any thing else tended to adulterate the simple
truths of the latter, and involve whatever there was of
mysterious in its doctrines in still more hopeless dark-
ness.
" The only instances, indeed, which occurred in those
times, of free and fearless investigation into the credibility
and historical consistency of the documents of Revela-
tion, are to be found, as might be expected, among the
Gnostic writers ; and more especially, — as far as can be
all is so uncertain in nature, how much better is it and more venera-
ble to adhere to the faith of our ancestors, as to a depository of truth,
to profess the religions, delivered down by tradition, and fear the Gods
that our fathers and mothers have taught us to fear." duanto venera»
bilius ac melius antistitem veritatis majorum excipere disciplinam.
religiones traditas colere, &c. — Ccecil. ap. Minuc. FeL
* Nee vero non omni supplicio digni P. Clodius et L. Junius, qui con*
tra auspicia navigaverunt; parendum enim fuit religioni, nee patrius
mos repudiandus. — De, Div .
t Vic d'Epicure, by De Rondel.
17
( 191 )
judged from the mere abstracts of their works that re-
main, — in the writings of the Marcionites. The sifting
search made by these heretics through the Old and New
Testaments, for the purpose of pointing out the numerous
contradictions between them, affords, perhaps, the first
signal example in the annals of Christianity, of that sort
of reference to Reason, as the arbiter of Faith, which
formed the ground-work both of Protestantism, as intro-
duced at the Reformation, and of that more extended sys-
tem called Rationalism by which it had been superseded,
How acutely Marcion perceived the utter irreconcilable-
ness of the history of the Fall of Man with any of those
attributes which true piety would aecord to the Deity,
appears from his comment upon that event, that ' God
must be either deficient in goodness if he willed, in pre-
science if he did not foresee, or in power if he did not
prevent it.'
" These glimpses of Rationalism, however, mixed up
as they were with the wild fancies and absurdities from
which no sect of Gnosticism was free, produced but little
enlightening effect, even on those from whom they ema-
nated, while upen- the self-satisfied orthodox of the day
they were, of course, entirely lost. Like all other here-
siarchs, Marcion was followed for the absurd parts of his
system, not for what was sound in it, and the former, with
the usual good fortune of error, prevailed. The Church,
too, fast intrenched within her frontier of Unity, and
having, marshalled on her side, most of the learning and
talent of Christendom, might safely bid defiance even to
the assaults of Philosophy when approaching in the odious
shape and name of Heresy.
" Thus kept safe from all scrutiny of reason, during its
early and probationary period, Christianity, when, at last,
adopted as the religion of the Empire, received the addi-
tional aid and sanction of the secular arm. At the same
time, in acquiring this alliance, it could not but lose much
of that internal union which the pressure of persecution,
from without, is sure to impart to all proscribed religions.
Hence Schism, — so much more dangerous than Heresy,
as deriving from kinship but the readier power to wound,
— began then only to show itself, to any formidable
extent, when the Church, with " Kings for her nursing-
( 195 )
fathers and Queens her nursing-mothers,' took her place,
mitred and enthroned, as the chosen Spouse of the
State.
" Then was it that, within her own hosom those con-
troversies sprung up, which, though relating to the most
awful concernments of another world, were decided by-
debates and majorities, like the most ordinary state-affairs
of this, — the discussions of a riotous Council and the
votes of a crowd of factious Bishops, being thought suf-
ficient to determine such points as, whether the Trinity-
was to be abolished or retained, whether the Holy Ghost
was a person or an accident, &c. — Through all these
struggles, the Church, (owing chiefly, it must be con-
fessed, to the influence of the Bishops of Rome,) triumphed
signally over its adversaries; nor did the efforts of the
schismatics to simplify and rationalize the popular articles
of belief, in any one instance, succeed.
" In vain did Arius attempt to lay the foundations of a
pure system of Monotheism, by asserting Christ to have
been but a creature, made, like other creatures, by the
one God of all. It was decided against him,* by a large
majority of Bishops (many of whom, we are told, never
asked the meaning of the word * Consubstantial,' till the
whole affair was settled) that the Son was not a creature,
but a Being consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, f
The decision, thus adopted, took its station in the code of
Christian orthodoxy, and a ready answer was always at
hand for all objections offered to it. For instance, — ' if
the Father and Son,' said the Rationalists, 'are to be con-
sidered thus identical, it may be said, that one of the
Trinity has been crucified, — that one of the Trinity died.*
'By no means,' answered the orthodox, 'though the Father
* At the famous Council of Nice, assembled by Constantine, in the
year 325.
1 1 have here considerably abridged the discourse of the learned Pro-
fessor, who, besides that in the wantonness of his Rationalism, he chose
to speak of these ancient Councils in a tone of levity which could not
be otherwise than offensive to most readers, branched out also into
details of those Assemblies which could as little fail to be found use-
less and tiresome. The authority cited by him for what he here relates
of the Bishops is the Church historion, Socrates; who, it appears, adds
that, on coming to an explanation, after the Council was over, such a
scene of discord ensued among these unanimous voters of Consubstan-
tiality as the historian could compare to nothing but a " battle fought
in the dark."
( 196 )
and Son are one essence, in perfect identity, yet could
the Son die, without the Father also dying!"
44 In vain did Nestor ius, — who, to avoid the blasphemy,
as he deemed it, of calling Mary * the Mother of God,'
held that there were two persons in Christ, the divine
and the human, — venture to assert the very simple and
obvious proposition, that \ a child of two months old never
could be a God.' Against him also the usual summary
mode of decision was adopted,* and the union of the two
natures in one person thus inexplicably explained : — ' As,
in God, the Father, Son and Spirit are three persons and
but one God, so, in Christ, the Godhead is one person and
the manhood another person, and yet these are not two
persons, but one person.'
44 With equally ill success did Macedonius, another Ra-
tionalist, endeavour to relieve the Christian creed of the
separate divinity of the Holy Spirit, maintaining that the
Scriptures afforded no sufficient authority for such an
opinion. He was answered that the want, as far as it
exists, of express testimony to this doctrine arose from
the unwillingness of the Holy Spirit, who dictated the
sacred writings, to dwell on the share he himself had
taken in the divine operations there recorded.! A Coun-
cil, too, was, in the usual way, convened upon the sub-
ject; and, as the failure of all such appeals to reason, on
one side, led invariably to increased demands upon faith
from the other, this attack on the personality of the Holy
Ghost but ended, as might have been expected, in establish-
ing, among the orthodox, his consubstantiality and divinity.
A majority of the Bishops present at that disorderly
Council,]: — thirty-six, if I recollect right, having voted in
the minority, — came to the decision now incorporated in
* By a Council held at Ephesus, A. D. 431.— Dr. Priestley, whose
views of all these great Trinitarian Councils coincided, of course, with
those of our Protestant Professor, after describing the proceedings of
the Council of Ephesus, says, M In this factious manner was the great
doctrine of the hypostatical union of the two natures in Christ (which
has ever since been the doctrine of what is called the Catholic Church)
established."
t Such is the reason given by Epiphanius for the omission of the
Holy Spirit in Paul, 1 Cor. 8, 6. M There is but one God, the Father,
of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all
things."
X A Council assembled by Theodosius, at Constantinople, in 381— I
have here also taken the liberty of suppressing a considerable portion
of the Professor's discourse. Among his authorities for the li disorder-
( 197 )
the orthodox creed that c the Holy Ghost was the Lord
and Giver of Life, who proceeded from the Father, and
who ought to be adored and glorified with the Father and
the Son, and who spake by the Prophets.'
" It was before long, however, discovered that the Holy
Ghost proceeded from the Son, as well as from the Father,
— but without prejudice (said these enigmatical believers)
either to his own claim to he considered as Father, or to
the Son's right to be considered as only Son ; and the fact
and manner of this new line of procession was thus, at
last, laid down: 'The Holy Spirit is eternally from the
Father and the Son, and he proceeds from them both
eternally, as from a single principle and by one single
procession."
"During the ages of darkness and ignorance that
followed the period of which I have been speaking, the
Church was fortunate enough to have the undisturbed
possession of the Christian world to herself; — the few
pretenders to science who, from time to time, usurped the
name of philosophers, being almost all of the ecclesiastical
order, and therefore pledged to devote the whole stock
of their wretched quibbling knowledge to the support of
a superstition by which they lived and prospered, and of
which such science as theirs was, at once, the offspring
and nurse. Little, therefore, had religion to dread from
the light of reason, in those times, when even Grammar
was thought too profane a restraint upon the words of
divine wisdom, and to be ignorant was accounted an es-
sential qualification of all good Christians.*
" In the midst, however, of this darkness, there had ap-
peared, now and then, some crepusculous gleams, which
bespoke the approaches, however slow, of a more intellec-
tual era. At last, in the fourteenth century, the night of
ages began gradually to clear away; and, with the revival of
ly " character of this meeting, is St. Gregory of Nazianzum, in one of
whose Poems it is asserted that the great object of those assembled at
the Council was to procure for themselves bishoprics. " They fight,"
says the Saint, " and run into schism, and divide the whole world, for
the sake of thrones:' St. Gregory also adds, that " the Trinity was but
a mere pretext for their wrangling, the true cause being an incredible
spirit of hatred."
* It was a saying of those times, "duanto melior Grammaticus, tanto
pejor Theologus."
17*
( 198 )
learning, there burst forth a * morning of the mind,' a
spread of thought and knowledge, in whose light, it was
easy to foresee, Superstition would not very long linger.
" The important change, indeed, which was soon mani-
fested in the tone of religious feeling through Europe
showed sufficiently how the spirit of Christianity may be
altered or modified by the more or less enlightened state
of the minds that receive it. The hostility to the Roman
See, expressed openly both by Dante and Petrarch, was
but a foretaste of what the diffusion of a thirst for know-
ledge was yet to produce. Within the very precincts of the
Church the inquiring spirit began disturbingly to display
itself; and we find, among other instances, a friar of the
Dominican order, Savonarola, so far anticipating the
glorious era that was at hand as to venture to couple the
word ' Reformation ' with the Church,* and to maintain,
in opposition to the preachers of mystery, the reasonable-
ness of Christianity.
" Notwithstanding, however, such glimpses of a purer
era of theology, — glimpses rewarded, as in Savonarola's
case, with strangulation and burning, — the anti-papal ad-
venturers of that period were, it must be confessed, far
more of fanatics than of Reformers ; nor was it till the
ever-memorable outbreak of Luther himself that, for the
first time, in the whole history of creeds, it was laid down
as a principle, that Religion is to be subjected to the ju-
risdiction of Reason, and private judgment made the sole
test and guide of Faith. From that moment, the triumph
of Reason over Superstition was, however distant, secure.
The very introduction of such a principle, into Christian
theology at once threw open the sanctuary to the search-
ing eyes of philosophy, and led, by natural and inevitable
steps, (which it shall be my business, in future lectures,
to trace,) to that enlightened and philosophical state of
religious belief which you will find prevailing among
most educated German Protestants at the present day."
* Savonarola wrote a Mtratto "della Revelazione della Riforraa-
aione della Chjesa"
( 199 )
CHAPTER XL.
Reflections on the Professor's Lecture.— Commence Second Lecture.
Luther.— His qualifications for the office of Reformer.
It would be difficult to describe the state of astonish-
ment and, at times, utter dismay, into which, — though
obliged from a sense of good-breeding to put a restraint
on my feelings, — I was thrown by the whole course and
tendency of this most startling discourse; a discourse ut-
tered, be it remembered, by one who was not only a Pro-
testant Professor of Theology, but still more, a Minister,
as I now for the first time learned, of the Hanoverian
Church!
The natural cast of my disposition was, as I have be-
fore stated, deeply devotional ; and I had at this time,
notwithstanding my general love of inquiry on such sub-
jects, formed but little acquaintance with the works of
any infidel writers; — the few occasions on which T had
tasted of the cold springs of Scepticism having rather re-
pelled than allured me to any deeper draught.
The irreverence with which, I knew, most Protestants,
of all countries and sects, think themselves privileged
to speak of that illustrious array of Fathers and Councils
which arose in the early times, as fortresses, along the
banks of Christianity, during the first progress of that
"river of God " through the world, sufficiently accounted
to me for the views taken by the Professor of the inspired
wisdom of those early beacons of the truth, It was not
till I found him raising doubts, and even more than doubts,
as to the direct agency of God in the promulgation of the
Gospel,* and endeavouring to reduce that special mission
* The particular passage of the Professor's lecture here alluded to
occurred in that portion of his discourse which, for reasons already
given. I omitted. In speaking of the dark ages he had said ; " It will
be difficult for those who regard Christianity as a revelation direct
from Heaven to explain why this revealed knowledge should, at the
time of which we are speaking, have shared the fate of all mundane
and ordinary knowledge, and like philosophy, poetry,— like the whole
( 200 )
of a Saviour to the level of those every-day manifesta-
tions of beneficence which all alike proceed, though me-
diately, from the same divine hand, — it was not till
startled by his arrival at this advanced stage of scepticism
that I was, at last, aware in what direction my Protes-
tant guide was leading me, and saw that already we were
on the high road to the " waste wilderness " of unbelief.
There was, however, but little time allowed me for
rumination on what I had heard before I was again sum-
moned to hear more, by the indefatigable Scratchenbach,
who, presenting himself early in my apartment, on the
following morning, and resuming his subject where we
had broken off, proceeded as follows : —
" In most respects, Luther may be said to have been
eminently qualified for the great task of demolition which
it fell to his lot to accomplish. Intrepid, vain, self-willed,
and vehement, — fearless of all attacks from enemies, and
elated easily by the acclamation of friends, — with pas-
sions ever prompt to suggest what was daring, and a per-
severance proof against all scruples in executing it, —
the very weaknesses and excesses of his character con-
tributed fully as much as its better points to his success.
The indiscriminate license of personal abuse in which
he indulged gave a vigour to his public displays, in the
eyes of the vulgar, which made all else appear feeble in
comparison, and against which no man who was, at all,
restrained by decorum, could hope to contend with any
success. In the same manner, had his natural tempera-
ment, as regarded the other sex, been aught but what he
circle, in short, of human sciences,— should have passed through an
eclipse as opaque and earthly as ever ignorance and superstition have
combined to cast over mankind. That a light, so immediately from
the hand of God, should, within a few centuries after its introduction
into the world, not only fail in preventing the darkness that then fell
over every other field of knowledge, but should itself become as much
obscured by craft and credulity as were even the basest of those forma
of superstition that had preceded it, is a supposition too monstrous,
too derogatory to all our notions of divine power to find admission
into the belief of any mind not wilfully hood-winked.
" A system of faith, however moral and excellent in itself, which
follows so naturally the course of human weakness and change ; which
in a period of ignorance, takes the dark and gross colour of the times,
and in an age of increasing civilization becomes proportionally enlight-
ened, can assuredly lay no claim to those marks of Divine workman-
ship, — that instant, and constant perfection, — that grand sameness of
design and execution, which characterizes all that bears the impress of
the immediate hand of God."
( 201 )
himself so coarsely describes it,* there would have been
one impulse wanting of the many, strong and ungovern-
able, which, in defiance of decency itself, urged him on
ill his career.
"No other man, indeed, of the memorable band whom
that crisis called forth, could have accomplished what
may be called the rough work of the Reformation, — the
revolutionary part of that great change, — with any thing
like the same ability, perseverance, or success. Me-
Jancthon would have been far too hesitating and consci-
entious for the bold, Carlostadt too much of a leveller
and fanatic for the timid, while Zwingli would have pur-
sued a plan of Reform too philosophical and simplifying
for almost all. Even the reverence with which Luther
clung to many of the errors of the old faith, was, how-
ever weak, of much service, in facilitating his general
object ; as the transition from old doctrines to new was
thus made to appear less violent, and while much was
held forth for the lovers of novelty to look forward to,
there was also much retained on which the reverers of
antiquity could look back.
" Nor would it be right, among the various requisites
for such a mission which he possessed, to omit adverting
to his private character, as a convivial companion, which,
among the sources of his influence, was certainly not the
least popular. The refined, retiring habits of a leader
like Melancthon would have presented nothing broad
enough to the public gaze ; while of Calvin, as an here-
siarch, the sour, arbitrary sternness would have thrown
such an air of rigour round the infant Reformation as
would not have been likely to attract many votaries to
its cradle. The social habits, however, of Luther, his
jollity, his love of music, the anecdotes spread abroad of
his two-pint cup,f his jokes, his parodies, &c. — all tended
* Ut non est in meis viribus situm ut vir non sim, tarn non est mei
juris ut absque muliere sim. — Colloq. Mensal. — See also his Sermon de
Matrimordo.
t The famous goblet which this apostle of Protestantism called his
"Catechistical Cup," and boasted that he could swallow down its
contents at a single draught. See the Colloq. Mensal. If there were
any need of additional testimony to the authority of this work, it
would be sufficient to say that Jortin, in his Life of Erasmus, always
refers to it, as authentic.
Of the Reformer's higher order of parodies the reader will find a spe-
( 202 )
at once to divert and interest the public, and by lowering 1
him to the level of their own every-day lives, established
a companionship, as it were, between him and his most
distant partisans.
" To this very day, indeed, his reputation, as a lover of
pleasure and good cheer, — surviving, strange to say, al-
most all his theological tenets, — still continues to give a
zest to some of our most popular drinking-songs. For
instance ! —
c D'rum stosset an,
Und sing-et dann,
Was Martin Luther spricht:
Chor. Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib und Gesang*.
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Lebenlang",
Und Narr en sind wir nicht.'*
" Such, undeniably, w T as the assemblage of at once
apt and powerful qualifications, with which Luther came
furnished to that work of assault and demolition, which
forms usually the first stage of all radical Reformations,
whether in faith, philosophy, or politics. We have next
to contemplate his character from a far more lofty and
trying point of view, and having accorded to him his full
praise, as the assailant of an old system of faith, consider
how far he is entitled to the same tribute, as the apostle
and founder of a new one : — and here, in my opinion, all
eulogy of Luther's character, as a Reformer, must cease.
" For that great principle which he was first the means
of introducing into theology, namely, the acknowledg-
ment of a right in every individual to interpret the Scrip-
tures according to his own judgment, it is impossible to
express too strongly the gratitude which all lovers of re-
ligious liberty owe to him. For the service rendered to
Religion itself, by making Reason its ground-work, those
who seek the reasonable in all things, in Faith as well
as in every thing else, can never be sufficiently grateful
to Luther and his associates. But here, in the introduc-
cimen in the appendix to Bower's Life of Luther ; his more ribald dis-
plays in this way are to be found in the Table Talk, in Bayle, &c.
* u Then let us drink and sing what Martin Luther said— who does
not love wine, women, and music, remains a fool all his life, and we
are not fools."
( 203
tion of this great pregnant principle, — a principle, bear-
ing within it the germ of future consequences to Christi-
anity which its propounders little foresaw, — the whole
services of Luther to the cause of Truth and Rationalism
terminate. His own practice, his notions of tolerance,
his temper of controversy, the whole tendency, in short,
of his creed and conduct, lay all, as we shall see, in the
very opposite direction.
"■"*►*►►© ^5 *4* 1, ^ —
CHAPTER XLI.
Lecture continued. — Doctrines of Luther. — Consubstanti.ition. — Jus-
tification by Faith alone.— Slavery of the Will.— Ubiquity of Christ's
body.
" Of the policy of retaining a few of the minor absur-
dities of Popery,* as a means of smoothing away the ab-
ruptness of so radical a change, I have already intimated
my opinion; and had our Reformer confined himself to
this slight compromise with prejudice, he might have
been justified, thus far, on fair grounds of expediency.
But he has to answer for a far more gross, as well as gra-
tuitous, homage to absurdity. For, not only did he, in
the free exercise of that reason of which he was so ve-
hement an assertor, adopt, to its full extent, the old Po-
pish belief of a Real Presence in the Sacrament, but also
in professing to explain more orthodoxly the modus of
that Presence, introduced a new and still more monstrous
enigma of his own, in the place of that mystery which he
had found, ready made to his hand ; thus endeavouring, by
the substitution of the small word Con, to give a new
form and life to that venerable nonsense which had so
long flourished under the auspices of the monosyllable
Trans.
* The Professor alludes to Luther's retention of the rite of Exorcism
in Baptism, of Private Confession before admission to the Lord's ta-
ble, of the use of the Sign of the Cross, of the decoration of Churches
with images, and other such observances of Popery, which were re-
tained in Lutheraiusia.
( 204 )
" That he was conscientious in his adoption of the
doctrine of a Real Presence, the accounts left by him of
his struggles upon this subject prove.* He was then re-
cent, we know, from the study of the early Fathers of
the Church, and, accustomed as he had been to consider
their authority as superseding even that of the senses
themselves, the strong proofs which he could not but find
in their writings that they were all, to a man, believers
in this miracle, were, to his still subjugated mind, suffi-
cient evidence of its truth. f Had he luckily remained
as ignorant of the Fathers as were, to the last, his col-
leagues, ZwingliJ and Calvin, the world might have
* The sincerity of Luther's belief in a Real Corporal Presence is
marked strongly in his own declaration to Bucer: " Quicquid dico in
hac summa Eucharistiae causa ex corde dico" — " Whatever I say on
this main point of the Eucharist, I say fronajny heart." He also de-
clared that he would much rather retain, with the Romanists, only
the body and blood than adopt, with the Swiss, the bread and wine,
without the real body and blood of Christ. " Malle cutn Romanis tan-
turn corpus et sanguinem retinere, quam cum Helvetiis panem et vi-
num sine (physico) corpore et sanguine Christi."
We have, indeed, from Luther's own pen, (in his " Sermo, quod
verba stent,") a most able exposition as well of the truth of the an-
cient doctrine of a Real Presence, as of the futility of the objections
which his brother Reformers raised to it. Maintaining that the words
of our Saviour are to be taken simply and literally, he points out, as
if in anticipation of the fatal mischiefs that have flowed from the
abuse of figurative interpretation by the Socinians, the great danger
there is in admitting this mode of interpreting Scripture and suffering
the mysteries of our salvation to be explained away by figure. The
same submission with which we receive the other mysteries of the
faith we should bring with us, he maintains, to the reception of this,
not troubling ourselves with arguments either from reason or nature,
but confining our thoughts solely to Jesus Christ and his word. To
the objections raised as to how a bo;'^ can be in so many places at
once, — how an entire human body can lie in so small a compass — he
opposes the equally difficult questions, how does God preserve his
unity in a Trinity of persons? how was he able to clothe his Son with
human flesh? how did he cause him to be born of a virgin ?
The very same was the line of argument pursued by the Fathers ;
and it is with an ill grace that believers in the Trinity can deny the
cogency of so kindred an appeal.
t Where the authority, however, of these holy men clashed with
his own notions, as in his favourite doctrine of the Slavery of the
Human Will, he made no scruple of casting it off. See his answer to
Erasmus, Be Serv. Arb. T. 2.
\ When referred to the Fathers for evidence against some of his he-
retical opinions, Zwingli confessed that he could not find leisure to
consult those writers ; and to the famous " Mallet of Heretics," Faber,
who pressed him hard with such authorities, he answered, " Atqui vel
annum totum disputando consumere licebit, priusquam vel unicus
fidei articulus conciliari possit." In such a hurry were these men to
alter the whole system of Christianity, and so impatient were they of
any reference to its earliest, and, therefore, purest teachers.
( 205 )
been, perhaps, spared this mortifying specimen of the
uses to which so vigorous a proclaiiner of the rights
of Reason could apply that faculty, when left to its free
exercise, himself.
" The true secret of Luther's version of this mystery
seems to have been that, failing in all his efforts to dis-
engage himself from so strongly attested a doctrine of
the primitive Church, he resolved that, though saddled
with the mystery, he would have the credit, at least, of
promulgating a new reading of it, so as to distinguish, by
some variation, his dogma from that of the Papists, and
thus keep the spirit of schism between their religions
alive.
" Accordingly, unsanctioned, as he must have well
known, by the Fathers, who, whenever they venture to
speak clearly on the subject, always imply that the ori-
ginal substance of the elements is exchanged for that of
the body of Christ, he had the face to intrude upon his
Church that hybrid progeny of his own brain, half Po-
pish, half Lutheran, to which he gave the name of Con-
substantiation — a doctrine invented, it is plain, not so
much to be believed as to be wrangled about, and which,
having abundantly, for a season, served that purpose, has
now passed into oblivion, leaving the Mystery, which it
was intended to supplant, still in possession of the field.*
" However fitted, indeed, by the peculiar character of
his intellect and temperament for the office of sweeping
* It is a signal tribute to the truth of the Catholic doctrine respect-
ing the Eucharist, that the three classes of Reformers, who, in dis-
senting from it, differed among themselves, should, in every objection
and argument which they brought against each other, furnish a wea-
pon against them all to the hands of the Catholics. Thus Luther was
accused by Calvin of doing violence to the words of our Saviour, who
did not say " My Body is in, or with this," but " This is my Body ;"
you must, therefore, said Calvin, either admit with me, no Real Pre-
sence, at all, or else admit, with the Papists, the mystery of Transub-
stantiation. On the other hand, Calvin and Zwingli were with equal
truth accused by the Lutherans of putting a forced construction on
the words of our Saviour, who did not say, " This is the figure, or
sign of my Body," but " This is my Body;" while Zwingli, in return,
rated the Lutherans on their imprudence, in allowing that the word
"is" retains its natural signification; because, if it does (argued
Zwingli) the followers of the Pope are in the right, and the belief
that the bread is converted into flesh must then follow, as a matter of
course. " Fieri nequit quin panis substantia in ipsam carnis sub-
stantiam convertatur." De Ctena.— See also his answer to Billi-
canus.
18
( 206 )
away, without mercy, established errors and prejudices',
there cannot be a clearer proof of Luther's inadequacy to
the task of founding an original system of his own, than
the fact that, of all those points of doctrine which he him*
self, in his capacity of Reformer, introduced, not a single
one has survived to this day among those Protestants
whose Church bears his name. And in this respect, as
in most others, he but shared the fate of all those earlier
heresiarchs whese respective systems, from the want of
that upholding authority which the Church of Rome alone
has ever been able to afford to doctrine, survived but a
short time themselves, leaving little more than the name
of each founder to his followers.
"The very doctrine, indeed, — that of Justification by
Faith alone, without Works, — which Luther propounded
as the foundation of his religious Reform, (and in which
he but revived, by the way, an old, exploded imagination
of the Gnostics,) was brought into disrepute, even in his
own life-time, by the dangerous consequences which his
disciples deduced from it;* and in opposing, as he was
sometimes forced to do, its most obvious results, he was
but passing sentence of condemnation on his own boasted
principle. Having himself, for instance, gone so far as
to assert the extravagant paradox, that the works of men,
1 though they might be good in appearance, and even
probably good, were still mortal sins,'f his favourite,
Amsdorf,! thought himself warranted in advancing a step
farther, and maintaining that ' Good Works were even
an obstacle to salvation ;'§ while another of his disciples,
* The immediate practical consequences of this doctrine are thug
described by one of Luther's own disciples, Martin Bucer:— "The
greater part of the people seem only to have embraced the Gospel, in
order to shake off the yoke of discipline, and the obligation of fasting,
penance, &c, which lay upon them in the time of Popery, and to live
at their pleasure, enjoying their lust and lawless appetite without
control. They, therefore, lend a willing ear to the doctrine that we
are justified by faith alone, and not by good works, having no relish
for them." — Be Regn. Christ.
t Prop. Heidls. Jin. 1518.
t Though himself but a priest, Luther took upon him, in the un-
bridled license of his self-will, to make this Amsdorf a bishop.
§ The question " whether good works were necessary to salvation "
became, after Luther's death, one of those subjects of controversy
which were agitated so fiercely and intolerantly among his followers.
For simply maintaining, indeed, the affirmative in this dispute, the
Lutheran Horneius was denounced as Papist, Majorist, Anabaptist,
( 207 )
Agrippa, renounced the obligations of the Law altogether,
and considered the enjoinment of Good Works as a Jew-
ish, not Christian, ordinance.
" This doctrine, I need hardly remind you, was revived
in England * by some fanatics of the seventeenth century,
and to this day, as I understand, boasts a number of par-
tisans in that country ;f so that, in fact, in the dangerous
extravagances of Antinomianism and Solifidianism, we
must now look for the only vestiges of that vaunted dog-
ma which formed the ground-work of the Saxon Re-
former's religious edifice.;);
" I must not omit here, in reference to this doctrine, to
notice, — as proving how unfit Luther was to be a teacher
either of morals or religion, — his audacious interpolation
of the word * alone ' in a verse of St. Paul to the Romans
(iii. 28) for the purpose of gaining, by this fraud, some
&c. and severely condemned by the three universities of Wittenberg,
Jena, and Leipzig.
* As a fair specimen of the opinions of these English Antinomians,
I need but quote the words of their great champion, Dr. Tobias Crisp,
who died in the year 1642: — " Let me speak freely to you and tell you,
that the Lord hath no more to lay to the charge of an Elect person, yet in,
the height of his iniquity, and in the excess of riot, and committing all the
abominations that can be committed, — I say, even then, when an Elect
person runs such a course, the Lord hath no more to lay to that per-
son's charge than God hath to lay to the charge of a believer ; nay,
God hath more to lay to the charge of such a person than he hath to lay to
the charge of a Saint triumphant in glory T
t Most of the English fanatical sects have, at some time or other
of their career, taken up this doctrine of Luther. Thus it was a fa-
vourite tenet of Whitefield, " that we are merely justified by an Act of
Faith, without any regard to Works, past, present, or to come." The
lengths to which the Wesleyan Methodists carried the same conveni-
ent doctrine appears from the account which Wesley's able disciple,
Fletcher, gives of them : — " I have heard them (he says) cry out against
the legality of their wicked hearts, which they said still suggested that
they were to do something for their salvation.'''' The same writer re-
presents some of these fanatics as holding that " even adultery and
murder do not hurt the pleasant children, but rather work for their
good. God sees no sin in believers, whatever sin they may commit.
My sins might displease God, my person is always acceptable to him,
Though I should out-sin Manasses, I should not be less a pleasant
child, because God always views me in Christ." — Fletcher's Checks to
Antinomianism.
X The sect of Lutherans that seem to have followed up most con-
sistently their leader's doctrine, on this head, were the original Hern-
hutters, or Moravians, whose founder, Count Zinzendorf, maintained,
among his Maxims, that "nothing is required to Salvation and to
becoming our Saviour's favourite soul for ever, but to believe that
another has paid for us, has toiled, sweated and been racked for us."
Maxims of Count Zinzendorf— & work revised and corrected by the
Count himself.
( 208 )
sanction for his own doctrine of Justification by making
the Apostle assert that ' man is justified by faith aloneS*
" Another article of his Reformed creed on which Lu-
ther prided himself no less ostentatiously, (though this,
also, he derived from that fountain-head of most of his
tenets, Gnosticism) was the absolute slavery and nullity
of the human will; — a doctrine, in his eyes, so founded
on Christian truth, that he professed his readiness to de-
fend it ' against all the Churches and all the Fathers.'
Notwithstanding this vaunt, however, and the audacious
lengths to which he dared to carry his paradox, — even to
the blasphemy of making the Deity the author of man's
sin.f — he was forced, on this point, also, to yield to the
saner suggestions of others ; and consented, in the framing
of the Confession of Augsburg, to the introduction of an
article, in which the Liberty of the Human Will is ad-
* He was detected, by Staphylus, Emser, and others, in still farther
frauds on the text of the New Testament, and for the same party pur-
pose. Thus, in the 6th verse of the Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon,
he omitted the word " work" after theepithet "good," notwithstand-
ing that this word was, as these critics assert, in the famous Complu-
tensian edition as well as in the old editions, in Latin, of Robert
Stephen.
t In his w r ork Be Servo Arhitrio, Luther declares expressly that
41 God works the evil in us as well as the good ; that the perfection of
faith is to believe that God is just, though by his own will he renders
us necessarily worthy of damnation, so as to seem to take pleasure in
ihe torments of the miserable."
We have already shown in the preceding volume how large a por-
tion of Protestantism has been borrowed from the monstrous schools
of Simon Magus and the Gnostics ; and from the same respectable
source is derived also this doctrine— common alike to Luther and Cal-
vin, — which supposes God to be the deliberate author of man's sin and
ruin. " It was the belief of Simon Magus, (said Vincent of Lprins.)
that God was the cause of all sin and wickedness, as having himself,
with his own hands, created man of such a nature, as, by its own
proper movement and the impulse of a necessary will, is neither able
nor willing to do any thing but sin." Conna. c. 34. Compare with
this opinion the foregoing of Luther and the following of Calvin : —
" Though Adam has destroyed himself and his posterity, yet ice must
attribute the corruption and the guilt to the secret judgment of God.'"
(Calvin. Respons. ad Calumn. Xebal. ad Art. 1.) Take also another
specimen from a Calvinist of the seventeenth century, Szydlovius : " I
myself acknowledge that, according to the common custom of think-
ing, it seems too crude to say, ' God can command perjury, blasphemy,
lies, Sec' — andean also command that ' he shall not himself be wor-
shipped, loved, honoured, &C.'— Yet all this is most true in itself." —
Vindicice Qucest. aliquot, &x. One of the Dort divines, Maccovius, (Pro-
fessor of Theology at Franeker,) maintained, in still more express
terms, that " God does by no means will the salvation of all men, that
2ie does will sin, snd that he destines men to sin, as sin."
( 209 )
mitted to such an extent as by some has been even thought
to border closely on Semi-Pelagianism.
" In this doctrine, respecting the Will, — as in every
other, indeed, which he himself originated, — the nominal
followers of Luther took a course entirely different from
that of their master; insomuch that, in the time of Bayle,
as we are informed by that writer, the Lutherans had
been for a long period on the verge of Molinism. Bayle
adds, too, in a spirit of prophecy, the following remarka-
ble words : — 'If the Lutherans go on in future thus depart-
ing from the dogmas of their ancestors,* there will come
a time when they will in vain look for their doctrines in
the Confession of Augsburg; and they will then, perhaps,
do as the monks have done by the rule of their Patriarchs,
that is to say, place all matters again upon their former
footing.^
" It must be acknowledged that the present state of
Protestantism in Germany, combined with those deser-
tions to the Catholic Church which are daily taking
place, confirm but too strongly the acuteness of this
shrewd philosopher's foresight.
" Nearly the same destiny as awaited the other doc-
trines of Luther attended also his strange notion concern-
ing the Ubiquity of Christ's body. Taking for granted,
that, as the divine nature of Christ is omnipresent, so
must also be that human nature which is hypostatically
united with it, he drew from hence the monstrous con-
clusion that Christ's body is every where ; attempting
thereby to account for its real presence in the Eucharist,
in answer to Zwingli, who contended that not even God
himself could cause the body of Christ to be in more than
one place at a time.
" But from this wild doctrine, also, the Reformer found
himself dislodged by those consequences which the in-
quiring spirit he had himself awakened deduced from it.
■ If the body of Christ is every where,' said Brentius, * it
* Not only did they desert their Founder's doctrine on this point,
but al-o carried with them into their later extreme of opinion the same
spirit of intolerance which they had manifested in the former. " Since
then,' 1 says Gilhert, " the Lutherans have gone into the Semi-Pelagian
opinion so entirely and so eagerly that they will neither tolerate nor
hold communion with any of the other persuasions." Exposition of
the Thirty-nine Articles.
t Nouvclles Lcttres Critiques sur VHistoire du Calvinisme.
18*
( 210 )
is, then, of coarse, present in a glass of beer, in a sack of
corn, in the rope with which the criminal is hanged •'
Whether we look to the doctrine itself or to the conse-
quences drawn from it, we must own that the master and
his disciples were well worthy of each other.
" Such, briefly, is the history of those misbegotten and
short-lived dogmas which this Reformer had the audacity
to present to the world as the legitimate offspring of Re
ligion by her new consort, Reason; — so little had his
mind of that power, which only great minds possess, of
setting the seal of durability on its conceptions, and
striking out truths that will last; — though gifted amply
with the coarse vigour that can assail and demolish, so
utterly wanting was he in that prospective spirit of Re-
form, which alters but to improve, and remoulds but to
regenerate; which can look beyond the mere dazzle of
the moment's change, and while it clears away the
clouds of the past, can also send a steady light into the
future !
** Hence was it, as I have already remarked, that of all
those doctrines which belonged peculiarly to himself—
all, in short, of his system that was not Popery at second
hand — the greater portion found its Euthanasia in his
own life-time, while of the remainder, all that at present
survives is either the mere shadow, as in the Church of
England Articles and Homilies, or the mere abuse, as in
the tenets of the Antinomians and Solifidians.
— — * t, fV0 ^^ ©^*'*'"
CHAPTER XLII.
Lecture continued.— Doctrines of Calvin and Zwingli compared with
those of Luther.— Luther's intolerance— how far entitled to be called
a Rationalist.— Summary of his character, as a Reformer.
" Tried by the test which I have applied to Luther, —
the durability of their respective systems, — both Zwingli
and Calvin must stand, as Reformers, very far above their
Chief; most of the doctrines of the father of Calvinism
being still held by his followers, in nearly the same form
( 211 )
in which they were promulgated and consistently en-
forced by himself; while the rational view taken by Zwin-
gli of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, — as being a
mere commemoration of the death of Christ, under the
symbols of bread and wine, — has become the standard be-
lief of mast Protestant Churches.* Even the simple and
unmysterious form to which Zwingli reduced the rite of
Baptism, divesting it of all that miraculous efficacy which
superstition had attributed to it, has not only been adopt-
ed into the creed of the Socinians, Unitarians, &c„, but,
with the same good fortune that attended his philosophic
view of the Eucharist, has received the sanction of some
.of the most distinguished among your English divines.f
JSo different has been the fate of the doctrines of Zwingli,
and even of Calvin, from that which has justly befallen
the crude, ill-considered, and abortive dogmas of Luther.
" While, on his own part, too, this clumsy and precipi-
tate reformer contributed so little, in the way either or
strength or ornament, towards the structure of the new
faith, his intolerance led him to oppose violently every
effort in the work of improvement by others; and it was
soon seen that this loud champion of the right of private
judgment would, if he had his own will, restrict the ex-
* "Zwingli's views on the subject of the Sacrament," says Bower.,
"have been adopted not only by the British Churches, but by many
on the Continent." — Life of Lather. Appendix.
| Though the Zwinglian, or, as it has an equal right to be called,
Socinian view of the Sacrament, had found its way into the English
Church long before the time of Hoadly and Balguy, it was by these
two divines that so bold and heterodox an innovation upon the doc-
trines of the Church of England, as declared in her Catechism and Ar-
ticles, was first openly promulgated. " The rite of Baptism," says Dr.
Balguy, " is no more than a representation of our entrance into the
Church of Christ." {Charge, on the Sacraments.) He explains this far-
ther by saying, that " the sign of a Sacrament is declaratory only, not
efficient;'''' thus doing away that effectual and invisibly working grace,
which, according to the Articles and the Catechism, is given by means
of the Sacraments. In the same Socinian spirit, this Protestant di-
vine tells us, that " the benefits of the Lord's Supper are not present,
but future. The Sacrament is no more than a sign or pledge to assure
us thereof."
Equally devoid of all efficacy and mystery was the Lord's Supper in
the eyes of Bishop Hoadley, who agreed, with Zwingli and Socinus, in '
considering it as nothing more than a mere commemorative rite ; or, as
his able Protestant opponent, the Rev. W.Law, not unfairly describes
his doctrine : — " Thus has this author stripped the Institution of every
mystery of our salvation which the words of Christ showed to be in it,
and which every Christian that has any true faith, though but as a
grain of mustard seed, is sure of finding in it."
( 212 )
ercise of that right solely to himself.* His coarse and
bitter enmity to Carlostadt and Zwingli for no other rea-
son than that they followed their own views of doctrine,
not his, showed how widely different was his theory of
toleration from his practice. ' They are,' said he, speak-
ing of the Zwinglians, 'men damned themselves and
drawing others into hell; nor can the Churches have any
farther communion with them, or allow of their blasphe-
mies.'! In another place, too, he says of these brother re-
formers of his, — ' Satan reigns so among them, that it is
no longer in their power to speak any thing but lies.'J
" With an assumption, too, of infallibility, preposterous
from such a quarter, he denounced the most trifling de-
viation, either on the one side or the other of that pre-
cise line of opinion which he had thought proper to dic-
tate, as a transgression, not only against himself, but
against God. The defeat of the Zwinglians, at Cappel,
as well as the death of their able Pastor, he pronounced
a judgment on them all for differing from his version of
the Eucharist. In the same bigoted spirit was it that he
refused to comprehend in the confederacy of Smalcald
either the Zwinglians or those German states and cities
which had adopted the opinions and confessions of Bucer.
" The same impatience, indeed, of all control which he
evinced so usefully throughout his struggle with the Pope
still continued to render him impracticable in the hands
* The author of the History of Leo the Tenth notices with just re-
probation " the severity with which Luther treated those who unfor-
tunately happened to believe too much on the one hand, or too little
on the other, and could not walk steadily on the hair-breadth line
which he had presented." The same writer remarks, — " Whilst Lu-
ther was engaged in his opposition to the Church of Rome, he assert-
ed the right of private judgment with the confidence and courage of a
martyr. But no sooner had he freed his followers from the chains of
Papal domination than he forged others in many respects equally in-
tolerable, and it was the employment of his latter years to counter-
act the beneficial effects produced by his former labours."
This part of Luther's character, indeed, has long been given up by
all candid Protestants. The Rev. Dr. Sturges, in his " Reflections on
Popery," allows that Luther was, " in his manners and writings,
eoarse, presuming, and impetuous;" and a far higher authority, Bishop
Warburton, says, in speaking of Erasmus, that the other Reformers,
such as Luther, Calvin, and their followers, understood so little in
what true Christianity consisted, that they carried with them into
the Reformed Churches that " very spirit of persecution which had
driven them from the Church of Rome."—- Notes on Pope's Essay on Cri-
tieism.
\ Ap. Hospin. \ Epist. ad Jac. Prep. Bremcns. ap. Hospin.
( 213 )
of his brother Reformers; and this self-willed and selfish
principle he allowed to influence him in the most import-
ant concerns. * I abolished,' said he, ' the elevation of the
Host to brave the Pope, and I had retained it so long to
spite Carlostadt.'* In a similar strain of dogged defiance,
combined, too, with the most unprincipled indifference as
to the error or truth of the hasty notions he took up, we
find him declaring that, if a Council were to order the
Communion to be taken in both kinds, he and his would
only take it in one, or none ; and would, moreover, curse
all those who should, in conformity with this decree of
the Council, communicate in both kinds.'f
"How completely he held in subjection the wise, but
too gentle Melancthon, — even to the endurance from him
of blows, as Melancthon himself confesses,! — would be
sufficiently apparent, did there exist no other testimony
of the fact, from the prominent station and authority
which immediately on Luther's death, his former slave
began to assume in all the counsels of the party. But
it was then too late for the mild spirit of Melancthon to
have any influence. The intolerant character of the
Founder had sunk deeply and indelibly into his Church ;
and, as he himself had been accustomed jocularly to boast
that he was a second Pope,§ so the followers of his creed
but exchanged the infallibility of Bulls and Councils for
the upstart pretensions to the same authority assumed by
Confessions and other Symbolic Formularies.
"Hence, though Lutheranism has now, — thanks to the
enlightening progress of Reason, — become, like most
other such distinctions between Protestants, a mere name,
its course, for nearly two centuries after the death of
its founder, w T as marked by a bitterness of polemic spirit,
a cold pedantry of doctrine combined with a hot-headed
intolerance in practice,|| such as never before conspired
* Confess Parv.
t Form. Miss.
X Ah ipso colaphos acceperim. — Ep. ad Theodorum. The wretched
life which hie tyrant led him is described touchingly in some of Me-
lancthon's confidential letters. " I am in a state of servitude (he says
to his friend Camerarins) as if I were in the Cave of the Cyclops; and
often do I think of making my escape."
§ When Luther, in going to visit the Pope's Nuncio, in 1535, stepped
into the carriage with Pomeranus, who was to introduce him, he said,
laughingly, " Here sit the Pope of Germany and Cardinal Pomeranus."
Ii This intolerance of the Lutherans has been noticed, even to a late
( M4 )
to render religion imamiable, since human systems of
faith were first known in this world.
" In what respects beside his one, great, and signal
achievement in substituting the tribunal of Private Judg-
ment for the authority of the Church, this Reformer has
been deemed, by Wegschneider, to deserve the title of
Rationalist, I am wholly at a loss to discover.* Besides
the instances which I have brought forward, from his doc-
trines, displaying an extent of irrationalism which goes
beyond even the privilege of such sectarian absurdities,
his favourite thesis, on which even the Doctors of the
Sorbonne were opposed to him, that * there are things false
in Philosophy which are true in Theology ' may be said
to contain within itself the very essence of the Anti-ra-
tional principle ; and, accordingly, on the first rise of the
party called Rationaux, we find them frequently contest-
ing this thesis with the orthodox.f
" Tt is true, that Luther first set the example, — though
certainly not with any clear foresight of the consequences,
of that unceremonious method of dealing with the re-
ceived Canon of Scripture, which has in later times been
adopted, and with such searching effect, by far more able
inquirers into the authenticity of the sacred writings. In
rejecting the Epistle of St. James, as spurious, and call-
ing it a ' chaffy ' production, * unworthy of an Apostle,' J
Luther w r as actuated, we know, by little else than a feel-
ing of pettish impatience at the authority which this
Epistle opposes to his own doctrine of Justification, — as
period by Travellers in Germany. Thus, the Baron de Riesbeck says,
in speaking of Frankfort, " La seule chose qui nuise a la liberte de
penser, a rhumanisation des mceurs, et aux progres du commerce et
de l'industrie, c'est I'inquisition qu'exerce le Clerge Lutherien, qui
forme ici la principale eglise."
* Wegschneider possibly meant no more than what many other Ger-
man Rationalists (as M. Pusey informs us,) assert — viz. that " their
scheme is the perfection of that Reformation which Luther left incomplete."
f One of the earliest of the Rationalists, Meyer, in his work, " Phi-
losophia Scripturse Interpres, (which Semler republished,) contends
strongly against the notion of Luther, that there are many things
" qua sunt vera theologice ac philosophice falsa.*'
X With a similar freedom Luther expressed his opinion of the re-
lative value of the other books of Scripture. The Gospel according
to John he called the Chief Gospel, and preferred it far to the other
three. So, also, the Epistles of Peter and Paul were held by him to
be far above the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, insomuch
that these Epistles, together with the Gospel and First Epistle of John,
contain all, in his opinion, that is necessary for a Christian to know
See his Preface to the New Testament. 1524.
( 215 )
also at the sanction, perhaps, which it affords to the Ca»
tholic Sacrament of Extreme Unction. In the same
manner, his unseemly attacks upon Ecclesiastes and
other Books of Scripture, are to be accounted only among
those post-prandial effusions of his humour, for which, in
his soberer moods of theology, he was hardly to be held
responsible.
" Though the example, therefore, from such authority,
of a want of reverence for any part of the received Ca-
non, may have tended to weaken, in some minds, that ho-
mage for the whole which a long reign of superstition
had impressed, it would be paying much too high a com-
pliment to the headlong theology of Luther to trace to
his factious attacks on the Epistle of St. James and Ec-
clesiastes even the germ of that bold school of scriptural
criticism, for which we are so deeply indebted to the Ra-
tionalists; — a school, which, in our own times, has pro-
duced a Gesenius to call in question the authenticity of
Isaiah, and a Bretschneider to impugn the genuineness
of the Gospel and Epistles of St. John.
" For the rest, taking into view the predominant fea-
tures of Luther's character, — his intolerance, his ungo-
vernable temper,* his weak, anile superstition,! — the
* " It is impossible," says Calvin, in a letter to Bullinger, " to bear
any longer with the violences of Luther, whose self-love will not per-
mit him to know his own defects, or to endure contradiction." Those
who wish, indeed, for favourable portraits of the Reformers must seek
elsewhere than in the pictures they have drawn of each other. In re-
turn for the polite names which Luther lavished upon his fellow Pro-
testants, calling them " blasphemers," " heretics," " devils," &c. they
as freely retorted upon him such titles as the new Pope, the new Anti-
christ, and said that " those who could bear his violence must be as
mad as himself." The same candour respecting each other seems to
have pervaded the whole reforming circle, and while Melancthon tells
us (Testim. Prcrf. ad Frid. Mycon.) that Carlostadt was a brutal igno-
norant fellow, more of a Jew than a Christian, we are informed by
Calvin (Ep. Calv.) that Bucer was full of tortuous and double-dealing
ways, and that Osiander (in whose jokes Luther took such delight)
was a man of the most profane conversation and infamous morals.
(Mel. Ep. ad Carrier. — Calv. Ep. ad Mel.)
| Besides the fancies of Luther, already mentioned, respecting his
interviews and dialogues with the devil, he imputed also to this fami-
liar the severe illness of which he was near dying in 1532. In the same
manner some remarkable meteoric phenomena, which occurred in the
following year, were, as Seckendorf tells us, attributed by Luther to
diabolical agency. This historian, too, has preserved a letter from
the Reformer to a servant-maid who was supposed to be possessed by
a demon, and nothing could well be more weak or old-womanish than
its contents.
With the exception of all that related to the operations of the devil,
( 216 )
tank absurdity of those parts of his faith which he paro-
died from Popery, and the want of all stamina in those
abortions of doctrine which he chose to father himself, —
his utter failure in bequeathing to his followers one last-
ing dogma, but his complete success in transmitting to
them the worst bitterness of the dogmatic spirit, — having
glaringly before us these characteristics of his whole ca-
reer, both as man and reformer, it requires, I must say,
the summoning up of all our most grateful recollections
of the vast service rendered by him to mankind, in throw-
ing open the documents of Faith to the search of Reason,
to keep alive in our minds even a due show of respect to
his memory, or enable us to listen, without impatience,
to the eulogies that are sometimes lavished on his name,
in which department Luther's power of belief shone unrivalled, his
friend Melancthon was even more grossly superstitious than himself.
It appears from his Letters that, while employed on the Confession of
Augsburg, he attended anxiously to all stories of prodigies that were
abroad, hoping to collect from them omens as to the success of his
cause. An extraordinary overflow of the Tiber, — a mule delivered of
a foal, with a foot like that of a crane, appeared to him, both of them,
signs that something serious was at hand ; while the birth of a calf
with two heads, within the very territory of Augsburg, was an omen,
he thought, of the approaching destruction of Rome, by schism. This
last portent, indeed, he communicates seriously in a letter to Luther,
acquainting him at the same time that, on that very day, the Confes-
sion of Augsburg was to be presented to the Emperor! That a mind,
capable of such flights of absurdity, should believe also in the predic-
tions of astrology was not to be wondered at; and accordingly we find
that this noble victim of superstition was constantly brooding over
the horrors of his own horoscope, which among other threatened mis-
fortunes, had foretold that he was to be shipwrecked in the Baltic.
Addicted as was not only Melancthon, but, — as would seem from
his letters,— the greater number of his correspondents, to this absurd
belief in astrology, it does not appear, as far as I can learn, that they
were any of them acquainted with the alleged prediction, respecting
Luther himself, which, through the astrological calculations of Lan-
din, was discovered in Dante, Infern. Cant. i. (See the remarks on
this passage in Mr. Taafe's ingenious Comment on Dante. Murray,
1822.) As a still farther proof that the poet could have meant no other
than Luther by his "Greyhound," M. Rossetti has, it seems, found
out that the word Veltro is but an anagram of the great Reformer's
name!
( 217 )
CHAPTER XLIIL
Lecture continued — the Reformer, Zwingli— superior to all the other*
— his doctrine on the Lord's Supper and Baptism — original author of
Rationalism — followed by Socinus — Analogy between Transubstan-
tiation and the Trinity.
" Of all the men, whom the great crisis of the Refor*
mation called forth, the most clear-sighted, consistent,
and enlightened, was, beyond all question, Zwingli; and
it is among the instances which show how, in all such
revolutions, the thinkers anticipate the actors, that the
mind of Zwingli was already in advance on the road to
religious freedom, at a time when Luther still lingered
in the dark thraldom of Popery. That to the latter, when
once roused, the praise of enterprise and its reward, suc-
cess, were most amply due, cannot be denied. But the
advantage in mind, which Zwingli possessed over him at
starting, he maintained ever after; — not only throughout
their joint living career, but in those important effects
which have, to this day, survived themselves.
" Of the short-lived dogmas, indeed, of Luther, it may
be said, (to borrow an illustration from one of your Eng-
lish writers,) that ' they rose like the rocket, and fell like
the stick ;' while not a single one of those doctrines which
Zwingli either introduced or adopted, — such is the vita-
lity which good sense can infuse into all that it handles,
— has been suffered to pass away from the Protestant
faith ; for, while his rational view of the Eucharist very
early supplanted both the monstrous mystery of Luther
and the evasive Real Absence* of Calvin, his simple and
* The Calvinistic view of the Eucharist is thus explained by a
learned Protestant : " Calvin and Beza will not allow the bread and
wine to be so much as the vehicle of the body and blood, but make
these things not only distinct but very far distant from each other.
They allowed nothing but bare elements to be taken from the cele-
brator, and if men, over and above, receive the body and blood of
Christ, that was to be attributed to their own faith, by which they
imagined they could communicate of the body and blood, at any other
19
( 218 )
unmysterious doctrine respecting Baptism has, for a long
time, been adopted by most Protestant Churches, and has
even found its way, in spite of Catechism and Articles,
among' your subscribing Church of England Divines.
"Nor was it so much by the example he thus set to-
wards clearing away the alleged mysteries of Christiani-
ty, as by the mode of interpreting the text of Scripture
which he adopted for this purpose, that Zwingli esta-
blished his claims to the gratitude of all lovers of the rea-
sonable and the intelligible. The rule laid down by him,
for this great object, and which he fully exemplified in
his own manner of dealing with the Eucharist, is simply
as follows: — never to let the mere literal sense of a pas-
sage of Scripture stand in the way of a rational interpre-
tation of its meaning; but, wherever the words, taken
literally, would imply something irreconcilable to rea-
son, to solve the difficulty by having recourse to a me-
taphorical sense.
" Thus when Christ, for instance, in instituting the
Eucharist, said, taking the bread in his hands, ' This is
my body,' the words, thus solemnly uttered, were accept-
ed, there is no doubt, by the Primitive Christians, in their
strict literal sense,* even as Christ himself uttered them;
and the miracle which he then announced, as one per-
manent, through all future time, in his Church, held its
place in the faith of the whole Christian world for a pe-
riod of no less than fifteen centuries.
place, and in any other religious action, as well as at the Lord's Ta-
ble or at the Sacrament." — Johnson's Unbloody Sacrifice.
The eame industrious inquirer into Christian antiquity, says, in
speaking of the view of this Sacrament now prevalent in the Church
of England: — "But what all ages and Christians before thought too
mean and base to be the whole entertainment for pious souls at the
Table of the Lord, that is, mere bread and wine, without either natu-
ral or spiritual body, and blood joined to them, or accompanying them,
without any divine grace or benediction shed upon them by the Holy
Ghost,— these weak elements, barely set apart for a pious use, our
Arminians and Socinians have substituted for the Medicine of Immor-
tality, the Sanctifying Food, the Heavenly as well as Earthly Thing,
the Spiritual Nourishment, the Divine Substance, the Tremendou*
Mystery of the Ancients.
* To this belief, as being that of the ancient Church, the immortal
Leibnitz thus bears testimony:— Aiunt enim (the Impanatores) cor-
pus Christi exhibere in, cum et sub pane: itaque cum Christus dixit,
hoc est corpus meum, intelligunt quemadmodum si quis sacco ostenso
diceret haec est pecunia. Sed pia antiquitas aperte satis declaravit pa-
rtem mutari in corpas Ckristi, vinum in sanguinem passimque hie vete-
res agnoscunt metastoicheisin quam Latini transubstantionem re&te
verterunt.— Systema Thcolegicum.
( 219 )
u In the just confidence, however, that no antiquity,
however venerable, has any right to establish a prescrip-
tion in favour of fiction anil error, the philosophic mind
of Zwingli at once saw through the misconception which
had, even from the apostles themselves, veiled the mean-
ing of these words, and, by the application of that test of
scriptural truth to which I have just referred, showed
manifestly that, in saying of the bread, • This is my
body,' Christ could have meant only • This signifies? or
* is the sign of my body.'
"It was, I repeat, in his bold adoption and enforcement
of this simple mode of interpretation that Zwingli' s chief
and inappreciable service to the cause of Rationalism lay.
For, though he himself did not extend the principle far-
ther than to the Eucharist and Baptism, it has been, by
later followers in the same naturalizing path, applied to
other mysteries not less untenable. It is, therefore, to
the example iirst set by this Reformer in rejecting all
that was miraculous in the Sacraments, that we owe
that process of simplification which the whole system of
Christianity since has undergone, till, gradually purified
through the successive strainers of Arminianism, Socini-
anism, and Unitarianism, it has, at length, settled into
that clear and, if I may so say, filtered state of belief, un-
obscured by mystery, and unimbittered by controversy,
which is exhibited in the rationalized creed of our Pro-
testant churches at this day.
"In mystery and supernaturalism has ever lain the
strong-hold of priestly influence ; and the two grand and
unfailing sources of this influence, in the creed which
preceded those of the Reformation, were the Real Pre-
sence and the Trinity. In getting rid of the first of
these, the Swiss Reformer not only opened an inlet for
light on this one particular point, where, as Milton said
of his own blindness, ' Wisdom was at one entrance,
quite shut out,' but also, by the principle which he ap-
plied, as a touch-stone to this long-standing miracle, pre-
pared the way for the fate, at no distant day, of its twin
mystery, the Trinity. He was, in fact, suspected of be-
ing, on this latter doctrine also, a Rationalist; insomuch
that Luther, who was too acute not to perceive that all
such mysteries have one common cause, called on him
publicly for an explanation of his orthodoxy on the sub'
ject,
( 220 )
11 It was, indeed, hardly possible these men should be
blind to the sure and natural consequences of the revo-
lutionary principle which they were introducing into re-
ligion; and how clearly Melancthon, at least, foresaw
that the Nicene mystery of the Trinity would, in its turn,
be arraigned at the bar of all-judging Reason, appears
from a passage in one of his letters, where, speaking of
Servetus, he says, ' You know I always feared that there
would be, at last, this outbreak about the Trinity. Good
God! what tragedies will these questions, 'Whether the
Word is a Person, Whether the Spirit is a Person, give
rise to among our descendants!'*
" So conscious was Zwingli himself of the invaluable
prize which he had lighted on, in this discovery of a mode
of interpreting Scripture which would bring its myste-
ries down to the level of human reason, that he used to
call his application of this principle to Christ's words, his
1 Margarita felix,' or ' happy pearl,' — as though with a
sort of joyful anticipation he was looking forward to those
still farther triumphs over error which future cham-
pions of Reason would, with the same simple weapon,
achieve.f
"Nor was there long wanting one to wield this wea-
pon with a degree of courage and effect which will for
ever render his name ' a hissing ' in all priestly ears, —
the learned and excellent Socinus. The very same
principles of interpretation by which Zwingli had been
enabled to relieve Christianity from the portentous incu-
bus of a Real Presence, were made equally available by
Socinus for the subversion of Christ's divinity, and of all
the complex machinery of mysteries connected with that
belief.J In one of his works, on this latter subject, w T e
* ITs£/ t»c T£/*/c? sc i s me semper veritum esse fore ut ' haec ali-
quando erumperent. Bone Deus, quales tragcedias exeitabit hcec quaes-
tio ad Posteros, u evriv u7ro?Tct.? ic o Aoyos u &rrsr VTrcrrxrt; to
nviu/u*. — Lib. 4. Ep. 140.
t In this mode of interpretation, as in every thing else, the ancient
heretics anticipated the modern. Thus Tertuliian tells us (de Resur-
rect. Carnis) that those who opposed, in his time, the doctrine of the
Resurrection of the flesh argued that " the language of Scripture is fre-
quently figurative, and ought to be so considered in this instance; the
resurrection of which it speaks being a moral or spiritual resurrec-
tion."
X The doctrine of Christ's Satisfaction, for instance, is thus got rid
of by Socinus:—" Even though I should find it written, not to say
( 221 )
find the great parent of Socinianism pointing out as well
the analogy that exists between Transubstantiation and
the Trinity as the similar processes of reasoning by which
both are to be rejected ;* and the following are the terms
in which he sums up his parallel:—
11 ' But, as the monstrous and sophistical notion of the
Eucharist has been, by the help of God, so plainly ex-
posed that even children, with reason, laugh at and ex-
plode it, and it is now evident that what was reckoned the
most divine mystery of the Christian religion is the gross-
est idolatry* so we hope that the shocking fictions concern-
ing our God and his Christ which at present are supposed
to be sacred and worthy of the deepest reverence, and to
constitute the principal mysteries of our religion, will,
with God's permission, be so laid open and treated with
such scorn that every one will be ashamed to embrace
them, or even bestow any attention on them.' — Socin.
Opera, tcm. I.
" It is more peculiarly, perhaps, in that branch of the
history of the Reformation which relates to the rise and
progress of Anti-Trinitarian doctrines that we are able
to trace, step by step, the natural working of the princi-
ple" which that revolution, in favour of reason, against au-
thority, introduced. The impossibility of fixing a boun-
once, but frequently, in the Sacred Writings, I still would not believe
it in the sense which you have put on it. For, as that is utterly im-
possible, I would interpret all such passages accordingly, giving them
the sense that suited my views of the matter, as I have done with
many other passages of the Scriptures." — Socin. Lib. 3, de Servatore.
As farther specimens of his manner of applying this rule of interpre-
tation, it need only be mentioned that in his Exposition of the First
Chapter of John's Gospel he overleaps the difficulty which there meets
him in limine by maintaining that John, in calling Jesus the Word of
God, uses at once a metaphor and a metonymy; and the passage (v. 14,)
where it is said that " the Word was made Flesh," he explains away
by showing that the verb ryzviro, which is here translated " was made,"
means sometimes simply " was." " Therefore," he adds, " we ought
not, in this passage, to translate the verb was made flesh, but was flesh.
For it has been sufficiently proved already that by the term, the Word %
must be understood the man who was born of the Virgin Mary, who
could not be made fle^h, but was flesh." — A disciple, it must be owned,
worthy of him who first showed that the words, " This is my body,"
mean 4l This signifies my body !"
* The biographer of Socinus, Toulmin, in defending this mode of
44 having recourse to a figurative and more lax sense of all such pas-
sages as otherwise assert things derogatory to the divine perfections,"
adds, " There is no other way of evading the force of the Papist's argu-
ment for Transubsiantiathn,frem the express words of the Institution,"
19*
( 222 )
uary, at which Reason, once started on her inquisitorial
career, shall content to rein in her speed, could not be
more strikingly exemplified than in those successive
stages of reform by which the dignity of Christ's nature
was lowered from its divine station, losing, at every
stage, some attribute of glory that once belonged to it, —
first, to the subordinate, but still heavenly rank assigned
to it by the Arians; then, by a farther fall, to the region,
half heavenly, half earthly, of Socinianism; and from
thence down, by rapid descent, to the entirely human so-
lution of the whole mystery, in the creed of the Uni-
tarian.
»»H$@
CHAPTER XLIV.
Lecture continued. — Anti-Trinitarian doctrines among the Reform-
ers. — Valentinus Gentilis. — Socinianism — its weak points. — Pro-
gress of Anti-Trinitarianism— the Holy Spirit, not a Person, but an
Attribute.
" Among those bolder speculators who ventured, early
in the progress of the Reformation, to express openly
their dissent from the received doctrine of the Trinity,
the only one whose opinions on the subject seem to have
been stated clearly, either by himself or others, was Va-
lentinus Gentilis. This Italian Reformer (one of the
scions from that nursery of Anti-Trinitarianism, esta-
blished in the year 1546, at Vicenza) though he was for
despoiling the Saviour of his Godhead, still allowed him
to have been a super-angelic spirit, born before all worlds,
who became incarnate in the human body of Jesus, with
the view of effecting the salvation of man.
" The next step, in the descending scale, was the doc-
trine of Socinus, who, rejecting, as a notion unsanctioned
by scriptural evidence, all belief in the pre-existence
and superior nature of Christ, held that he was, by na-
ture, man, though of miraculous birth, — being conceived
of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, without the in-
tervention of any human being. Thus being properly,
( 223 )
said Socinus, the Son of God, and endued with divine
wisdom and power, Christ was sent, with supreme autho-
rity, on an embassy to mankind ; and, after his death and
resurrection, becoming", like a God, immortal, received
from the Father all power in heaven and earth, having
all things, with the exception of God himself alone,
placed under his feet. To a being invested with this di-
vine sovereignty it seemed naturally to follow that di-
vine worship was due; and Socinus, in according such
worship, was far more consistent than a great number of
his followers,* who, while they hesitated not to believe
that a human creature could have been elevated to all
this God-like sway, yet, with a reservation not very in-
telligible, refused to invoke so mighty a sovereign in
their prayers.
" It required, in truth, but a very little farther advance
of the rationalizing principle to supersede, by some more
plausible scheme, the well-meant, but wholly untenable
system of Socinus, who, by this transfer of all the power
of heaven and earth into subordinate hands, made of
Christ a sort of Maire du Palais and degraded the Al-
mighty into a Faineant. One of his disciples, Palseologus,
had suggested, — evidently as a means of escape from the
grand absurdity of their system, — that though such power
might have been intrusted to Christ, during his stay on
earth and before the fall of Jerusalem, he had, since his
death, resigned all into the hands of the Father, and no
longer himself directed the concerns of his kingdom.
This easy escape, however, out of an absurdity, which
was even more gross than that of the believers in the
God-man,f was rejected indignantly by Socinus, who,
* The same spirit of variation and dissension which has marked
the course of every other branch of Protestantism we find also among
the Socinians. After the arrival of Socinus in Poland, the Unitarians
there formed thirty-two distinct societies, which had, as we are told,
scarcely any common principle but this, that Jesus Christ was not the
true God. — Dictionnaire des Heresies.
Those who take an interest in the history of Unitarian doctrines
will find their curiosity gratified by the instructive sketch of the pro-
gress of Socinianism which Dr. Rees has prefixed to his edition of the
Racovian Catechism.
t The absurdity of the scheme of Socinus is thus sneered at by a
brother infidel — " And though the Socinians disown this practice [of
allowing seeming contradictions in religion,] I am mistaken if either
they or the Arians can make their notions of a dignified and Creature-
God capable of Divine worship appear more reasonable than the extra-
( 224 )
'with the self-opinion characteristic of a system-mohgef*
Still persevered in his own views ; and the following ex-
tract from his answer to Palseologus, in which, it will be
perceived, he disposes of all the arrangements of the
iDivine government as familiarly as he would any matters
of mere earthly concernment, will show, at once, the dif-
ficulties of the system which he wished to substitute for
the Trinity, and the grossly human hypothesis by which
he endeavoured to get rid of them.
" Thus does he argue with his disciple: —
" ' If Christ be not removed to any distant place, from
whence he cannot himself govern his kingdom; if he be
not hindered by other engagements; if, lastly, he live for
ever and be not fallen into inactive sleep, it is most weak
to suppose that he hath resigned his kingdom to the Fa-
ther, especially when the sacred Scriptures say not a
word of it.
"If you allow Christ's care o£ his kingdom before the
destruction of Jerusalem, as is very plain, for what reason
should you deny it after this, and assert that he has re-
signed it to his Father ! Is it because Christ has perhaps
since removed to some remote place from whence he may
not be able to govern his kingdom, or is so engaged in
other concerns as to have no leisure for this office ! or
does he sleep during thi3 interval ; for I cannot imagine
that you will be so mad as to sav that he is ao-ain dead.**
Socin. Opera, Tom. II.
"This, from a worshipper of the Power of Reason*
was, it must be owned, but a sorry offering at her shrine.
But even the failures of such bold adventurers, in the
cause of truth, have their use; — the very wrecks they
leave become beacons for the guidance of those who fol-
low them. The opinion,! that Christ was neither to be
worshipped nor invoked, was but a forerunner of those
Vagancies of other sects, touching the article of the Trinity. "—Toland's
■ChrisUaviti 1 not vtysterious.
* Who could believe that it was of a man capable of uttering such
blasphemies that the following eulogium was pronounced? — "High,
most deservedly high as those great ^Reformers stand, Luther, Zuin-
glius, and Calvin, in the Book of Fame, Faustus Socinus will be found
to rank as high in the Book of Life, which is of more consequence."—
Ideological Repository. Vol. I.
t If we may believe his persecutor, Socinus, (for, however strange
it may appear, these apostles of free-thinking have almost all been
£ers?cutors) David went so far as to assert that "it was the same
( 225 )
farther curtailments of his dignity which were soon, in
the natural course of such sifting inquiries, to take place.
It was now found that his miraculous conception was un-
supported by any scriptural authority, besides that of the
introductory Chapters of the Gospels of Matthew and
Luke; and this evidence, on the subject, a bold and
unscrupulous spirit of criticism, which had now enlisted
itself in the serviee of Rationalism, pronounced to be
spurious.*
" The simple humanity of Christ's nature being thus
clearly established, all that contusion between celestial
and earthly natures, which had so long puzzled and
shocked ail reflecting Christians, was, to the great relief
of common sense, effectually got rid of; while, by a si-
milar verdict, or rather series of verdicts, the third mem-
ber of the Trinity was disposed of in the same rational
and satisfactory manner. By a scale of reduction, even
more summary and rapid, the Holy Spirit was, in like
manner, lowered, till, from its high and substantial sta-
tion, as a constituent Person of the Godhead, it came to
be stripped, at last, of all claims to be considered a Per-
son, at all ; — the conclusion to which the Socinian Re-
formers came, on this point, being that the Holy Ghost
implies the Power and Energy of God, and is, according
to the Scriptures, not a person, but an attribute.!
" In this outline of the course of one of the great
branches of the Reformation, may be traced the working,
step by step, of that naturalizing principle which has
thins t0 invoke Jesus Christ as to pray to the Virgin Mary and other
dead saints." — Socin. Opera, Tom. 2.
* Some of the English Unitarians, content with rejecting only the
two first chapters of Matthew, retain those of Luke, in which the pas-
sage relating to the miraculous conception has been explained by one
of their most learned writers, as not necessarily supposing that there
was any thing supernatural in the conception of Jesus. — Unitarianism
the Doctrine of the Gospel, by Dr. Carpenter.
t After referring to numerous authorities on this point, one of the
Editors of the Racovian Catechism (Wissawatius) thus concludes : —
" It is most safe, therefore, adhering to the proper import of the word,
to believe the Holy Spirit to be the power and energy of God, and conse-
quently his gift, as is clearly revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures,
both of the Old and New Testament." There was, on this point, how-
ever, some difference of opinion among these sectaries, and the Father
of the English Unitarians, John Biddl.-, was one of those who, as we
are told, " took the Holy Spirit to be a Person, Chief of the Heavenly
Spirits, Prime Minister of God and Christ, and therefore called the
Spirit, by way of excellence."— Brief History of the Unitarians, 1687.
( 226 )
more or less operated, throughout the progress of them
nil, and must, sooner or later, bring all to the same sim-
plified result. And for these happy effects, — still happier
in the farther consequences yet to spring from them,—
we are indebted, primarily, of course, to that grand prin-
ciple of the Reformation, which brought matters of faith
within the jurisdiction of Reason, but secondarily, and
above all others, to him who asserted that principle in its
fullest extent, the bold and philosophic-minded Zwingli.
" In fact, by none of those who co-operated with him
Was the spirit of their mighty cause maintained with half
Such consistency, while living, or transmitted with half
such effect to other times. Luther himself was, as I have
shown, disqualified both by his temper and his supersti*
tion* for leaving behind him any durable monument but
his name; while Melancthon, though hurried forward
in the foaming wake of his leader, still sighed for the
safe moorings of the Church, and was, at heart, half Pa-
pist, f
" Nor less unfit, though in a very different point of
View, was Calvin, for the task of reconciling religion to
reason, and establishing a faith such as men of sense
* To the picture of Luther's already presented in these pages, I can-
not help adding two more touches, — one, from his own unerring hand,
— which the above remark of the Professor suggests to me. In a pre-
face to his works, written but a short time before his death, the Re-
former says, " When I engaged in the cause of the Reformation I was
a most frantic Papist; so intoxicated, nay, so drenched in the dogmas
of the Pope, that I was quite ready to "put to death, if I had been
able, or to co-operate with those who would have put to death,
persons who refused obedience to the Pope, in any single arti-
cle." That he carried this amiable temper with him into the new ex-
treme which he espoused cannot be doubted; and I shall only add to
the specimens already given of the tolerance of his spirit the account
which Seckendorf, the able apologist both of Lutheranism and its au-
thor, has left on record respecting the dispositions of his hero towards
the Jews. M It was Luthor's opinion, 11 says Seckendorf, '• that their
synagogues should be levelled with the ground, their houses destroyed,
their books of prayer and of the Talmud, and of the Old Testament bo
taken from them, that their Rabbis should be forbidden to teach, and
forced by hard labour to get their bread," &c. &c.
f The Professor alludes, no doubt, to Melancthon's opinions in fa-
vour of the Primacy of the Pope, as well as his decidedly Catholic lan-
guage, on the subject of the Eucharist, in the Apology for the Confes-
sion of Augsburg. It is curious enough that the very same passage,
from the ancient Canon of the Mass, (implying expressly a change
of substance, in the elements, after consecration) which gave such
scandal by its admission into Melancthon's Apology, was adopted af-
terwards into the Liturgy which Charles I. endeavoured to force on the
people of Scotland.
( 227 )
could adopt. After rejecting,— or rather juggling away,*
— the oldest mystery of Christianity, he introduced others,,
entirely unknown to antiquity, in its place; and, while
that which he cast off was but chargeable with being of-
fensive to human reason, what he adopted implies im-
peachment of the character of God himself. For what
less can be said of his mystery of Election and Reproba-
tion — a mystery into whose dark recesses none can look
without shuddering, and which would make of the A^
mighty a Being such as even his own Chosen could not
love.f
" To Zwingli, in short, alone, of all that memorable
band, can the combined qualities required to constitute
a great Reformer be attributed, Enterprising, but tenv
pcrate, keeping the speculative in subordination to the
* By no other word than "juggle " could the Professor have half go
justly described the sort of conjuror's process by which Calvin, in his
mere mockery of a Sacrament, first lays before us the " proper subr
stance" (as he proclaims it) of Christ's body; assuring us that it is as
substantially present to the communicant as was the Holy Spirit un-
der the form of a dove, and then, presto, by a sudden wave of the wand,
converting this real presence into an absence, and showing that the
receiver and the thing received are as distant from each other as earth
is from heaven 1
It is a strong proof, however, of the force of our Saviour's words, in
instituting the Eucharist, that, while they compelled Luther, against
his will, to believe in a Real Presence, they forced Calvin, with no
less reluctance, to endeavour to seem to believe in it;— though, after
all, the true explanation of Calvin's doctrine on this point, is to be
found in the profane pun of his disciple Beza, who said that the body
of Christ " non magis esse in Ccma quam in Cee7tq."
t The following concise and just statement of the fearful hypothesis
of Calvinism is from Bishop Copleston's clearly reasoned treatise on
the subject. — " We cannot, indeed, conceive how a Being who knows
all things that will come to pass should subject another being of his
own creating to trial; that he should expose this being to temptation,
knowing what the issue will be, and yet speak to him before, and treat
him afterwards, as if he did not know it." I have already shown
(page 187) into what frightful blasphemies the natural consequence of
this doctrine betrayed Luther and other supporters of it.
With equal conciseness another necessary consequence of Calvinism
was put by a certain Landgrave of Turing, a great patron of the Re-
formed Doctrines, who, on being admonished by his friends of the dis-
solute course of life he was leading, made answer, " Si prsedestinatus
sum, nulla peccata poterunt mini regnum ccelorum auferre ; si praesci-
tus, nulla opera mini illud valebunt conferre." " If I am one of the
Elect, no crimes that I may commit can deprive me of the kingdom of
heaven ; if I am one of the Reprobate, no works that [ can perform will
avail any thing towards bestowing it on me." — " An objection (adds
Dr. Heylin, by whom the circumstance is mentioned) not more old than
common, but such, I must confess, to which I never found a satisfactory
answer from the pen of Supralapsarian or Sublapsarian, witfci n tfa
email compass of my reading."— Quinquarticular History,
( 228 )
practical, and while throwing his energies into the pre-
sent, still looking forward to the interests of the future^
— firm in his own views and purposes, yet tolerant of the
opposing opinions of others, — this great man not only,
while living, showed himself worthy of the free cause for
which he died, but, in dying, bequeathed a legacy of his
spirit to mankind in the rational mode of interpreting the
Scriptures which he taught, and the consequent release
from mystery, and its attendant, Priestcraft, which the
application of that golden rule has since achieved for us.
" To the slow, but sure, working of this one simple
principle, we are indebted, I repeat, for the state of the
Christian w T orld at this moment. Hence, that philosophic
calm, or, — as fanatics choose to denominate it, — Indif-
ferentism, which has succeeded to the bitter and vehement
controversies that once convulsed all Europe. Hence,
the deniers of Christ's divinity, whose fate, in former
times, would have been the dungeon or the stake, may
now deny, with impunity, — may even pass muster as
Christians, and take their station in the rear-ranks of Be-
lief unmolested.*
" Even into regions that might have been supposed the
least accessible to such light, the subtle influence of this
principle has yet unerringly worked its way ; for, look to
your boasted Church of England, — who could ever, in the
days of an Abbot or a Laud, have foreseen the possibility
of such phenomena, among her Bishops, as a Hoadly and
a Clayton If What prophet would have then dared to
* The position of Ifnitarianism on the scale of Christian belie/is well
described by the late Bishop Heber, who calls it a system which " leans
on the utmost verge of Christianity, and which has been in so many
instances a stepping stone to simple Deism." The accomplished Bishop
would, no doubt, have been shocked to be told (what is, nevertheless,
but too true) that his own religion was but the first of the stepping-
stones in this path.
t Of the Essay on Spirit which this distinguished Prelate of the
Church of Ireland published under his own name, in 1751, the zealous
Whitaker thus speaks :— " This folly (of Arianism) has been recently
revived by what appears a monster of absurdity to these later ages, an
Arian Bishop of the Church. Bishop Clayton revived it in his Essay
on Spirit."
It has been said that Clayton was only guilty of the imprudence of
lending his name to this work, which was, in reality, the production
of a young clergyman of his diocess. But the hostility of this bishop,
not only to the Athanasian, but the Nicene Creed, and the bold effort
which he made, by appealing to the house of Lords on the subject, to
have both Creeds expunged from the Liturgy of the Irish Church, show
( 229 )
predict that a day would yet arrive, when the mark of
Arius would be seen peeping from under the mitres of
the Establishment, and even Socinianism be allowed to
touch, with her disenchanting wand, the long* vaunted
orthodoxy of the Church of England Sacraments' 1 *
^■^Hry^ ^^ ^44***""
CHAPTER XLV.
Lecture continued. — Effects of the relationizing mode of interpretation
as exhibited in Germany. — Contrasts between past and present state
of Protestantism. — Inspiration of the Scriptures rejected. — Authen-
ticity of books of the Old and New Testament questioned, &c. &c.
"We have seen that, even within the guarded pre-
cincts of the Church of England Establishment, — pledged,
as it is, by Articles, and moreover bribed, by rich rewards,
into orthodoxy, — the natural consequences of the primal
principle of Protestantism have, in many instances, shown
themselves, and would, doubtless, under a system of
Church Government, less appealing to strong worldly
considerations, have been still more fully, or I should
rather say, more openly developed.
" But, — to bring home at once to the scene of its most
extensive and signal results, this inherent and ever work-
ing principle of the Reformation, — need I point elsewhere
than to my own coimtry, Germany, for manifestations of
that though not, perhaps, the author of the Essay in question, he con-
curred sufficiently with it, in spirit, to be held answerable for all its
heterodoxy.
* In charging the Hoadlyan scheme of the Sacrament with Socian
ianism, the Professor but echoes the language of one of the few Prelates
of the Church of England, who have thought proper to declare them-
selves against this now prevalent opinion among the members of the
Establishment. In a sermon, preached before the University of Ox-
ford, the late Bishop Cleaver, after impressing upon his hearers the
intimate connexion which subsists between the importance of the
Lord's Supper and the dignity of Christ's nature,— insomuch that any
depreciation of the high benefits of the former is, in effect, a denial of
the divinity of the latter,— proceeds to say that the fame acquired in
certain quarters by Bishop Hoadly's plain Account of the SacTament
was "for the sake of its connexion with Socinian notions." 1
20
( 230 )
its activity and its power; can we ask any more con-
vincing proof of the efficiency of that one simple doctrine
which taught that the Scriptures are to be interpreted
according to the light of Reason, than is afforded in the
deep, radical, and all-pervading change which it has
worked throughout the whole system of religious belief in
Germany !*
" Among that people, who once, in their zeal for the in-
fallibility of Scripture, maintained that the whole of it had
been dictated verbatim by the Holy Spirit,f — that the
very Hebrew points and accents of the Old Testament
w T ere inspired, and, still farther, that even those formularies
and Confessions of Faith, every line of which teemed with
materials for wrangling, were, one and all, suggested by
the same Heavenly prompter, — among that very people,
so vast a change has the reasoning principle wrought,!.
* " It needed not be added (says the Rev. Mr. Rose, Christian Ad-
vocate in the University of Cambridge) that the Protestant Church of
Germany is the mere shadow ofaname. For this abdication of Christianity
was not confined to either the Lutheran or Calvinist profession, but ex-
tended its baleful and withering influence with equal force over each. ,r
— Sermons.
Similar to this is the account given by a German writer, Baron
Starke : — " Protestantism," he says, " is so degenerated that little more
than its mere name subsists at the present day. At all events, it must
be owned it has undergone so many changes, that, if Luther and Me-
lancthon were to rise again, they would not know the Church which
was the work of their industry." — Entret. Philosoph.
f " Such an exaggerated theory of inspiration (says Mr. Pusey) did
undoubtedly contribute mainly to shake in Germany the belief in the
doctrine itself, since the whole seemed to depend upon this faulty
theological system. It was a fancied idea of expediency, in support of the
main Protestant position against the Romanists, which gave rise to this
system among them. Deeply have their descendants to regret their
short-sighted policy."
Thus was party-spirit at the bottom of all, during the first struggles
of Protestantism. Having set up the Bible, as their sole guide, in op-
position to the Catholics, to uphold its entire inspiration, in every
word and syllable, became a point not so much of religion as of honour
with the party ; and the consequence has been, according to the or-
dinary course of such extremes, that the descendants of those very
men who cried up the Bible as every thing, have now succeeded, as we
see, in degrading the Bible to almost nothing.
X The following extract from the Sermons of Mr. Rose, — the gentle-
man to whom ^e owe our first full insight into the state of Protes-
tantism in Germany, — contains, in a few words, such a general view
of the subject as may save me the trouble of referring to his authority
for the details:— " The rationalizing Divines of Germany are bound
by no law but their own fancies ; some are more and some less ex-
travagant ; but I do them no injustice after this declaration in saying,
that the general inclination and tendency of their opinions (more
or less forcibly acted on) is this,— that, in the New Testament we shall
( 231 )
that they now reject all supposition of inspiration what-
ever, and regard the whole of the Scriptures themselves,
from beginning to end, as a series of venerable, but hu-
man, and, therefore, fallible documents.
" In that same country whose theologians once prized
the Old Testament as an equally valuable repository of
Christian faith with the New, — seeing under the veil of
its types the substance of the Gospel, and in its prophe-
cies an inverted history of the mission of Christ* — in
that country a more inquiring and discerning theology
has now severed all such connexion between the two
codes. Instead of finding Christ every where in the pages
of the Old Testament, these divines (as was once ob-
jected to Crotius f) find him no where ; — the prophecies
hitherto assumed as having reference to the Saviour, be-
ing meant really to refer to the future state of the Jews,
and having, consequently, no farther connexion with
Christ than as accommodated by himself and others to
his mission. The many wonderful instances which the
Hebrew Scriptures record of the direct interposition of
find only the opinions of Christ and the Apostles adapted to the age in
which they lived, and not eternal truths; that Christ himself had
neither the design, nor the power of teaching any system which waa
to endure; that, when he taught any enduring truth, as he occasion-
ally did, it was without being aware of its nature ; that the Apostles
understood still less of real religion ; that the whole doctrine, both of
Christ and his Apostles, as it is directed to the Jews alone, so it was
gathered in fact from no other source than the Jewish Philosophy ;
that Christ himselfjsrred and his Apostles spread his errors, and that,
consequently, no one of his doctrines is to be received on their au-
thority ; but that, without regard to the authority of the Books of
Scripture, and their asserted divine origin, each doctrine is to be ex-
amined according to the principles of right reason, before it is allowed
to be divine."
* " They held," says Mr. Pusey, in speaking of those former theo-
logians of Germany, " that all the distinguishing doctrines of Chris-
tianity were, even to the Jews, as much revealed in the Old Testa-
ment as in the New, and that the knowledge of these doctrines was
a? necessary to their salvation as ours." He then adds, that "No
error seems to have prepared so much for the subsequent reaction, in
which all prophecy was discarded, all doctrine considered to be preca-
rious. " — Historical Inquiry.
To such a length were these notions carried at that period (about
1640) that the celebrated Lutheran, Calixtus, was accused of Arianism
and Judaism, because he thought, that the doctrine of the Trinity was
not revealed with equal clearness in the Old as in the New Testament ;
nor was, under the old dispensation, as necessary to salvation.
| It was said, with reference to their different modes of interpreta-
tion, that M Cocceius found Christ every where in the Old Testament,
and Grotius found him no where."
( 232 )
God in this world, are no longer looked upon as auglit
but Jewish images and dreams : those historical narra-
tives, for whose truth, and even verbal accuracy, the
Holy Spirit, as their dictator, used formerly to be held
accountable, are now explained away, as allegories, or
rejected, as forgeries ; and even that most important of
all, on whose truth so much of Christianity depends, the
Mosaic History of the Creation and Fall of Man, has
been shown to bear on its face the features of mythologic
fiction.*
" While thus of the Old Testament our views have
undergone such a change, some of our illusions, respect-
ing the New, have been no less thoroughly dissipated.
The notion, indulged in so fondly by our ancestors, not
only of the inspiration of the whole volume, but of the
uniform purity of its language, throughout, could not
stand before the progress of an improving spirit of criti-
cism ; and, accordingly, — imitating rather the boldness of
Luther himself than the blind homage paid by his Church
to every syllable of Scripture, — our Divines have dealt
as unceremoniously with most parts of the New Testa-
ment as did the great, Reformer himself with the Epistle
of St. James. They have shown that, in most of the
Epistles, gross errors and interpolations abound, — the
latter traceable chiefly to about the beginning of the se-
cond century ; while not only the Epistles but the Gospel
attributed to St. John, have been proved by Bretschneider
to have been the productions of some Gnostic of the same
period, f
" Nor is this all ; for even the trust-worthiness of the
remaining three Gospels has been called seriously into
question by a most important discovery which we owe,
* On this point, the German Divines have not had all the Ration-
alism to themselves, as the Rev. author of the "Free Inquiry" was
even beforehand with these critics in ridiculing the notion or " a Ser-
pent's speaking and reasoning."— See MiddletoiV s Essay on this subject,
and also his Letter to Dr. Waterlavd.
t In the Preface to this work, Bretschneider justifies his object in
writing it, both by the example of Luther and the principles of the
Evangelical Church.— "Earn enim judicn libertatem non solum anti-
quissima sibi vindicavit ecclesia, sed ea quoque usus est Lutherus,
eademque denique principiisecclesise evangelicffi est quam convenient-
issima." Many other German theologians, besides Bretschneider, and,
among the rest, Cludius, (Superintendent of the Lutheran Church, at
Hildesheim!) have taken similar views as to tb.8 snuriousness of the
writings attributed to St. John.
( 233 )
in the first instance, to the sagacity of our learned Mi-
chaelis, hut which others, since his time, have brought
still farther into light. The fact proved, as it appears,
from clear internal evidence, by these critics, is, that the
Three first Gospels are not, in reality, the works of the
writers whose names they bear, but merely transcriptions
or translations of some anterior documents.* To the proofs
brought by our Rationalists of this fact, there has been,
as yet, no satisfactory answer from the orthodox: and
thus the minds of all thinking Christians are left to the
painful doubt whether the same hands that copied may
not also have interpolated, and whether Protestants may
not find that their sole guide of faith, is, after all, but a
dubious and fallible dependence, without those lights of
tradition, by which, conjointly with the Scriptures, the
Catholic Church has, through all ages, steered her course.
We know,/rom undoubted evidence, that, about the end
of the second Century, both the forgery of new Gospels
and the adulteration of old ones prevailed throughout the
Christian world, to a very great extent ; and the latter
species of fraud, if we may trust their mutual accusations,
was, in an equal degree, practised both by heretics and
by the orthodox ; — ■ Ego Marcionis adfirmo adulteratum,
(says Tertullian) Marcion meum.'
" But, however ultimately, the question respecting the
genuineness of these documents may be decided, the ra-
tional mode in which we now interpret both their facts
and their doctrines completely purges them of nil that
fanaticism and mystery from which Superstition has hith-
erto drawn her chief aliment ; and our method of solving
all such unsoundnesses and inconsistencies in doctrine,
is, like most methods that are found eificient in their
* By Berthold, one of those critics who assert the existence of a
■common document, it is maintained that this original of the three first
Gospels was written in Aramaic. The Epistles of St. Paul, too, — as
well as, indeed, all the other Epistles,— he asserts, in like manner, to
be merely translations from the Aramaic ; so that, as an able writer
in the British Critic has remarked, on the subject, " instead of the
good old-fashioned notion that the New Testament is a collection of
works composed by the persons whose names they bear, and who
wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost, we must
now believe that the original narrator of the Gospel History was an
unknown person ; and that the Gospels and Epistles, which we read
in Greek, are merely translations made by some persons whose names
are lost, and who betray themselves by several blunders in the work
which they undertook."— July, 1828.
20*
( 234 )
operation, simple. It being admitted that, on some points,-—
and, among others, for instance, demoniacal possessions, —
Christ accommodated himself to the prejudices and super-
stition of his hearers, we think it warrantable, wherever his
precepts are found to jar with sound reason, to seek in the
same temporizing policy the solution of such difficulties.
M The doctrinal part of the New Testament being thus
sifted of its irrational ism , there remained but the task of
reconciling to the laws of reason and nature, those devia-
tions from the course of both which its recorded miracles
present ; and this not very easy service our theologians
have attempted, with success as various as the modes
which they have adopted for their purpose, — sometimes
resolving the whole wonder into a mere exaggeration of
natural phenomena; sometimes showing, as in the in-
stance of Jesus walking upon the sea, that to a preposi-
tion, mistranslated, the entire miracle owes its origin ;*
and sometimes even (as was the case in the time of Mes-
rner's celebrity) attributing the wonderful cures per-
formed by Christ to the effects of Animal Magnetism. f
In short, by one explanation or another, all that is mira-
culous in the relations of the New Testament has been
evaporated away effectually, leaving nothing but the
mere human realities behind.
" Thus, of all that imposing apparatus of miracles, —
which, having been conjured up as a necessary appendage
•
* According to this solution of the miracle, which we owe to a Pro-
fessor of Theology, Paulus, the words Wl tkv S«X*cr<r2y ^s£/r*TCuvr*
are to be translated M walking by the sea,' 1 instead of " walking on
the sea." Plis explanation of'the miracle of the tribute-money and
the fish is equally worthy of a Protestant Professor. "What sort of
miracle is it," asks Paulus, " which is commonly found here ? I will
not say a miracle of about 16 or 20 groschen. (2s. 6rf.) for the greatness
of th.3 value dors not make the greatness of the miracle. But it may
be observed, that as, first, Jesus received, in general, support from
many person? 'Judas kept the stock, John xii. 6.) in the same way as
the Rabbis lived from such donations ; as, secondly, so many pious
women provided for the wants of Jesus; as, finally, the claim did not
occur at any remote place, but at Capernaum, where Christ had
friends, a miracle for about a dollar would certainly have been super-
fluous. ' For a farther account of this precious Theologian, see Rose,
{State of Pretest aviiim in Germany.
t In speaking of the enthusiasts for animal magnetism, who went
so far as to attribute to it the raising of the apparition of Samuel hy
the Pythoness, the Abbe Gregoi re says, "Comme les neologues Pro-
testans, ils nppliquent a. d'autres fahs surnaturels racontea dans la
Bible rette thaumaturgie medicaie qui tendroit a demolir tout !e
plan de la re vela' ion."
( 235 )
to Christ's Divinity, should now, along with that Divi-
nity, he suffered to pass away, — the only one that still re-
tains a hold on our faith is the great miracle of the Re-
surrection, to which, in despite of all reasoning, human
nature still clings, and which, therefore, but few of our
theologians have yet ventured to call in question.*
" Into a detail of the various doctrines, reputed hith-
erto as the very essence of Christianity, which have al-
ready fallen before the all-conquering march of Ration-
alism, it is not my intention here to enter. Suffice it to
say, throughout that region, — including Switzerland f
within its circle, — which saw the birth, the triumphs, the
excesses of the Reformation ; that region, where intole-
rance once rioted over its victims; where Pestelius was
condemned to death by the lawyers of Wittenberg for no
other reason than that he differed with them on the sub-
ject of the Eucharist; where Calvin brought Servetus to
the stake, and the Bernese Reformers beheaded Gentilis,
for opinions scarce more heterodox, on the Trinity, than
those of Whiston and Dr. Samuel Clarke; — through that
whole region, not only the Trinity, but every doctrine at
all connected with it, the superior nature of Christ, the
* Among these, is Paulus, who, in his Commentary, asserts, that
Christ did not really die, but suffered a fainting fit. One of the fa-
thers of Rationalism, Semler, held the Resurrection to be a sort of
poetic mythus, which was to be received in some moral or allegorical
sense ; and YVegschneider says, that though Christ seemed to the by-
standers to expire, yet, after a few hours, being given up to the sedu-
lous care of his friends, he returned to life on the third day.
Mr. Pusey looks upon it as one of those symptoms of a returning
reverence for Christianity which he is sanguine enough to perceive in
the present state of the Germans, that the doctrine of the Resurrection
has resumed its place in their creed. " Many," he says, " I heard of,
others I saw in Germany, who had formerly been cold Rationalists, but
who were now in different degrees approximating to the fulness of
Christianity. From the stage in which the one great miracle of our
Saviour's Resurrection was held as the basis of Christian revelation,
from this stage onwards there was progress. — Historical Inquiry.
f "The ministers of Geneva," says a Protestant writer, Grenus,
"have already passed the unchangeable barrier. They have held out
the hand of fellowship to Deists and to the enemies of the faith. They
even blush to make mention, in their Catechisms, of Original Sin,
without which the Incarnation of the Eternal Word is no longer ne-
cessary."
Rousseau, in his Lettres de la Montagne, gives much the same ac-
count of the Genevese of his own timn : — " When asked," he says, " if
Jesus Christ is God, they do not dare to answer. When asked, what
mysteries they admit, they -still do not dare to answer A
philosopher casts upon them a rapid glance and penetrates them at
once,— he sees Ui^y are Aiians, Socinians."
( 236 )
Personality of the Holy Spirit, the Incarnation ,* the
Atonement with its attendant mysteries, have all, by the
great mass of Protestants, of all denominations, been cast
off, as fictions and absurdities, from their creed.
" Finally, — to close and crown this series of striking
contrasts, which the Germany of the nineteenth century
presents to the Germany of the sixteenth and seventeenth,
— I need but point to the extraordinary coalition which
has, within these few years, taken place between the two
principal ereeds into which the Reformation in its first
progress, branched. Of all Churches, perhaps, that ever
existed, the most fiercely intolerant has been the Lu-
theran,! — not only in persecuting, imprisoning, and even
excluding from salvation, as heretics,! the members of
her sister Church, the Reformed or Calvinist, but also in
nurturing within her own bosom such a nest of discord §
as had never before been engendered by theologic hate,
— Ultra Lutherans, and Melancthonians refusing each
* We find clear work made of all these mysteries by a German di-
vine, Cannabich, who, in a " Review of the ancient and new Dogmas
of the Christian Faith," coolly sets aside the Trinity. Original Sin, Jus-
tification, the Satisfaction of Christ, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper,
as taught in his own Church. This levelling divine, (who held one of
the highest dignities in the Lutheran Church) thus speaks of the Tri-
nity : — •' The dogma of the Trinity may be removed, without scruple,
from religious instruction, as being a new doctrine, without founda-
tion and contrary to reason ; but it must be done with great circum-
spection, that weak Christians may not take scandal at it, or a pie-
text to reject all religion!"
f " De toutes les sectes du Christianisme," says Rousseau, with just
severity, " la Lutherienne me paroit la plus inconsequente. Elle a
reuni comme a plaisir contre elle seule toutes les objections qu'elles se
font Tune a I'autre. Elle est en particulier intolerante comme l*Egli«e
Romaine; mais le grand argument de celle-ci lui manque; elle est in-
tolerante sans savoir pourquoi." — Lettres de la Montague.
\ Thus, a learned Professor, Fecht, in a work, ,l De Beatitudine Mor-
tuorum in Domino," expressed his opinion that all but Lutherans, and
certainly all the Reformed, were excluded from salvation. But to Lu-
therans he asserted that the term " der Selige," or ; - died in the Lord,"
ought in all cases to be applied, even though they had led notoriously
ungodly and profligate lives, and on their death-beds had not given
the least indication of repentance. — See Mr. Pusey' s Historical Inquiry ;
§ Among the instances of Lutherans persecuted by Lutherans, 1 shall
only enumerate Strigel, imprisoned three years for maintaining that
man was not merely passive in the work of his conversion, — Harden-
berg, deposed and banished from Saxony for only approximating to the
Reformed doctrines on the Communion,— Peucer, Mel ancthon's son-
in-law, imprisoned ten years, for espousing the cause of his father-in-
law's followers, and Cracau, put to the torture for the same Anti-Lu-
tlieran offence.
( 237 )
other the rites of communion and burial,* — Flacianists
against Strigelians, — Osiandrians against Stancarians,f —
each of these parties hating its opposite as inveterately
as all agreed in detesting their common enemy the Cal-
vinists. Yet this very Church, born, as it was, and nursed
in discord, till strife seemed the very element, the prin-
ple, of its existence, has, within these few years (thanks
to the becalming power of Rationalism) sunk quietly into
coalition with its ancient foe, and now shares amicably
with it the same temples, the same ministers, and the
same Sacraments !}
" To the Eternal glory of reason, the world now be-
holds the edifying spectacle of two religions once so mu-
tually hostile, that each would have freely granted salva-
tion to be attainable any where but within the hated pale
of the other, now quiescently subsiding into a partnership
of belief, — with creeds simplified, it is true, on both sides,
to so rational an extent, as to leave them, even were they
so disposed, but few dogmas to dispute about, J and with
* The origin of this controversy was the extravagant assertion of
Flacius, that "original sin was the substance of human nature."
f By Osiander it was maintained, that our justification through Christ
was derived from his divine nature solely, while Stancarus ascribed
the work of justification to his human nature alone. Thus did these
" graceless bigots fight :" for ever in extremes, and for ever in the dark.
X One of the compromises by which this strange union has been ef-
fected is not a little curious. The Lutherans had been accustomed,
like the Catholics, to use a small wafer, whole; the Calvinists bread,
which they broke. They now use, in common, a large Lutheran wafer,
which is broken, like the Calvinistic bread.
We have here a type, if I may so say, of the fate of German Protes-
tantism altogether. It was respecting the substance in the Eucharist
that these churches first fell into variance, and now a mere compro-
mise as to the wafer has been sufficient to bring them together again !
Well might, the Abbe de la Mennais say, " Le Protestantisme fatigue
s'est endormi sur des mines"
§ As a confirmation of all that is here stated by the Professor, I give
the following passage from an English traveller, Mr. Jacob, who, in
speaking of the reconciliation in question says, "This union is said
to have spread still wider a spirit of indifference upon sacred subjects.
The distinguishing tenet of the Lutherans, and that which is con-
tained in their Symbolic Books, to which the clergy profess adherence,
is the doctrine ol the real presence of the body and blood of Christ, in
the bread and wine, in the Lord's Supper. This tenet, though it has
been ever the profession of the Lutheran Church, has been long aban-
doned by almost the whole of its ministers. The Reformed, or Cal-
vinistic ministers, had, like their brethren of the Lutheran party, lit-
tle to give up. Their distinguishing tenets of predestination, election,
perseverance, and impelling grace, were passed over in their public
services, as obsolete dogmas never to be introduced, and it was gene*
/ally understood that, for a century past, they have been scarcely en-
( 238 )
that best and sole guard against dissension and craft, a
freedom from all dark and uncharitable mysteries.
"To Zwingli who, both by the example and the rule
which he held out in applying the touch-stone of common
sense to the mystery of the Eucharist, was the main
source, I again repeat, of all the consequences I have
been describing, we are indebted for other bold lights, in
the same adventurous track, which would yet more fully
illustrate the working of his principle, but to which the
extent this Lecture already has reached permits me
barely to allude. The gloomy dogma of Original Sin, —
an evident craft from Manicheism,- — was among the doc-
trines discarded by this enlightened Reformer,* who, in
rejecting the notion that Baptism washes away sin, de-
nied that there is any original sin to wash away. As on
the existence, too, of this innate corruption depends the
necessity of a Redemption, we can little wonder at his
adopting a scheme of salvation so comprehensive, that,
according to his view, the great heroes and sages of Pa-
ganism are no less admissible to the glories of Heaven
than St. Paul himself. In his Confession of Faith ad-
dressed, but a short time before his death, to Francis I.,
not content with assuring that monarch that he might ex-
pect to meet, in the assembly of the Blessed, such illus-
trious ancients as Socrates, the Scipios, the Catcs, grouped,
side by side, with Moses, Isaiah, and the Virgin Mary,
he announces also, as part of the company, the demigods
Hercules and Thesus, and at the head of all places Adam
and Jesus Christ himself.
" I have already intimated that, during his life-time,
some suspicion attached to Zwingli of being less ortho-
dox, on the subject of the Trinity, than were most of his
brother Reformers ;f and though he succeeded, as we are
tertained by any considerable number of the clergy; so that the union
which has been effected is not imagined to have had any other practi-
cal effect, but that of making the common people think religious wor-
ship, under any form, as much a matter of indifference as this union,
thus easily effected, shows that different opinions are to their teachers."
* He held it to be a misfortune, a malady of man's nature, — not sin,
nor incurring the penjity of damnation. " Colligimus emo peccatum
oriirinale morbum quidem esse, qui tamen per se non culpabilis est,
nee damnationis poBnam inferre potest." — Tractat. de Baptism.
t Calvin, too, was accused of heterodoxy, on this subject, by the Lu-
therans ; and a book was published by Hutter, one of their most vio-
lent divines, to prove that Calvin " had corrupted, in a detestable
manner, the most illustrious passages and testimonies in the Holy
( 230 )
told, in vindicating himself, on this point, to Luther, I am
inclined to believe, from the little ceremony with which,
in so solemn a document, he classes the Saviour undis-
tinguishingly with all this motley group of saints and de-
migods, that the suspicion of his heterodoxy, on the sub-
ject of Christ's divinity, was not without foundation. In
truth, to a mind far less penetrating than that of Zwin*
gli it could not fail to have been self-evident that the
very same motive and principle on which he had act-
ed in explaining away transubstantiation, namely, that
all which is unintelligible should be held to be incredi-
ble, would lead, with equal certainty, to the overturn of
the no less inexplicable enigma of the Trinity. It w T as
on these grounds that the latter doctrine was attacked
afterwards so successfully by Socinus; and the two strong-
holds of mystery having thus fallen before the summons
of Reason, all those other inroads into the ancient terri-
tory of Faith, which it has been my object to point out to
you, have followed naturally in succession/'
CHAPTER XLVI.
Reflections. — Letter from Miss * * .—Marriages of the Reformers.—
CEcolampadius.— Bucer.— Calvin and liis'Idoletta. — Luther and his
Catherine de Bore. — Their Marriage Supper. —Hypocrisy of the Re-
formers. — Challenge at the Black Bear.— The War of the Sacrament.
Those among my readers to whom, from their previous
unacquaintance with the subject, the picture that has
Scriptures, relating to the most glorious Trinity, to the Godhead of
Christ, and the Holy Spirit."
The grounds of this charge against Calvin, are to be found in the
view taken by that Reformer of some of those prophecies and types of
the Hebrew Scriptures, which are, by most Christians, regarded as
having reference to Christ, but which Calvin, anticipating the system
of the Rationalists, applied solely to the temporal condition and pros-
pects of the Jews. In noticing this mode of interpretation, (which Pro-
fessor Scratchenbach might have cited, among his instances of the ra-
tionalizing spirit of Protestantism) Mosheim thus speaks: — •' It must,
however, be observed that some of these interpreters, and more espe-
cially Calvin, have been sharply censured for applying to the temporal
state and circumstances of the Jews, several prophecies that point to
the Messiah, and to the Christian dispensation in the most evident
manner; thus removing some of the most striking arguments in favour of
the divinity of the QospcV
( 240 }
just been given of the present state of Protestantism in
Germany, comes with the same shock of novelty as it
did, I confess, to myself, can alone form any adequate no-
tion of the wonder, the incredulity, with which I listened
to that summing up of the Protestants' creed of unbelief
(as it is hardly a solecism to call it,) which has been re-
ported faithfully, as it fell from my instructor's own lips,
in the concluding portion of his Lecture.
I had, it is true, been sufficiently prepared by my know-
ledge of the earlier heresies, — those elder branches of the
dark family of Simon Magus, the Valentinians, Marcion-
itcs, &c, — to expect all possible freaks of belief from a
free, uncontrolled range of Reason through the Scrip-
tures. But that I should find zmbelief resulting, to such
an extent, from the same license of private judgment,
was, though an equally natural consequence, by no means
so clearly foreseen by me ; nor could I help now recalling
to mind the remark of a clever Protestant writer,— a re-
mark which, when first I happened to light upon it, struck
me as bordering on the extravagant, but to whose truth
the fate that has attended Christianity, in the very fa-
ther-land of the Reformation, bears but too awful a testi-
mony, — namely, that " the first step of separation from
the Church of Rome, was the first step to infidelity."*
So incredible, however, did some of the details of this
new negative code of Christianity appear to me, that I
resolved to satisfy myself, by direct reference to some
of the Professor's authorities, as to how far dependence
might be placed on his very startling statements. With
this view, declining, for a time, the honour of any farther
lectures from him, I applied myself sedulously to the
study of all such Rationalist writers as were likely to aid
me in forming a judgment respecting the nature of their
system.
In this task, however, I was, before long, interrupted
by a letter from Miss * *, in which, mixing up, as usual,
sentiment and theology together, she entreated, as a spe-
* Extracts from the Diary of a Lover of Literature.— The intelligent
author of this work, Mr. Green, lived in habits of intimacy with
some of the most eminent men of the last half century. It is in speak-
ing of Dryden's poem of " The Hind and Panther," that he says, " His
Hind demonstrates — what I have often thought, but tremble to ex-
press—that the first step of reparation from the Church of Rome, wis
ths first to infidelity."
( 241 )
cial favour, that I would collect, for her Album, all such
particulars as were on record, respecting " those heaven-
favoured women, who, in the first dawn of the Reforma-
tion, enjoyed the enviable distinction of being the wives
of Reformers, and thus participating in the affection and
sweetening the toils of the first labourers in that great
and most goodly vineyard."
Though my own romance on the subject had conside-
rably abated, I lost no time in performing, to the best of
my ability, this commission of my fair friend, whose ex-
ceeding zeal in all matters of theology, (whatever might
be her knowledge of them,) entitled her fully to the eu-
logy passed by Boussuet on a learned Religieuse of his
time : " II y a bien de la theologie sous la robe de cette
femme."
Beginning with (Ecolampadius, the early friend of
Erasmus,* who was the first priest that took advantage of
that era of liberty to provide himself with the lay luxury
of a handsome young wife, I proceeded regularly through
the list of all those who were induced to follow in so in-
viting a path. " (Ecolampadius," says Erasmus, in one
of his letters, " has taken to himself a wife — a pretty
young girl : he wants, I suppose, to mortify himself. Some
call Lutheranism a tragedy ; but I call it a comedy, where
the distress generally ends in a wedding."
Even the stern Calvin was not proof against this " prim-
rose path of dalliance ;" but, on the death of one M. de
Bure, an Anabaptist, whom he had converted, kindly fol-
lowed up this spiritual service by espousing his widow, f
Martin Bucer, who had been originally a Dominican
friar, no sooner cast off his frock than he set about mar-
rying, like the rest, — " et meme plus que les autres,"
says Bossuet, as it was the friar's good fortune to become
the husband of no less than three ladies in succession ;
one of whom (still more to heighten the zest of wrong)
had been a nun.j: This extreme readiness to marry, —
* For the share which Erasmus was supposed to have taken in pre-
paring the way for the Reformation, the Lutherans acknowledged
their gratitude, by having a picture painted "in which Luther and
Hutten were represented carrying the ark of God and Erasmus dancing
before them with all his might."— Critique de VJifol. (TErasvte, quoted
by Jortin.
t The name of this lady was Idoletta.
X The nun is said to have borne him thirteen children. " Cent etc
21
( 24-2 )
more especially on the part of ecclesiastic proselytes, —
was regarded as a proof of heartiness in the cause of re-
ligious reform ; while, on the other hand, any antiquated
scruple at the thoughts of violating the most solemn vows,
was held in suspicion, as a symptom of still lurking Po-
pery.*
With this sort of evidence of good Protestantism, Mar-
tin Bucer was, as we have seen, amply provided ; and one
of his wives had been even more of a pluralist, in matri-
mony^ than himself. By a singular run of good luck, too,
this lady's marriages lay all in the Reforming line; — her
first husband having been Ludovicus Cellarius; her se-
cond, the famous CEcolampadius, who had been a Brigit-
tine monk ; her third, Wolfgang Capito, one of the most
active of the Reformers; and her fourth, the Dominican
friar, and helping Apostle of the English Reformation,
Martin Bucer. Knowing that the career of this fair pro-
moter of Protestantism would be sure to interest my
friend, Miss * *, exceedingly, I took care to set it forth
as much in detail as my materials would allow of; point-
ing out particularly to her notice the sentimental inci-
dent of CEcolampadius , widow becoming also, in succes-
sion, the widow of his two most esteemed colleagues, Ca-
pito and Bucer.
Nor was the liberality of these Reformers, respecting
marriage, confined solely to their own particular cases,
but extended even more indulgently to the matiimonial
propensities of others: and while three wives in succes-
sion were deemed by Bucer a sufficient privilege for him-
self, he allowed to the Landgrave of Hesse, in considera-
tion of his great services to Protestantism, the right,
somewhat less customary among Christians, of having
two wives at a time. The Memorial addressed by this
Prince to the Reformers, stating his reasons for requiring
dommage (says Bayle) qu'une fille si propre a multiplier fiit restee
dans le couvent."
* M Ce que M. de Meaux observe qu'en ce tems-la le marriage etoit
une recommendation dans le parti, n'est pas entitlement faux; car il
est certain qu'im ecclesiastique, qui ne se seroit point marie, eiit fait
naitre des soup^ons qu'il n'avait pas renonce au dogme de la loi du
Celibat. Je crois que Bucer insinua cette raison a Calvin lorsqu'il le
pressa de se marier." — Bayle. So much was this the case at that pe-
riod, that the visiters appointed in the reign of Edward the Sixth ex-
horted all ecclesiastics to marry, as a sure sign of their abjuration of
Popery.
( 24li )
such a luxury, and the Dispensation granted, in conse-
quence, signed by Luther, Melancthon, and Bucer* in
which they allow to this great patron of their faith the
additional wife he requires, form together as curious spe-
cimens of the mdrality of a religion of reason as an in-
quirer into the history of such creeds could desire.
But the great hero and heroine of my " Loves of the
Reformers," were the mighty Martin himself and his fair
Catherine de Bore. Commencing from the memorable
Good Friday, when this lady, with eight other nuns, es-
caped,, under the care of Leonard Koppen, from her con-
vent,! showed how early Luther evinced that strong in-
terest in her fate which led eventually to their union.
For, not only did he defend Koppen's achievement, in
carrying off the nine nuns, but even compared it J to that
of Christ himself, in carrying away the Saints captive to
Satan.
In tracing the history of the destined wife of Luther
through the interval between this elopement and her
marriage, I took care to avoid even an allusion to any of
those scandalous, and, as it would seem, false stories re-
* He assured them that a second wife was quite necessary to his
conscience, and that he would thereby be enabled "to live and die
more gaily for the cause of the Gospel!"
In Bossuet (liv. 6.) and Bayle (art. Luther) the reader will find all
the particulars of this most disgraceful transaction, which, from the
secrecy with which it was managed by the parties, remained for a long
period unknown, till, allast, the publication of the curious documents
connected with it, by the Elector Palatine, Charles Lewis, revealed
the whole to the world. The motives of the three leading Reformers
concerned in it for this most profligate concession are thus shrewdly
touched on by Bayle; who, after giving some extracts from the Land-
grave's Memorial, or instruction; continues, " II joignit a tout cela je
ne sai quelles menaces et quellcs promcsscs. qui donnerent a penscr a ses
Casuistes; car il y a beaucoupd : apparence que si un simple gentilhomme
les eut consultts sur un pareil fait il n'eut rien obtenu d'eux. On pent
done s'iraagffter raisonnablement qu'ilsfiirent depetitefoi: ilsn'eurent
pas la con fiance qu'ils dcroicnt avoir aux pramesses de Jesui Christ; ils
craiirnirent que si la Reformation d'Allemagne n'etoit soutenue par
les Princes qui en faisoient profession, elle ne fut etoufTee."
f The example of these nuns was followed by another batch, con-
sisting of double The number, who, soon after, made their escape from
the Monastery of Wedersteten.
X It is but fair to say. that the reporter of this blasphemy is Coch.
lams, who. from his exceeding violence against Luther, must be re-
garded as rather suspicious testimony. The following are the words
in this writer:— 1 ' Felicem raptorem sicut Christus raptor eratin mum
do quando per mortem suam . . et quidem opportunissimo
tempore in Pascha quo Christus suorum quoque captivam duxit can=
tivau-ni."
( 244 )
lated by Maimbourg, Varillas, and others, respecting her
conduct among the young students of Wittenberg. The
curious circumstances, however, leading immediately to
the marriage, I was enabled to give authentically as
stated in those MSS. left by Luther's friend, Amsdorf, to
which Seckendorf had access. From these it appears that
Miss Catherine had, in a conversation with Amsdorf,
complained that it was Luther's intention to marry her,
against her will, to Doctor Glacius. She, therefore,
begged of Amsdorf, knowing on what intimate terms he
lived with Luther, to try and prevail upon his friend to
choose some other husband for her ; adding, that she was
ready, at a minute's notice, to marry either Amsdorf or
Luther himself, but on no account, Doctor Glacius.*
On this hint the Great Reformer spake ; and, with a
rapidity unexampled, (as if the. vows pledged to keep
them asunder but made them more impatient to come to-
gether) — Miss Catherine de Bore became, almost on the
instant, Madame Luther. Without a single hint of the
matter to any of his friends, he invited a party to supper,
consisting of the bride, a priest, a lawyer, and a painter, —
the last attending professionally, as well as the others,
being summoned to take the fair Catherine's portrait, f —
and in this apostolical manner was solemnized a marriage,
which, for a time, filled the ranks of Protestantism with
dismay.
The deep concern of his friend, Melancthon, at this
* Venit Catherina ad Nicolaum Amsdorffium, conqueriturque se de
consilio LutheriD.GIacio contra volunt a tern suam nuptiis locandam:
scire se Lutherum familiarissime uti Amsdorffio; itaque rogare ad
quaevis alia consilia Lutherum vocet. Vellet Lutherus, vellet Ams-
dorffius se paratam cum alterutro honestum inire matrimonium, — cum
D. Glacio nullo modo. — Seckendorf. Comment, de Lutheranismo.
This whole plan does much credit to the ingenuity of Miss Catherine,
who was already well aware how much Luther admired her. There
had, indeed, from the display and notoriety of the Reformer's fondness
for her, arisen rumours not very creditable to either of the parties.
To these rumours he himself alludes, in one of his letters:—" Os ob-
struxi," he says, " infamantibus me cum Catherina Borana; — and his
warm advocate, Seckendorf, states without any reserve, that " he had
wished exceedingly for the girl, and used to call her his Catherine:" —
1 Optime enim cupiebat virgini et suam vocare Catherinam solebat."
t The name of this painter was Carnachius, and an engraving from
the best of his portraits of Catherine, was prefixed by M. Mayer, to his
Dissertation " de Catherina, Lutheri Conjuge," for the express purpose
of clearing Luther from the imputation of having married a pretty
woman .
( 245 )
unseasonable event — his own consciousness of the shame
and humiliation he had incurred, by a step, which, as he
himself bitterly said, would, he hoped, " make angels
laugh and all the devils weep,"* — the reaction that fol-
lowed so closely upon this feeling of degradation, and the
violent effort by which, regaining his own esteem, he
soon succeeded in persuading himself that, after all, the
ringer of Providence was manifest in the wdiole affair,
and it was "God himself that had suggested to him to
marry that nun, Catherine de Bore "f — all these various
struggles between conscience and passion afforded me
.scope for such alternations of light and shadow, as, in the
Memoir of a wedded Monk and Nun, could not fail to be
turned strikingly to account.
To give a domestic interest, too, to the story, I took
care to mix up with it a number of conjugal details, show-
ing how happily, through all the war of creeds, this holy
menage went on, and how much attached to his " girl,"
as he fondly called her,]: the great Reformer continued to
the last. With her, indeed, was always associated in his
mind whatever he considered most precious and sacred ;
nor could he, more satisfactorily to himself express his
ardent admiration of St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians
(his favourite portion of all Scripture) than by saying that
" he had wedded himself to that Epistle, and that it was
his Catherine de Bore." 5
The reader has by this time, I trust, come to know me
somewhat too well to suppose that, light as may have
been the tone in which I dwelt on these details, I was at
all insensible to their true and gross nature, or could feel
* Sic me vileni et coh tempt um his nuptiis feci, ut angeios ridere et
omnes dEemones flere sperem. — Epist. ad Spalat.
t Dominus me subito aliaque cogitantem conjecit mire in covjugium cum
Catherina Borensi moniali ilia. — Epist. ad Winces. Line. Even Me>
lancthon, too, brought himself to think (or, at least, to say) that it was
possible there might be "something hidden and divine 1 ' under this
marriage: — " Isto enim sub negotio fortasse aliquid occulti et quid-
dam divinius subest!"— Epist. ad Camerar. Can infatuation or hypo-
crisy—for it must be one or the other— go farther?
% In boasting that the " wise men " of his party who were so angry
at his marriage, had been themselves forced to acknowledge the finger
of God in the event, he thus expresses himself :— Vehementer irritan-
tur sapientes inter nostros: rem coguntur Dei fateri. sed persona? larva
tam mese quam puellce illos dementat. — Lutheri Epist. ap Seckend.
§ Epistola ad Galatas est mea Epistola cui me despondi— est mea.
Catherina de Bora.
21*
( 246 )
otherwise than deeply disgusted at the scenes of vulgar
self-indulgence and nauseous hypocrisy which this whole
drama, to a near observer of the chief actors in it, exhi-
bits. It was, indeed, with some difficulty, I contrived to
hide, under a thin surface of pleasantry, (such as any
other eyes than those of my learned instructress would
have seen through,) the feeling of loathing with which I
traced these mock Evangelists through their career, —
with which I followed them to their homes, and through
all their haunts and habits, and saw them come flushed
from their " Table-talk,'' and their thrice-transmitted
wives, to tread down, like dogs and swine, the "holy
things," and " pearls " of the Faith.
The historian Hume has truly characterized the first
Reformers as "fanatics" and "bigots," but with no less
justice might he have added, that they were (with one ex-
ception, perhaps,*) the coarsest hypocrites ;| men, who,
while professing the most high-flown sanctity in their
writings, were, in their conduct, brutal, selfish, and un-
restrainable ; who, though pretending, in matters of faith,
to adopt reason as their guide, were, in all things else,
the slaves of the most vulgar superstition ; and who, with
the boasted right of judgment for ever on their lips, passed
their lives in a course of mutual crimination and persecu-
tion, and transmitted the same warfare as an heir-loom to
* The one exception here made by my friend can be no other, of
course, than Melancthon; yet, it would be difficult, on considering the
career of this amiable, but most irresolute man, to acquit him wholly
of, at least, the duplicity of disguising his true opinions and lending
the sanction of his countenance to measures which he disapproved.
The sole circumstance of his upholding, in public, as correct docu-
ments of faith, both the Confession andlhe Apology, which he yet, in
his private letters, mourns over, as containing errors and obscurities
which it was most essential to amend, is, in itself, so culpable a sacri-
fice to the headlong spirit of party as nothing but the remorse which
he himself felt for it can at all palliate or atone. It is true, his position
was most trying ; and but too aptly did he compare himself to " Daniel
among the lions," as never was gentle spirit surrounded by such un-
congenial associates. But his approval of the atrocious crime of the
burning of Servetus — how is this to be palliated? It was but in cha-
racter for such men as Bucer and Farel to demand that the doubter of
the Trinity should 'have his bowels pulled out," should "die ten
thousand deaths ;"— but Melancthon!
t To this charge Bucer himself, the most hypocritical of the whole
band, pleaded guilty. In a letter written to Calvin, during the victo-
rious career of Charles V., he says, tl God has punished us for the injury
which we have done to his name, by our long and most mischievous hypo-
crisy:'
( 247 )
their descendants. Yet, " These be thy gods," oh, Pro-
testantism ! — these the coarse idols, which Heresy has set
up in the niches of the Saints and Fathers of old, and
whose names, like those of all former such idols,* are
worn, like brands, upon the foreheads of their worship-
pers.
How any Protestant that has ever examined, even but
slightly, into the disgraceful history of that long series
of wranglings, equivocations and frauds, which the at-
tempt to understand, or rather to mystify, each other,
on the one single doctrine of the Eucharist, gave rise to
among the Reformers, can be content to have received
his faith, at the hands of innovators at once so double-
dealing and so clumsy, is to me a marvel unspeakable.
The very commencement of this Sacramentarian warfare
resembled far more the preliminaries of a horse-race than
the solemn preparation for a controversy by which the
faith of millions yet unborn was to be influenced. " I defy
you," said Luther, haughtily, to Carlostadt, "to write
against me on the Real Presence; and will even give
you this gold florin, if you will undertake to do so." In
saying thus, Luther took from his pocket a florin, which
Carlostadt accepted and deposited in his own. They then
shook hands on the challenge, and swallowing down a
bumper to each other's healths, the War of the Sacra-
ment was thus, in the true German style, declared.f
The scene of this memorable interview was at the
Black Bear, where Luther lodged ; and in such manner
was it that the ineffable and adorable Mystery, which the
Saints of other days knelt to, as "the hidden Manna" of
salvation, " the wisdom of God in a mystery," was start-
ed, as fit game to be hunted down, by this pair of chal-
lengers at the Black Bear !
* From the very beginning of the Christian church this adoption of
names derived from men, — such as Marcionites, Arians, Donatists,
Lutherans, Calvinists, &c has invariably been the badge of heretical
strife and schism; some saying that they are of Paul, others that they
are of Apollos, and others that they are of Cephas. 4l The Apostles,"
says Ephrem of Edessa, " gave no names; and when it is done, there
is a departure from their rule."
How aptly may the words of St. Augustine to the Donatists be ap-
plied by a Catholic of the present day to that swarm of Calvinists, Ar-
minians, Socinians, &c. who are opposed to him: — " / am called Ca-
tholic; you are with Donatus" — Ego Catholica dicor et vos de Donati
parte. — Psalm, contra part. Donati.
t Luther. T. 2. Jen. 447. Calix. Judic. n. 49, Hospin. 2 par. ad ann,
1524. See note at the end of the volume,
( »» )
So much for the decency of those new apostles of Chris-
tianity; — for their consistency, tolerance, good faith, and
wisdom, let the whole history of that most disreputable
controversy speak. In the very first attempt of tne Lu-
therans at a regular Confession of Faith, no less than six
different explanations of their doctrine respecting the Eu-
charist (each announced as positively for the last time of
explaining) followed in quick succession: while the coun-
ter explanations on the Sacramentarian side, were almost
equally numerous.
Then came the wily and tortuous Bucer, as a mediator
between the parties, — a mediator, by affecting to agree
with both, — a reconciler, by misrepresenting each to the
other; now inducing Luther to think that Calvin con-
curred in a Real Presence of Christ's body, while CaL
vin meant but some vague presence to the eye of faith,
and in the sky; now persuading Calvin that Luther ad^
mitted the substance present to be spiritual, while, on
the contrary, Luther held, as do the Catholics, that the
miraculous presence in the Sacrament is spiritual only as
to the manner, but corporeal as to the substance.
By such tricks and evasions did Bucer, — and, it is pain^
ful to add, Melancthon, — succeed in maintaining, for a
time, a false and feverish truce between the parties. But
arts so gross could not long continue to deceive ; all com-
promise was found to be hollow and hopeless, and, at last,
the three great Eucharistic factions, the Lutheran, the
Calvinistic, and Zwinglian, all broke loose in their re-
spective directions of heresy,-^each branch again sub-
dividing itself into new factions distinctions, under the
countless names of Panarii, Accidentarii, Corporarii, Ar-
rabonarii, Tropistse, Metamorphists?, Iseariotistao, Schwen-
kenfeldians, &c. &c. &e. — till, to such an extent did the
caprice of Private Judgment carry its freaks, on this one
solemn subject, that an author of Bellarmine's time (as
that great man informs us) counted no less than two hun-
dred different opinions on the words, " This is my body!"
But the whole history of that period abounds with les-
sons full of melancholy warning; nor can anything more
strikingly impress us with the infatuation or ignorance of
those persons who still cry out for "the Bible, the whole
Bible, and nothing but the Bible," than thus to see that
the very men who first raised that cry, and who held the
( 249 )
Bible to bo all-sufficient for the discovery of divine truth,
could yet fall into all this fierce and interminable discord
about the meaning of a text consisting but of four simple
words !
CHAPTER XLVII.
Blasphemies of the Rationalists. — Sources of infidelity in Germany.—
Absurdity of some of the Lutheran doctrines.— Impiety of those of
Calvin.— Contempt for the authority of the Fathers.— Doctor Dam-
man.— Decline of Calvinism.
It required no very long or deep study of the chief
oracles of Rationalism to convince me fully that, in the
Professor's description of the present awful state of Pro-
testantism in Germany, he had by no means exaggerated
or over-coloured his picture. On the contrary, I foand
that his statements, however incredible they had at first
appeared, were but a faint and diluted representation of
the truth ; and that, while, from the fear perhaps of giving
alarm to so mere a neophyte in the school of Rationalism,
he concealed from me more than half of the impieties of
the system, he had also, for the honour of his supreme
sovereign, Reason, thrown a veil over all its feebleness
and its folly.
Had I wanted any thing, indeed, to prove, to my fullest
conviction, how wholly misplaced is reasoning, on a sub-
ject where, if feeling and faith be not alive, all else is
" of the earth, earthy," I should have found it in the piti-
ful exhibition which these men, otherwise so acute and
learned, afford in their attempts to bring down the grand
and awful wonders of Christianity to the level of their
own finite and low-thoughted reason; nor between the
example which they present of irreverent boldness, on
such subjects, and the most stupid and superstitious ac-
quiescence under belief, is there much more to choose
than between the ass of the Egyptians, carrying gravely
the Mysteries, and the same ass, in a fit of liveliness,
trampling them clumsily under his feet.
With the more plausible features of that mere phan-
tom of Christianity, which still wears the abused name
( 250 )
of Protestantism, in Germany, the reader already has be-
come acquainted from the sketch given of its rise and
progress by M. Scratchenbach ; and, to go into details of
the profane excess to which the system has been carried,
would be a task, even had I left myself space for it, nei-
ther agreeable nor useful. To give some notion, how-
ever, of the tricks, in the way of theology and exegesis,
which Fancy, under the demure mask of Reason, can
play, I shall here string together, at hazard, a few of the
leading results at which these inquirers into "the Bible,
the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible," have ar-
rived.
In the Old Testament, the history of the Creation, of
Paradise, and of Adam and Eve, are nothing but allegories
or mythi. The Pentateuch, which may be looked upon
as a sort of " Theocratic Epic," was not written by Moses,
but compiled at a much later period ; and Jehovah was
but the Household God, or Fetiche, of the family of Abra-
ham, which David, Solomon and the prophets afterwards
promoted to the rank of Creator of all things. It is plain
that Deuteronomy could not have been the work of Moses,
nor Ecclesiastes that of Solomon, as, in each case, it
would suppose the author to have related his own decease.
The Psalms were a sort of Anthology to which David and
other writers contributed ; and the productions of the chief
contributor are thus criticised by a grave theologian,
Augusti: "David's Muse takes no high flight, but he
succeeds best in Songs and Elegies." By critics of the
same school Esther is pronounced to be an Historical Ro-
mance, while Ruth, they say, was written for the pur-
pose of proving David to have sprung from a good family,
and the story of Jonah is but a repetition of the fable of
Hercules swallowed by a sea-monster. As to the Pro-
phets, the learned Eichorn allows them the credit of
having been sharp, clever men, who saw farther into
futurity than their contemporaries ; while others, assign-
ing to them a decided political character, "make them
out," says Mr. Rose, " to be demagogues and Radical
Reformers." The Prophecy, in Isaiah, of the Fall of
Babylon, was evidently written by some one who was
present at the siege ; and the predictions, supposed to
refer to Christ, in the same rhapsodies, relate to the
( 251 )
fortunes and ultimate fate of the race t)f Prophets in ge-
neral.*
In the New Testament, the miraculous birth of Christ
is to be ranked in the class of mythologic fictions, along
with the stories of the incarnations of the Indian gods, —
and more especially that of Buddha's generation from a
Virgin who had conceived him by a rainbow. The mo-
tive of Christ for giving himself out for a Prophet was
that he might thereby have more weight, as a moral
teacher; and, in like manner, he was induced, afterwards
to personate the Messiahf from the notion entertained by
his admirers that he was that promised personage. Ac-
cording to Wieland, Jesus Christ was a noble Jewish
magician,^ who on his own part, never conceived the
least idea of being the founder of a Religion, and whose
Institute only assumed the form of religion by time.
Much of the obscurity, it is said, in which the doctrines
of the New Testament are involved is owing to the stu-
pidity and superstition of the Apostles, who misunderstood,
in many instances, the language of their master, § and
whose gross misconception of his promises, as to a future
kingdom, involved him in difficulties with his followers,
from which he saw no other way of extricating himself
honourably but by death. ||
* " There is a book by Scherer (a clergyman in Hessee Darmstadt,)
in which he represents the prophets of the Old Testament as so many
Indian jugglers, who made use of the pretended inspiration of Moses
and the revelations of the prophets to deceive the people."— Rose's State
of Protestantism in Germany.
| Jesum personam Messise suscepisse. — De Wette.
I A Prussian Rationalist has even improved (in the retrograde di-
rection) upon this notion of Wieland. " II existe (says Stapfer) un livre
publie en Prusse, dans des intentions pieuses, et dont le titre dit plus
que les plus longs devellopemens historiques ne pourroient apprendre
a ceux qui aiment a douter encore de l'empire des opinions llation-
alistes en Allemagne ; la voici. — Jesus Christ fut-il autre chose qu'un
simple rabbin de campagne Juif?" Archives du Christianisme.
§ Etsi enim Apostolorum, innocentiam, integritatem, pietatem, fer-
vorem et evSouo-icLcrjAcv ea, qua par est, veneratione agnoscimus, dis-
simulare'tamen non possumus fuisseeos non solum variis superstiti-
onibus et falsis opinionibus imbutos, sed tamen indocilesquoque et tar-
dos, ut si Jesus paulo obscuriore loquendi genere uteretur, eum pror-
sus non intelligerent. — De Wette, de Morte Jesu Christi Expiatoria.
|| Voluit Jesus, veterum prophetarum more, morte suadoctrinse veri-
tatem profiteri, sperans fore ut difficultatibus quibus, se vivo, pressam
videbat, morte sua superatis, victric tamen illaevaderet, et vanis Mes-
siie opinionibus destructus, in hominum animos vim suam salutarcm
exsereret.— Dc W'ettc.
( 252 )
It is painful thus to repeat, — even for the purpose of de*
nouncing them, — profanations and blasphemies at once so
daring and so frivolous. But a Reverend Protestant has
not shrunk from recording them in his pages, and a
Catholic has, at least, one less reason for being ashamed
of them
The original source of all this flood of irreligion by
which Protestantism has been swept away in Germany f
and even Christianity herself seen her " foundations over-
flown," has, in the foregoing lecture of my German in-
structor, been clearly and irrefragably pointed out ; nor
is he a less valuable authority for the true source of the
evil, because by a perversion of moral vision, he regards
it as a good, and, in the false pride of Illuminatism, even
glories in results, over which every thinking Christian,
of all sects, must mourn.
In one respect only can the view taken by the Pro-
fessor of the causes of this great religious revolution be
considered partial or imperfect. In the wish to claim for
his favourite Zwingli the whole honour, as he deems it r
of having, by the principle which he first applied to the
interpretation of Scripture, led the way in this desecrating
and unchristianizing system, he has failed to do justice to
the share which both Luther and Calvin contributed, in
their several ways, to the same lamentable result ; nor,
in showing how Zwingli set the example of undermining
Christianity by the anti-mysterious and naturalizing cast
of his doctrines, has sufficiently pointed out how his
brethren of Geneva and Wittenberg conduced exactly
to the same end by the absurdity of theirs.
We have already seen how revolting were some of
those notions of Luther which, adopted, as they were, in
all the wantonness of self-will, by himself descended
afterwards, under the abused name of doctrines, to his
In considering what was the particular reading adopted by Christ
of a passage in Daniel which he accommodated to himself, this writer
coolly discusses our Saviour's qualifications, for the task of interpreting
the Old Testament,— saying that, though he could not of course, be ex-
pected to know the new Grammatico-histohcal mode of interpreta-
tion, still it was impossible he could be so neglectful of the true mean-
ing of the passage as to understand it in the manner attributed to him :
— " Is enim in fectione Vet. Testamenti, licet nostra exegeseos gram-
matico-historicae rudis, contextus tamen non adeo negligens se potuir,
ut locum, &c. &c."
( 253 )
Church. Of one of these, the Ubiquity of the human nature
of Christ, an extravagance that has no parallel in the whole
range of Gnosticism, — its author himself had, towards the
close of his life, seen reason to be ashamed; and, with his
usual caprice, as well in dictating as in countermanding
doctrines, had, in some of his later writings, wholly
abandoned the notion. Already, however, had his name
hallowed even this nonsense to his followers; — the
Ubiquity had become a part and parcel of Lutheranism,
and, as such, was to be maintained and wrangled for with
the rest.
It was, in fact, not as articles of belief, but as badges of
party, that any of these monstrous extravagancies were
clung to so obstinately. Torn up, as was the Lutheran
Church, into a multiplicity of schism, every such dictum
of their founder became the Shibboleth of a faction, and
the more inconceivably absurd was its nature, the more
desperate the fidelity with which it was defended. That
this is no unfair or distorted representation of that Church,
the pages of Mr. Pusey, — the historian, as he may be
called, of the Decline and Fall of German Protestantism,
— but too sufficiently testify. It is only surprising, in-
deed, that the reaction, in favour of insulted reason, to
which, at last, this war of wordy sectarianism gave rise,
did not much earlier take place, and most lamentable that
they who, disgusted with this abuse of the name of reli-
gion, rejected the motley creed from whence such dis-
cord sprung, did not seek refuge at once in the haven of
the ancient Church of Christ, whose " peace is as a river,"
instead of breaking off, it is to be feared, irrecoverably,
into the vague void of Unbelief, — that sea without a
shore !
The course of the Calvinistic branch of Protestantism
in Germany was, in many respects, different from that of
the Lutheran. Owing to their freedom, for a longer pe-
riod, from fixed formularies of doctrine, there existed in
their Church a far more comprehensive scheme of com-
munion than among the Lutherans; and having less,
therefore, of the exclusive spirit of formularism in their
theology, they were proportionally more tolerant. They
had, indeed, a spectacle for ever before them, in the ra-
bid rancour of the sister Church towards themselves,
which, though insulting and irritating, was, for the most
22
( 254 )
part, by its outrageous absurdity, far more calculated to
inspire disgust than any desire to retaliate. Such an
amiable direction had the family feeling between these
two heresies taken that, by Lutheran preachers, the title
of Antichrist was transferred from the Pope to Calvin,
and in Lutheran liturgies one of the petitions was, " Re-
press the Turks, Papists, and Calvinists."*
But though it may be granted that the Reformed Church,
as compared with the Lutheran, set an example far more
becoming a Christian community, there was, on the other
hand, in its whole spirit and principles, even more deeply
laid mischief, and a still more unerring source of such
demoralizing and Antichristian consequences as we see
exhibited in the present state of continental Protestant-
ism. Not to dwell farther on that rule of scriptural in-
terpretation, so pliant for all purposes, which Calvin,
alike with Zwingli and Socinus adopted, and which places
the meaning of God's word at the mercy of man's sense,
the very foundation of the creed of Calvinism involves
notions of a Supreme Being the most disturbing, if not
fatal to all genuine piety. If, as Hooker declares, " the
seed of whatever perfect virtue groweth from us is a
right opinion touching things divine," alas for the growth
of virtue or charity in those who seek their model of
" things divine" in the God of the Calvinists, — the deli-
berate pre-ordainer of sin and ruin, — the Author of man's
existence, temptation, and fall!
That most ancient and most melancholy of all myste-
ries, the Origin of Evil, must, as long as man suffers and
thinks, continue to occupy, however needlessly, his mind.
But to attempt to conjure up doctrine out of such a " mist
of darkness," — to speculate on the unrevealed decrees of
God, and look for light where Himself ha3 willed there
should be none, is a task presumptuous as it is shadowy,
vain as it is daring; and which, by mixing up the specu-
lations of philosophy with religion, introduces an element
into the latter which never fails to explode, to its ruin.
So aware were the Gnostics, in the midst of all their re-
* "In Swedish Pomerania, where there were no reformed, an order
from the local authorities, suspending declamations against them, and
erasing from the Liturgy the petition, 'Repress the Turks, Papists,
and Calvinists,' was annulled by application to Stockholm; and the
intermarriage of a Lutheran with a Reformed declared inadmissible."
—Pusey, Historical Inquiry.
( 255 )
veries, of the danger of holding forth a Supreme God as
the author of evil, that they had recourse to the supposi-
tion of an inferior and malevolent Deity, on whom to rest
all the responsibility of that mass of moral evil which
the more impious Calvinist traces up to the one God him-
self!
Nor is it merely in the rash impiety of this doctrine
that its mischief to the cause of Christianity lay, but also
in the contempt for Christianity's earliest teachers which
Calvin's adoption of it implied; he himself having avowed
that, on this point, the Fathers of the three first centuries
were opposed to him, and his more violent followers, Go-
marus and others, even admitting that they were unsup-
ported in it by Scripture.
The whole history, indeed, of the Predestinarian doc-
trine, from its first introduction by St. Augustine, is a
subject well worthy of study, as enabling us to track the
course of so dark an error, through all the stages of its
progress, growing more and more bloated and virulent as
it advances, till, at last, bursting w 7 ith its own venom, it
gradually dies away. Such, very nearly, has been the
course and fate of the dark doctrine of Calvinism. Be-
ginning, in a comparatively mild form with St Augus-
tine, — who himself had commenced with far other opi-
nions, and was only led by the heat of controversy to lay
the foundations of Calvinism,* — it assumed, in the scheme
of the Genevese Reformer, a more rigid and damnatory
shape; received some gloomier touches from his follow-
ers, Beza and Zanchius, and from thence on, deepening
still its hue, as it passed through the hands of the fierce
Francker divines, reached the full consummation of its
blasphemy and absurdity, under the auspices of the well-
named Doctor Dam-man^ at the memorable Synod of
Dort.
* When St. Augustine opposed the Manichaeans (who held, with
the Calvinists, that there are souls necessarily wicked,) he advanced
doctrines wholly different from those which he afterwards took up in
opposition to Pelagius; and this latter party opinion has been his he?
quest to future times ; — inflicting thereby an injury on Christianity (for
even the Catholic Church did not wholly escape the infection) far great-
er than all his labours in her service can ever compensate. In reject?
ing Jansenism— an innoculation of this virus — from her Communion,
the Church of Rome has got rid of the only slight taint of heresy that,
in her course, "immortal and unchanged," the Milk white Hind has
ever known.
t This Dr. Pamman was one of the secretaries to the Synod, and
( 256 )
At that point, however, the glory of Calvinism may be
said to have touched its meridian, and the moment of
complete triumph was but its first step towards decline.
Even the Dutch, whose divines had principally contri-
buted to this victory over common sense, refused, in most
instances, to submit to the yoke of the victors; and, with
that nimbleness which has ever characterized the Pro-
teus, Protestantism, were seen gliding away from the
grasp of orthodoxy in the various forms of Universalists,
Semi-Universalists, Supralapsarians, Sublapsarians, — like
that model of the reforming spirit, to which I have just
alluded, —
Nee te decipiat centum mentita figuras,
Sed preme quicquid erit; dum quodfuit ante, Reformet.
In Geneva, the very cradle of all those monstrous doc-
trines which had been now decided, by the Maccoviuses
and Dammans,* to be the true Christian and Protes-
tant faith, that reaction which has since developed it-
self so signally, began already to appear; and the same
recoil from fanaticism and absurdity which made her then
almost Arminian, has since, in its farther and natural
operation, made her all but infidel.
of course an upholder of the high Dort doctrine that "none of the
truly faithful can by any sins fall from the Grace of God."— Nulli vere
fideles per ulla peccata possunt ex gratia Uei excidere. — Damman. in
Concordia.
* Of the frightful opinions of Maccovius and other Dort theologians
I have already given some samples. One of the memorable decisions
of this Synod was that " the children of unbelievers dying in their in-
fancy are reprobate as well as their parents." — Infantes infidelium
morientes in infantia reprobatos esse statuimus. — Act Synod. Dord.
This humane enactment is but a consequence of the same principle on
which Predestinarians hold that the infants of godly persons are in
the covenant of grace, together with their parents, and have therein
" a federal interest." The following is the impiously familiar manner
in which the draft of agreement, as it may be called, for this covenant
between God and the seed of believers is drawn up by one of the theo*
logians of the sect :—" They (the infants) have true, real and proper
interest and propriety in God. As they are his, so he is theirs. There
is a mutual propriety and interest in each other. They have God un-
der an actual obligation, viz. of his promise, to improve and employ all
his attributes for their good, benefit and advantage, according or in away
agreeable to the true tenor of the covenant and of the various promises of
it. They have a present interest in and right to salvation ; and
answerably, in case of their death, before a forfeiture be made of thai
their interest and right, they shall infallibly be saved." — Whiston's Pfi*
mitive Doct. of Inf. Bap. revived.
( 257 )
In England, where, at this period, both Court and Peo-
ple were casting a " lingering look behind," towards
their Mother Church,* and where the authority, there-
fore, of the Fathers (bound up, as it is, essentially with
Catholicism,) was regarded still with reverence, a system
of doctrine so avowedly opposed as was that of Dort to
those early oracles of the faith could hope for no very fa-
vourable reception. From that period, indeed, the Church
of England may be said, in the words of the ever-memo-
rable Hales,f to have "bid John Calvin good night:" —
and though my German Lecturer, in contrasting Calvin
with Luther, assumed that the sectaries still bearing the
name of the former maintain also his doctrines, it will be
found that Calvinism, though still far from being (like its
sister heresy, Lutheranisjn) extinct, has for a long time
been shorn of its most baleful beams; insomuch that for
one rigid adherent to the reprobatory branch of the creed
of Geneva, there are now numbers of professed Calvin-
ists who confine their belief to the sole doctrine of Elec-
tion, J rejecting more charitably, I must say, than logi-
cally, its concomitant and consequence, Reprobation.
Such, rapidly traced, has been the course and fate of
the two leading branches of the original Protestant creed;
both dwindled away to mere shadows in those countries
where they first took their rise, — or rather superseded
there by a system hardly pretending to be Christian, —
while, the only one of the two that still exists, in more
than name, has abandoned all that constituted originally
its essence, and, in England, is chiefly indebted for its
* " I acknowledge (said James I., in a public speech to his Parlia-
"ment, 1603) the Church of Rome to be our Mother Church. "
t This candid and simple-minded man went to Dort a Calvinist,
but "at the well-pressing (as he himself tells us) of St. John, iii. 16, by
Episcopius, — 4 there (says he) I bid John Calvin good night.' "
X " I am aware (says Bishop Tomline) that some persons now living
who seem to glory in the name of Calvinists maintain the doctrine of
Election and reject that of Reprobation. That this was not the sys-
tem of Calvin himself will fully appear by the quotations from his
works ; and that it was not the system of the Calvinists at the end of
Queen Elizabeth's reign will be equally evident from the first of the
Lambeth articles, &c." Refutation of Calvinism.
"Many Calvinists, both at home and abroad, including the princi-
pal American divines, reject the second leading article of theCalvinistic
creed, and hold Universal Redemption."— Adams' Religious World Dis-
played.
22*
( 258 )
distinctive character to that party spirit, which a Church,
fenced round by human formularies, is always sure to ge-
nerate.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Rise of infidel opinions in Europe, soon after the Synod of Dort.—
Lord Herbert, Hobbes, Spinoza.— Beginnings of Rationalism among
Calvinists.— Bekker, Peyrere, Meyer.— Lutheran Church continued
free from infidelity much longer than the Calvinist.
The main object which I had in view, in the historical
sketch given in the preceding chapter, is to show that,
in the reaction produced among Protestants themselves,
as well by the impious and irrational consequences of
some of their own doctrines, as by the unchristian into-
lerance with which those doctrines had been enforced,
lay one of the chief sources of that infidelity by which
their churches have since been deluged.
In farther confirmation of this remark, we shall find
that it was but a short time after the monstrous decision
of the Synod of Dort,* that scepticism began openly to
display itself, among professed Protestants, in different
countries of Europe. It was then, in that dawn of the
era of Rationalism, that Lord Herbert of Cherbury assert-
ed the sufficiency and absolute perfection of the Religion
of Nature; — that Hobbes anticipated the German theolo-
gians of the present day in questioning the authenticity
* " By way of argument to the following story, you will permit me
to remind you that the Contra-remonstrants in the Synod of Dort
condemned the lax opinions of the Remonstrants, concerning Original
Sin and Free Will.
"Two of their divines (Contra-remonstrants) elated with victory,
insulted a poor fellow who was a Remonstrant, and said, ' What were
you thinking of with that grave face? 1 ' 1 was thinking, gentlemen,'
said he, ' of a controverted question — Who was the author of sin?
Adam shifted it off from himself and laid it to his wife; she laid it to
the serpent; the serpent, who was then young and bashful, had not a
word to say for himself; but afterwards, growing older and more au-
dacious, hu went to the Synod of Dort, and there he had the -assurance
to charge it upon God!' "— Letters from the late Lord Chedworth to the
Rev, Thomas Crompton.
( 259 )
of the Old Testament and the divine authority of the
New, and even let fall those seeds of doubt as to the ex-
istence of a Supreme Being, which, in the gloomy mind
of his contemporary, Spinoza, soon ripened into Atheism.
Already, too, at that same period had a school of Di-
vines, under the name of Rationals, appeared whose prin-
ciple it was to apply the touch-stone of reason to religion,
and reject all that was not conformable to that capricious
test.* It is also confirmatory of what I have above re-
marked as to the share Calvinism had in producing these
results, that Predestination was the very first doctrine on
which these Socinians in disguise opened their batteries.
As might be expected, too, it was among Calvinists that
the reaction against their own creed commenced; and
thus has the same sect, by a fate common to all heresies,
given birth to the opposing extremes, — both to the fana-
ticism which first ingrafted such errors on Christianity
and the infidelity which tore up tree and graft together.
One of the first of these Calvinist sceptics was Bekker,
a Dutch divine, who, attempting the same sort of alliance
between Philosophy and Religion which has been the
means of bringing Christianity to its present state in
Germany, employed the principles of Descartes to under-
mine some of the leading doctrines of Scripture. The
account of the temptation of our first parents, the agency
of good and evil spirits, the demoniac possessions in the
New Testament, and the temptation of our Saviour, were
among the chief points on which this Rationalist divine
exercised his scepticism; and while his master, Calvin,
besides that demoniac principle which he supposed lodged
in every human breast, admitted also the direct influence
of the Devil on human actions, his follower, Bekker, de-
nies all agency of the Devil whatever, and (forestalling
the shallow device of our modern Rationalists, so much
as to leave them not even the credit of originality in
w T rong) resolves all those passages in the Old and New
Testament, where the interposition of the Evil Spirit is
described, into mere allegory and mythos.
To another Calvinist writer, still earlier, (1655) the an-
nals of nationalism are indebted for a book which, though
* See an account of this school of Theologians in Bayle's Reppns?,
auz Questions (Tun Provincial, c. 130.
( 260 )
now long forgotten, produced on its first appearance, such
an explosion of indignation as could with difficulty be
brought to stop short at the mere imprisonment of the
author. Of this strange work* the main object is to
prove from the fifth Chapter of St. Paul to the Romans,
that there had existed nations and races of men before
Adam, and that he was but called the first man, because
with him the Law commenced.
In the course of his pretended proofs of this hypothesis,
the author (a French Protestant, Peyrere) suggests solu-
tions of some of the miracles of the Old Testament which
approach nearer even than those of Bekker to the plain
but clumsy mode of interpretation adopted by Paulus and
other moderns. For instance, it was not necessary, he
says, that the sun should retrograde because the shadow
of the dial was put back for Hezekiah. Whatever mira-
cle there was in the circumstance must be confined to the
dial of Ahaz alone.f
In the same manner, the sun standing still for Joshua
was nothing more, he thinks, than that sort of optical de-
lusion which is common in most hilly countries, at sun-
set, when, though the sun has gone down, its orb appears
to be still stationary in the heavens.} The miracle in
Deuteronomy of the clothes and shoes of the Israelites
having been kept from " waxing old," during their forty
years in the wilderness, this author ridicules in almost
the very same terms which were employed afterwards
by Voltaire for the same purpose; J and the whole mira-
* Pr<Fadam\t<z sive Exercitatio super versibus 12, 13, 14, cap 5, Epist.
Paul, ad Romanos.
t Ponatur miraculum in horologio ipso, in horologio Achas, ut vult
Seriptura ; stabit miraculum suo loco— stabit natura suo ordine, nee
faseinabitur intellectus praestigiis inanibus.
X Fulgor eolis, sine sole ipso, et miraculo maximo euperesset in at-
mosphaera, vel regione vaporum ilia, qua? civitati Gabaonica?, cseli et
ae'ris medio, incubabat : Solis vero fulgor civitatem Gabaonicara et
montem Gabaon verberaret, &c. — The author adds that he himself had
often witnessed the same phenomenon among the mountains of duer-
cy, where he dwelt.
§ Quod de ealceamentis eorum itidem dejerant, nulla unquam ve-
tustate fuisse eonsumpta, atque adeo ubi primum induxissent calceos
infantibus cre-centibus infantum pedibus, crevisse eorum calceos.—
•' Non seulement (says Voltaire) les habits de9 Hebreux ne s'userent
point dans leur marche de quarante annees, au soleil et a la pluie, et
en couchant sur la dure, mais que ceux des enfans croissaient avec
eux, et s'elargissaient raerveilleusement, a mesure qu'ili avancaient
en age."
( 201 )
cle is, he thinks, to be accounted for by the supplies of
materials for making clothing which the Israelites de-
rived from their flocks and other natural sources. From
the plea set forth by this author in defence of his own
impiety, — that he had been led to such doctrine " by the
'principle of Protestants," — we may see how clearly,
even at that time, the natural tendency of Protestantism
to gravitate towards infidelity, was not merely prognos-
ticated, but felt.
There is yet another work of the same period, (1666)
which both its title and the circumstance of its being re-
published by Sender, sufficiently announce as one of the
harbingers of that infidel school of which Semler was the
founder. I allude to the once celebrated work, " Philo-
sophy, the Interpreter of Scripture," which, on its first
appearance, was attributed to the notorious Spinoza, but
proved afterwards to have come from the pen of his friend
and physician, Lewis Meyer.
In subtlety as well as in mischief, this Amsterdam Ra-
tionalist was a fit forerunner of the present race of Pro-
testant sceptics; and the following specimen of his work
will at once show its insidious nature, and prove, — what
frequently I have endeavoured to impress upon my reader,
— the great triumph it has been for infidelity, by the
avowal of infidels themselves, to have been able, by phi-
losophizing away the mystery of the Real Presence, to
open a way for the subversion of all mysteries what-
ever. " There are (says this pupil of Spinoza) three Mys-
teries, of which Philosophy alone can properly be the in-
terpreter ; and these are, 1. God, — 2. the Real Presence,
— 3. the Trinity. The second of these, the Reformed
Church has already disposed of, — showing, by the aid of
Philosophy, that her own opinion, on the subject, is the
true one, and that of the Catholics and Lutherans, ab-
surd." With a silence, then, but too significant, as to
the first of the three Mysteries on his list, he proceeds to
apply to the third the mode of philosophizing which had
been so successful with the second.*
* Of the discussion, respecting the mystery of the Trinity, he says—
41 Q,uanto sane satius fuisset illam pro mysterio non habuisse, et phi-
losophise ope, antequarn quod esset 6tatuerent. secundum verse logices
praecepta, quid esset cum CI. Kekkermanno investigasse."
That the absurdities of theology have been, at all times, the food
( 262 )
Having traced thus far the progress of that Anti-chris-
tian principle, which deriving its origin from the very
foundations of Protestantism itself, has since branched out
in a multiplicity of names and shapes, and is, at this mo-
ment, under its most recent and apparently last disguise,
employed in spiriting away the substance of Christianity,
in every country where the Reformation has taken root,
I shall now, for the farther descending steps of the pedi-
gree of this principle, more especially in that country
where its effects are most conspicuous, refer to the pages
of a writer whose authority I have frequently had to ad-
duce, Mr. Pusey. The ability and research with which
this gentleman has traced, through all its stages, that
" gradual descent (as he expresses it) of Theology into a
a system of unbelief," which marked the course of the
German Church, during the eighteenth century, can ad-
mit of no dissentient opinion. It is only to be regretted
that, by confining himself exclusively to the Lutheran
branch of Protestantism, he has lost the still stronger il-
lustrations of his subject which the career of Calvinism
would so strikingly have supplied ; and it is, in some mea-
sure, to remedy this very important omission that those
instances of the progress of Rationalism among Calvin-
ists, which I have just laid before the reader, were col-
lected.
There would be no difficulty, indeed, in showing that,
from the very first, a disposition to unbelief was far more
prevalent among the members of the Reformed Church
than of the Lutheran ; and the names of Laelius Socinus,
Gentilis, Ochinus and others prove how early Geneva
began to produce its natural fruits. Without ascending
any higher, however, than the middle of the seventeenth
and fuel of scepticism cannot be more clearly proved than by the use
which this writer makes of the monstrous notion broached by some
Protestant divines, that God intentionally gave double meanings to
some of the precepts of his Word, and rather wished that they should
be misunderstood by those to whom he addressed them. Such is the
doctrine advanced in a passage of Wolzous which he cites: — "Quan*
doque Deus. ut dubios et suspensos relinquat, vel ip?°s eos, quos suffi-
cienti gratia spiritus donavit, ut quaecunque ex ilia tunc oratione
hauriri possint, eliciant, non tamen omnem eliciant veritatem : ora-
tionem enim volvat et revolvat centies. sit vacuus praeconceptis opi-
nioniuus, omnia examinet, quae usus linguae requirit, ut intuenti tex-
turn nil appareat esse neglectum, noluit tamen hoc tempore intelligi
Di.us, imo voluit permittere ut aliquaniisper errarctur.
( 263 )
century, we have seen that at a time when the Lutheran
Church was still immersed in all the absurdities of its
theology, — wrangling, tooth and nail, against Good
Works and for the Ubiquity of Christ's manhood, — -the
process of reasoning away all Christian doctrine what-
ever had already commenced among the Calvinists ;— •
that long before any of those critics and scholars were
born, to whom Mr. Pusey assigns the first origin of Ra-
tionalism, its most distinguishing features and principles
had been anticipated; and that the very subject of Demo-
niacal Possessions, upon which Semler commenced his
rationalizing career, had been turned by Bekker to the
same sceptical purposes more than half a century before.
4i *^ > *^© ^9 ©44*****
CHAPTER XLIX.
Return to England.— Inquiry into the history of English Protestant"
ism. — Its close similarity to the history of German Protestantism.— -
Selfishness and hypocrisy of the first Reformers in both countries. — ■
Variations of creed. — Persecutions and burnings. — Recantations of
Cranmer, Latimer., &c. — Effects of the Reformation in demoralizing
the people. — Proofs from German and English writers.
They show, or, at least, used to show, in the library
of the Abbey of St. Anthony, in Dauphine, an original
letter of Erasmus,* in which that great man declares that
he would sooner suifer himself to be cut to pieces than
not believe in the reality of the body and blood in the
Sacrament. Without pretending to more of the spirit of
a martyr than I am likely to be called upon to exercise,
and confining my heroism, too, within bounds proportion-
ate to the immense distance between my humble self and
Erasmus, I shall here merely communicate to my reader
that I had now come to the magnanimous determination
to prefer Popery and poverty, for the remainder of my
days, to the alternative of Protestantism and JE2000 a
year, with Miss * *, at Ballymudragget.
* Voyage Litteraire de deux Religieuz Benedictins,
( 2C4 )
After remaining some months longer in Germany, I
prepared to set out for England, — having passed the latter
part of my time in society much more suited to my tastes
than that of the Scratchenbachs of the University, name-
ly, some quiet and intelligent Catholic families, whom I
found in the midst of this wreck of all other creeds, pur-
suing tranquilly and implicitly the very same paths of
faitrT which their Church has now trodden for near two
thousand years. It is, indeed, a most impressive specta-
cle, which the state of Germany, at this moment, pre-
sents; divided, — according to Mr. Southey's concise and
pithy description, — "between the old religion, on one
side, and the new irreligion on the other."*
The sagacious prediction of Bayle, that a day would
yet arrive when the Lutherans, no longer finding their
creed in the Augsburg Confession, would " put all mat-
ters again on their former footing," is now in a fair train
for accomplishment ; as already numbers of Protestants,
disgusted at the unchristian mockery of their own mis-
called churches, have embraced the faith of Rome, with
every prospect of their example being still more exten-
sively followed. It is, in fact, the alarm produced by
these desertions to the Catholic Church, that has chiefly
caused that apparent reaction, in favour of Christianity,
which has been, of late, observable in Germany, as well
as those retractions of their former blasphemies which the
De Wettes and Bretschneiders have, with so little ap-
pearance, I must say, of sincerity,* been hastening to
proffer to the public.
On my arrival in England, finding my taste for theo-
logical reading return, I was glad to avail myself of the
few months of leisure I had yet at command, and imme-
diately proceeded to inquire into the state and history of
Protestantism in that country, quite as zealously as I had
pursued the similar line of study in Germany. Not that
there hung even the penumbra of a doubt round the con-
* CUoquies, #e.
t Thouch professing, as it seem;?, to recant their former sceptical
notions, both these writers have republished, and with but little alte-
iatiou,the very works which contained them; and in the Preface
which De Wette has prefixed to the second edition of his "De Morte
Expiatoria, &c." we find little more than a sort of apology for his un-
christian assertion, that " Jesus took upou himself to personate the
ah. '
( 265 )
diusions at which I had now arrived; but, having carried
thus far the researches which I had been induced to en-
ter upon, it was naturally my wish to collect such mate*
rials, respecting the English Church, as would enable me
to complete the Panorama of Protestantism which I had
commenced. Having now, however, nearly filled up the
canvas which I had allotted for the sketch contained in
these volumes, I must reserve the picture which I had
prepared of the English Reformation for some future op-
portunity.
In the meantime, I shall here briefly call attention to
a few ominous resemblances, which, on comparing the
course of English with that of German Protestantism*
could not but strike me as existing strongly between
them,— ^so strongly as scarcely to warrant even a hope
that two systems so kindred in their origin and tenden-
cies could lead, ultimately, to any other than kindred re-
sults. The same selfishness and hypocrisy which marked
the movers of the German Reformation, are seen but in
more intense and revolting activity among the founders
of the same faith in England.* The hi^h stations, in-
deed, of the principal actors on the latter scene, gave
proportionately more impulse and opportunity to such
vices ; and, while in Henry VIII. we find all the tempe-
rament of a Luther let loose, as it were, upon a throne,
so in Cranmer all the suppleness and hypocrisy of a Bu-
cer were, by the constant demands upon him for these
qualities, multiplied a hundred fold.f
Even the subservience shown by the Reformers of both
* The writer of an article in the Edinburgh Review, upon Mr. Hal*
lam's admirable work, the Constitutional History, thus truly described
the founders of the English Reformation : — " A king, whose character*
may be best described by saying, that he was despotism itself personi*
fied : unprincipled ministers; a rapacious aristocracy; a servile par-
liament. Such were the instruments by which England was delivered
from the yoke of Rome. The work which had been begun by Henry,
the murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer
of his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest/'— »
Edinburgh Review.
f It is not a little curious to observe that v in the same manner as
the violence and intolerance of Luther were inherited amply by his
church, so the hypocrisy and servile spirit of Cranmer have survived
to this day in that establishment of which he was a foundef; and id
no instance, perhaps, has the hypocritical taint, thus entailed, been
more strikingly exhibited than in those vindications of his (Cfan-
mer's) own character, which, in defiance of all truth and decency,
even such respectable divines as the Rev. Mr. Todd think themselves
bound, for the sake and interests of their order, to undertaise*
23
( 260 )
countries to the gross passions of their royal patrons will
be found to have been marked by the same comparative
degrees of baseness; for while, on the one hand, the licen-
tious bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse, — licentious, but
at least bloodless, — received the sanction, under their own
signatures of Luther, Bucer, and Melancthon, on the other,
the murderous marriages of Henry VIII. were not only
connived at, but concerted, by those still more obsequious
tools of Royal Reformation, Cranmer and Cromwell.*
The changes of doctrine through which, in both coun-
tries, the new creed had to transmigrate, form another
of those points of resemblance which force themselves on
our attention; and, as if, even then, the founders of Pro-
testantism had a sort of prescient consciousness that their
Church, in " fame of instability," would rival even De-
les,! a provision for future changes, accordingly as occa-
sion might require, was expressly stipulated for by IUe-
lancthon, and, in England, formed the subject of that
prospective declaration to which the obedient bishops of
Henry VIII. did not hesitate to pledge themselves.
That amono- the first English Reformers there should
have been so little of that contentious spirit which ren-
dered theology such an arena of discord among the Ger-
mans, is a fact easily, but disgracefully, to be accounted
for by the self- prostration of the English Church before
the throne, which left her no will or opinion but at the
beck of the monarch, no alternative but to believe what-
ever he dictated, and be silent. J
To the same slavish self-abasement, is to be attributed
that facility in recanting and abjuring which some of the
most eminent of the English divines, by frequent prac-
tice, acquired : the specious Cranmer having subscribed
* The writer of the article in the Edinburgh Review, above referred
to, — an article written with a power of thought and style which leaves
no doubt as to the masterly hand from which it came, — thus speaks of
Cranmer: — " Intolerance is always bad; but the sanguinary intole-
rance of a man who thus wavered in his creed creates a loathing to
which it is difficult to give vent without calling foul names. Equally
false to political and to religious obligations, he was first the tool of
Somerset, and then of Northumberland. When the former wished to
put his awn brother to death, without even the form of a trial, he
found a ready instrument in Cranmer," &e. <fce.
t Nee instabili fama superabere Delo. — Stat.
I So far did the Church of England carry the slavish principle on
which she commenced her course, thnt, on the death of Henry VI If.,
Cranmer surrendered his archiepiseopal authority to the infant mo-
ndial, and received it back at his hands.
( 267 )
no less than six recantations; while Latimer even ex-
ceeded, by two or three, that number. Still more dis-
gusting was the spectacle which these dissemblers pre-
sented in acting as persecutors for the cause which in
secret they hated, and condemning wretches to the flames
for opinions with which, in their hearts, they agreed.
In this monstrous combination of insincerity with cru-
elty, lies the distinction between the English and Helve-
tian persecutors ; for, though these latter champions of
the right of private judgment condemned Servetus to the
flames, and sent Gentilus and Gruet to the block, it was,
at least, for opinions which they themselves held to be
heretical and impious. But the code of persecution had
yet to furnish a still more notable precedent; and for those
Saints of the English Church, Latimer and Cranmer, it
was reserved to sit as accessaries to the burning of Chris-
tians for opinions which they, the burners, approved !
While such were the moral fruits of the Reformation,
as displayed in its leading authors and teachers, the ef-
fect which it produced on the people at large could not
be expected to have been of a more salutary character.
Accordingly, the descriptions given by eminent Protes-
tant writers, both English and German, of the state of
morality in their respective countries, during the first
century of this great change, bear, upon every essential
point, such similarity to each other, as leaves not a doubt
of the common origin of the evils of which they complain.
To begin with the Germans. — Throughout the writings
of the admirable Andrea, a man> who, to use the language
of Herder,* " bloomed like a rose among thorns," we find
the most bitter complaints of the flagrant corruption of
his times. " Idols," he says, " have been cast out, but the
idols of sins are worshipped. The primacy of the Pope
is denied, but we constitute lesser popes. The bishops
are abrogated, but ministers are still introduced or cast
out, at will. Simony came into disrepute, but who now
rejects a purse of gold ] The monks were reproached for
indolence, — as if there were too much study at our Uni-
versities. The monasteries were dissolved, — to stand
empty, or to be stalls for cattle. The regularly recurring
prayers are abolished, — yet so that now most pray not at
all. The public fasts were laid aside, — now the com-
* Quoted by Mr. Pusey.
( 268 )
mands of Christ arc held to be but useless words; not to
cay any thing of blasphemers, adulterers, extortioners,
&c."* Another writer, Walch, acknowledges that " the
complaints of the sunken state of Christianity, and the
corruption of the clergy, were not exaggerated;" and
CarpzofF, in speaking of the efforts of the pious Spener
to amend " the stiff-neckedness of that godless age," says,
" 1 praise the attempt, I add my wishes; but I despair of
success, on account of the desperate depravity of these
last times."
By the side of these strong testimonies to the demora-
lizing effect of the Reformation in Germany, I shall here
place two passages, describing its results in England,
from no less authorities than Camden and Burnet: —
M Sacrilegious avarice," says Camden, in speaking of the
time of Edward VI. "ravenously invaded Church livings,
colleges, chantries, hospitals, and places dedicated to the
poor, as things superfluous. Ambition and emulation
among the nobility, presumption and disobedience among
the common people, grew so extravagant, that England
jseemed to be in a downright frenzy."f
" Not less strong, to the same purport, is Burnet : —
" This gross and insatiable scramble after the goods and
wealth that had been dedicated to good designs, without
the applying any part of it to promote the good of the
gospel, the instruction of the poor, made all people con-
elude that it was for robbery, and not for reformation, that
their zeal made them so active. The irregular and im-
moral lives of many of the professors of the gospel gave
their enemies great advantage to say, that they ran away
from confession, penance, fasting, and prayer, only to be
under no restraint, and to indulge themselves in a licen-
tious and dissolute course of life. J By these things, that
* In another place, Andrea says, "he who knows the avarice of the
clerey and their unbridled life, will not be astonished that they no
longer stand in that respect with the people which were fitting." If
we may believe this pious and conscientious writer, Luther himself
foresaw, or, rather, already experienced, the baleful consequences of
the creed which he yet so rashly preached. " No complaints," says
Andrea. '• more often occur to me than those of that divine man (Lu-
ther) who foresaw the license of the Evangelical Church, and whose pen
unconquerable by all his enemies, almost sunk under the dissoluteness of
Jiis followers, and the specious pretext of the Gospel."
f Camden, Introduction to the Jlnnals of Queen Elizabeth.
| Almost word for word, the very language employed by Bucer, in
describing the effects of the Reformation in Germany. — See the pas
zzue extracted from his De Regn. Christ, p. 166 of thjs work
( 209 )
were but too visible in some of the most eminent among
them, the people were much alienated from them; and,
as much as they were formerly against Popery, they grew
to have kinder thoughts of it, and to look on all tbe changes
that had been made as designs to enrich some vicious cha-
racters, and to let in an inundation of vice and wickedness
upon the nation."*
We have seen with what slowness and reluctance the
great mystery of the Real Presence was surrendered by
almost all the continental Reformers, — Luther himself,
with all his efforts, being unable to cast it off,f and Me-
lancthon, though, in his latter days, inclined to Sacra-
mentarianism, yet leaving undisturbed in the Protestant
formularies of faith, those affirmations of the ancient doc-
trine which his own hand had there recorded; while Cal-
vin, in order to disguise the extent of his innovation,
threw such ambiguity of phrase round his rejection of a
Real Presence, as enabled Bucer to pretend that it was
meant as an acceptance of it|
* Hist, of the Reformation.— To thase undeniable testimonies may be
added that of Strype: — "The Churchmen heaped up many benefices
upon themselves, and resided upon none, neglecting their cures: many
of them alienated their lands, made unreasonable leases, and wastes
of their woods; granted reversions and advowsons to their wives and
children, or to others for their use. Churches ran greatly into dilapi-
dations and decays, and were kept nasty and indecent for God's wor-
ship. Among the laity there was little devotion; — the Lord's day
greatly profaned and little observed; the common prayers not frequent-
ed. Some lived without any service of God at all. Many were mere
heathens and atheists; — the Queen's own court a harbour for Epicures
and atheists, and a kind of lawless place, because it stood in no pa-
rish." — Life of Parker.
t Luther became, indeed, even more Popish, on this point, before his
death; and in a Thesis published by him against the Doctors of Lou-
vain, in 1545, (but a year before he died,) called the Eucharist " the
adorable Sacrament;" to the no small consternation of the Sacramen-
tarians, whom he had delighted by abolishing the elevation, and whom,
therefore, this inconsistent admission but the more thoroughly con-
founded. Calvin writes to Bucer on the occasion, " He has lifted up
the idol in the temple of God."
t We find a similar style of mystification still resorted to by those
few Protestant controvertists, who, in order to maintain some little
consistency with the Church of England Catechism, affect to uphold a
Real Presence. Thus, the theologians of the British Critic insist that
14 a Real Presence is the doctrine of the Church of England;"— while
Mr. Faber talks of a change in the elements, — a moral change." All
this, however, is but a mere stale repetition of the old trick of Heresy,
"speaking the same things, but meaning them differently," o/uctot
jtxtv x*\ouvtss, ttvojuoict Jg 0£cvovvTic> In such manner was it, aslre-
naeus tells us, that the first Gnostics proceeded,— using the same lan-
guage with the orthodox Church, but thinking differently.
23*
( 270 )
A similar reluctance to part with this vital doctrine was
manifested through a very long period in England. Under
Henry VIII. the zeal of both monarch and church for its
maintenance was shown by their burning all those who
dared openly to dissent from it; and in the following
reign, we find even the introducer of Zwinglianism, Pe*
ter Martyr, allowing, as Fox tells us, "a change of sub*
gtance of bread and wine."*
In the reign of Elizabeth, who was herself supposed to
favour this doctrine, a paragraph added to the 28th Arti-
cle in the time of Edward VI., and declaring expressly
against a Real Presence, was, by her desire, suppressed.!
** She inclined," says Burnet, " to have the manner of
Christ's presence in the Sacrament left in some general
words, that those who believed the Corporal Presence
might not be driven away from the Church by too nice
an explanation of it."
Even at so late a period as during the reigns of James
I. and his successor, the language of many most eminent
Prelates, respecting this Sacrament, differed but little
from that of Catholics themselves upon the subject. " We
adore, with Ambrose,"! says Bishop Andrews, " the flesh
of Christ in the Mysteries." The same divine, address-
ing Bellarmine, and professing to answer as well for King
* At or»e of the disputations held between Protestants and Catho*
lies, during the reign of Edward the Sixth, the Real Presence was as-
serted by the advocate of the Protestant cause, Mr. Perne, who said.
"We deny nothing less than his presence, or the absence of his sub-
stance in the bread." At this disputation, Ridley presided.
t The following is the paragraph:—" Forasmuch as the truth of man's
nature requireth that the body of one and the self-same man cannot
be, at one time, in divers places, but must needs be in one certain place;
therefore the body of Christ cannot be, at one time, in many and divers
places, and because, as Holy Scripture doth teach, Christ was taken up
into heaven, end there shall continue unto the end of the world, a
faithful man ought not either to believe or openly confess the Real
and Bodily Presence, as they term it. of Christ's flesh and blood in the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper."
** In explaining the Protestant meaning of a Real Presence, Gilbert
nays. " In this sense, it is innocent of itself, and may be lawfully used:
though, perhaps, it were more cautiously done not to use it, since ad-
vantages have been taken of it to urge it farther than we intend it."
X Nos vero in mysteriis Carnum Christi adoramus cum Ambrosio.
Answer to Bellarmine's Apology.— When it is recollected that St. Am-
brose upheld, in its highest Catholic sense, the doctrine of Transub-
Ptantiation, the strength of this declaration of Bishop Andrews will
be the more fully appreciated. See the extract which I have given
from Clarke'i Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. i. p. 88. — " In doctrine,"
says this learned Protestant writer, "St. Ambrose is all that Rome
coijld wish him "
( 271 )
James as for himself, says, " We believe a Presence no
less true than that which you yourself believe."* Arch-
bishop Laud drew from the Reality of the Presence a rea-
son for reverence to the altar; as being", "upon this ac-
count, the greatest place of God's residence upon earth;"
and Bishop Forbes declares it to be " a frightful error in
those rigid Protestants who deny that Christ is to be
adored in the Eucharist."! Thus, too, Bishop Cousin, in
his History of Transubstantiation:-—" Although it seems
incredible, that, in so great a distance of place, Christ's
flesh should came to us to be our food, yet we must re^
member howjnuch the power of the Holy Spirit is above
our understanding, and how foolish it is to measure his
immensity by our capacity.":);
Still later, in the time of Charles II., we find, in the
Exposition of the amiable and pious Bishop Ken, the fol-
* Pracsentiam inquara, eredimus, nee minus quam vos veram. — An-
swer to Bcllarmine.
t Immanis est rigidorum Protestantium error qui negant Christum
in Eucharistia esse adorandum nisi adoratione interna et mentali,
non autem externo aliqtio ritu, &c. &c. — De Eucharist.
% The testimonies of Hooker and Jeremy Taylor, on this subject,
though well known, are of too much importance not to be added to
the above authorities. " I wish," says Hooker, " men would give
themselves more time to meditate with silence on what we have in
the Sacrament, and less to dispute on the manner how. Sith we all
agree that Christ by the Sacrament doth really and truly perform in
us his promise, why do we vainly trouble ourselves with so fierce
contentions, whether by CGnsubstantiation, or else transubstantiation?" —
Ecclesiastical Polity.
The passage from Jeremy Taylor is of still more value, as being not
merely a record of the opinion of so eminent a divine, on this point,
but also a vindication of the Catholics from the charge of idolatry in
their adoration of the Presence. "The object of their (the Catholics')
adoration in the Sacrament is the only true and eternal God hyposta-
tically united with his holy humanity, which humanity they believe
actually present under the veil of the Sacrament; and if they thought
him not present, they are so far from worshipping the bread, that they
profess it idolatry to do so." — Liberty of Prophesying . It is usual to
contrast with this passage of Bishop Taylor another, of apparently
different import, from a later work of the same eminent man, entitled,
il Dissuasive from Popery." But those who compare the laboured lan-
guage in which his latter opinion is conveyed with the simple, clear
enunciation of doctrine just cited, can little doubt as to which of the
two passages they would select as the true record of his views. A
man who expresses himself in the following scholastic fashion can
hardly escape the suspicion of being actuated by a wish to deceive
either himself or others:—" In calling it Corpus Spirituals the word
Spirituale is not a substantial predicate, but is an affirmation of the
manner; though, in disputation, it be made the predicate of a proposi-
tion, and the opposite member of a distinction. "—Dissuasive from Po-
pery.
( 272 )
lowing impressive sentences: — " Oh God Incarnate! how
thou canst give us thy flesh to eat and thy blood to drink ;
how thy flesh is meat, indeed ; how thou, who art in hea-
ven, art present on the altar, I can by no means explain;
but I firmly believe it all, because Thou hast said it, and
I firmly rely on thy love and thy omnipotence to make
good thy word, though the manner of doing it I cannot
comprehend."
The Catholic belief of a sacrificial offering in the Eu-
charist was even more extensively, at the period of which
I have been speaking, prevalent among Protestants; and,
among others, the profound scholar, Joseoh Mede, lent
the high sanction of his authority* to this doctrine. In
answering the famous Calvinist, Twisse, who. had said
that there was but little evidence for the Eucharistic Sa-
crifice in antiquity, Mede asks, " What is there in Chris-
tianity for which more antiquity may be brought than
for this? I speak not now of the Fathers' meaning
(whether I guessed rightly at it or not,) but in general
of their notion of a Sacrifice in the Eucharist. If there
is little antiquity in this, there is no antiquity for any
thing" He then quotes, as confirmatory of his own opi-
nion, the candid avowal prefixed by Bishop Morton to his
work on the Eucharist, — " We freely acknowledge the
fact that there is frequent mention made by the Ancient
Fathers of the bloodless sacrifice of the body of Christ in
the Eucharist."
Such attestations to the truth of the Catholic doctrine
* In maintaining a proper and material Sacrifice in the Eucharist,
Mede was followed by another great scholar, in the same walk of
learning, Doctor Grabe, who even composed a Liturgy, for his own
use, in which the ancient prayer, founded on this doctrine, was re-
stored. So great a concession to the Catholics could not but excite
alarm among their opponents ; and, accordingly, this opinion of Mede
and Grabe was strongly censured, as an acknowledgment of the Sa-
crifice of the Mass, by Buddeus, Ittigius, Deylingius, and other conti-
nental divines.
Embarrassed thus between the fear of favouring Popery, on one side,
and the irresistibly strong language of the Fathers, on the other, some
of the most eminent of the English theologians, and, among others,
Cud worth and Waterland, while they deny any proper or material Sa-
crifice in the Eucharist, go so far as to admit it to be a symbolical feast
upon a Sacrifice ; that is to say, (as Waterland explains it.) " upon
the Grand Sacrifice itself commemorated under certain Symbols."
Such are the pitiable evasions of evidence and authority to which
Protestants are compelled, by their schismatic position, to have re-
course !
( 273 )
on this point, particularly from a Protestant so versed in
Christian antiquity as Mede, cannot but be considered
highly important;* and the following' passage, from his
letter to Twisse, contains, in a few pregnant sentences,
the whole pith of what I have been endeavouring,
throughout these pages, to inculcate: — " Yet, one thing
more : it is no time now to slight the Catholic consentrof
the Church in her first ages, when Socinianism grows
so fast on the rejection thereof, nor to abhor so much the
notion of a Commemorative Sacrifice in the Eucharist
when we shall meet with those who will deny the death
of Christ upon the cross to have been a sacrifice for sin.
- — Verbum intelligenti. There may be here some mas-
ter of importance.' 5
But, to return to my parallel. — The bitter discord be-
tween the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches which, if it
did not produce, at least deepened and prolonged the hor-
rors of the Thirty Years' War, finds no unapt counter-
part in the long struggle between the Church of England
asd the Puritans, and that fierce civil war which ensued.
This similarity, as well in causes as effects, on both
sides, was not likely to escape the observation of Mr.
Pusey, who, in showing how much of the irreligion of Ger-
many is to be attributed to the English infidel writers of
the seventeenth century, traces the origin of this infide-
lity, in England itself, to " the sunken state of Christia-
nity through the civil wars, and the controversies of im-
bittered parties." Nothing, indeed, could well be more
calculated to bring religion itself into disrepute, than
thus to see two great nations torn up by internal faction
and hate, on points of difference, to which, at this day, no
rational mind can look back, without a mixed feeling of
sorrow, ridicule, and wonder.
But, however absurd were most of the doctrines about
which the German Churches wrangled so furiously, they
* So insurmountable is the evidence for the early date of the Sacrifice
of the Mas?, that. Hospinian, the Protestant historian, is forced to at-
tribute to the devil the introduction of such Popish abominations in
the very lifetime, as he owns, of the Apostles themselves! — " Even in
that first age," says this writer, " whilst, the Apostles were still alive,
the devil had the audacity to lie in ambush, under this Sacrament,
more than under that of Baptism, and gradually seduced men from
that primitive form." Sebastianus Francus, too, allows that, " Im-
mediately after the time of the Apostles, all things were inverted, — the
Lord's Supper teas transformed into a Sacrifice."
( 274 )
were, at least, subjects of speculation, and, as opening a
field for the gymnastics of argument, were, in so far,
more respectable than those wretched points of strife so
long contested between the Church of England and her
Puritan opponents. Whether the clergy ought to wear
linen surplices and caps ;* whether steeples ought to be
surmounted with weathercocks or crosses;! whether the
altar should stand in the middle of the church, or altar-
wise, with one side to the wall ; whether it be becoming
a good Christian to pay reverence to the altar,J to bow
at the name of Jesus, or stand up at the Gloria Patri;§ —
* There appear to have been some, even among the reverend stick-
lers on these points, who had the good sense to perceive the wretched
nature of their warfare. Thus, in a Memorial presented to the Bish-
ops by two deprived Dignitaries, Sampson and Humfrey, they " pro-
test before God, what a bitter grief it was to them, that there should be
a dissension between them for so small a matter as woollen and linen " —
(meaning the cap and surplice.) — Strype, Life of Parker.
Not content with the disgrace redounding to themselves from such
trifling, these divines, with the usual profaneness of party-theologians,
were for enlisting God himself in their war about " woollen and li-
nen." In a letter written by Bishop Sands, in 1566, he says, " Disputes
are now on foot concerning the Popish vestments, whether they should
be used or not ; but God will put an end to these things.'"
t In a letter to Peter Martyr, Bishop Jewel thus writes: — " The con-
troversy about Crosses is now grown very warm. You would hardly be-
lieve how mad some, who seemed wise men, are in a foolish matter."
He adds, farther on, " 'Tis come to that pass, that the silver and tin
crosses which we had every where broke down, must be set up again,
or we must leave our bishoprics."
The queen (Elizabeth) was so far attached to the ancient faith as to
wish to preserve some of these vestiges of it ; and we are told by Hey-
lin that one of her chaplains, " speaking less reverently, in a sermon
preached before her, of the Sign of the Cross, was called to aloud by
her out of her closet-window, and commanded to retire from that un-
godly digression, and return to his text." — Hist, of Reformation.
X As a specimen of their mode of treating these points, I shall here
give a few sentences from a pamphlet of that period, on the subject of
reverence to the altar. In a treatise, entitled, M Reasons for bowing
to the Altar," the author had contended, on the grounds afterwards
taken up by Archbishop Laud, that " as the Chair of State is always
to be honoured, though the person of the Royal Majesty be not seen
there, so is God's Board ever to have due reverence, and God, who is
there perpetually, is always to be bowed to," &c. &c. To this treatise
an answer was published by some Puritan, in which are the following
sentences. " First, therefore, let them prove that God hath and ought
to have a seat in every Church." Again, " This gentleman must
prove that God sits personally sometimes on the table." The conclu-
sion to which the Puritan comes, at last, is, "Therefore, as God is
always sitting on the table, they ought not to bow or do any reverence
to it at all."
§ In a letter from the sturdy Puritan, Twisse, to Mr. Mede, he says,
" You bade me stand up at Gloria Patri; and it was in such a tone
too, that you had the mastery of me, I know not how. I profess I
( 275 )
such were a few of the mighty questions at issue between
the parties; such the levers of discord by which Pro-
testant England was heaved from her very foundations!
At the same time that controversies like these were
bringing ridicule on religion by their frivolousness, the
Antinomian tenets,* then prevalent among all ranks, still
more disgraced it by their immorality;! while, in that
infinite power of subdivision into new sects and denomina-
tions, in which Protestantism, at all times, luxuriates,
never did she half so unboundedly revel as at that truly
sectarian crisis.]: " England (says a preacher before the
Commons, in 1647) was never so bad as in a time of Re-
formation. Witness the numerous and numberless in-
crease of errors and heterodox opinions, even to blasphemy,
among us ! The world once wondered to see itself turned
Arian. England may now wonder to see itself turned
Anabaptist, Antinomian, § Arminian, Socinian, Arian, Anti-
little looked for such entertainment at your hands. My wife's father,
Dr. Moore, was Bishop Bilson's chaplain, and most respected by him
of any chaplain that ever he had, and he a cathedral man, too; but
they could vevcr get him to stand up at Gloria Patri."
* In a pamphlet published at that time by one Archer, catted "Com-
fort for Believers in their Sins and Troubles," the doctrine origin-
ally held both by Luther and Calvin, that God was the direct author
of sin, is thus boldly put forward : — " We may safely say that God is,
and hath a hand in, and is the author of the sinfulness of his people. 1 '
After quoting the opinions of some divines, who " have erred," as he
says, " in making sin more of the creature and itself, and less from
God than it is," he adds, "This opinion gives not enough to God in
sin. Let us embrace and profess the truth, and not fear to say that of
God which he in his Holy Book, saith of himself, namely, ' that of Him
and from His hand is not only the thing that is sinful, but the pravity
and sinfulness of it.'"
\ What the effects of such tenets must be upon the minds of ordinary
and ignorant persons may be concluded from their demoralizing in-
fluence upon those of a superior class. We are assured by Bishop
Burnet (Sum. of Affairs before Reform.) it was the opinion of Cromwell
that " the moral laws were only binding in ordinary cases ; but that,
upon extraordinary ones, these might be superseded, — he and that set
of men (adds Burnet) justifying their ill actions from the practice of
Ehud and Jael, Sampson and David."
Most truly has Dr. Hey asserted, in his Theological Lectures, that
" the misinterpretation of Scriptures brought on the miseries of the
Civil Wars."
X There was, in Cromwell's time, a Committee of the House of Com-
mons appointed, to " consider of the particular enumeration of damn-
able heresies. What a Report it must have been !
§ Nothing can be imagined more ruinous to all true notions of re-
ligion and morality than was the doctrine of Justification, as asserted
by the high Calvinists, of that period. All the worst consequences, in-
deed, that can arise from pride and cruelty united were sure to be en-
gendered, in their most odious form, by a creed which held that there
( 276 )
Scripturist, what not ! — Alas, what were Ceremonies to
these things but (as Calvin once called them) ' tolerabiles
ineptise,' children's sport, in comparison ! How much less
an evil was it, think ye, to bow at the name of Jesus
than to deny, to blaspheme the name of Jesus? (2 Pet
ii, 1.")
" Would it be believed (said the great Hebraist, Dr;
Lightfoot,* who also preached before the House of Com-
mons) that, in so short a time, after so solemn an obliga-
tion, and the Parliament that brought on the Covenant
sitting, the Covenant should be so forgot as we dolefully
see daily that it is 1 We vowed against Error, Heresy and
Schism, and swore to the God of Truth and Peace to the
utmost of our power to extirpate them and to root them
out. These stones and walls and pillars were witnesses
of our solemn engagement. And now, if the Lord should
come to inquire what we have done according to this
vow and Covenant, I am amazed to think what the Lord
was no one sin, however small, that did not deserve eternal torments,
nor no number of sins, however great, that could deprive the Elect of
eternal happiness. — See the small volume of VVitsius, entitled J3ni-
madcersiones Irenicce, in which, whatever grace can be thrown round
euch blasphemies by the style in which they are stated, has been lent
to them by the elegant Latinity of this writer. Among the high
Calvinist doctrines of which, (though held, as he admits, by " Viri
docti " of his sect,) Witsius himself disapproves, are the following — that
God can see no sin in believers, that they contract no guilt by new
crimes, nor can any crimes lie heavy on their consciences, — that David
himself never complained of the weight of sin upon his mind, &.c.— il Nee
Davidem ex vero de peccati sibi incumbentis onere conquestum esse."
Among the opinions which Witsius fully adopts are such as the fol-
lowing: — Because believers are just through the justice of Christ, they
arc equally just with Christ himself, — the justice of the Elect being the
very justice itself of Christ. "Quiajusti sunt per justitiam Christi,
seque justos esse ac ipse Christus quum justitja Electorum
sit ipsissima Christi justitia."
The manner in which God's tolerance of the sins of the Elect is ex-
plained by these fanatics affords a highly characteristic sample of their
presumption and impiety. God sees, they allow, the sins of believers,
but does not see them with an «-ye to condemnation or punishment
the stain still remains in his sight, but without the guilt.—" Non in-
tuetur sic ut propter ilia condemnare eos instituat tollitur
(peccatum) non quo ad maculum sed ad reatum." To illustrate this
relative position of God and his Elect, Charnock compares it to an ac-
count book, in which the old score, though marked off, and no longer
due, is still legible.—" Debitum tale legi fortasse potest ; exigi non
potest."
* We have here another instance of a profound inquirer into Christian
antiquity bearing full testimony to the truth of a great Catholic tenet ;
—this learned man being of opinion, with the Catholics, that the keys
were given to Peter exclusively of the other Apostles.
( 277 )
Would find amongst us. Would he not find ten schisms
now for one then, twenty heresies now for one at that
time, and forty errors now for one when we swore against
them]"
The very same results, both as regards the distracting*
varieties of heresy, and the corrupting influence of An-
tinomian doctrines, appear from the avowals and lamenta*
tions of most of the eminent writers of Germany, to have
taken place at the same period in that equally sect-ridden
country. Indeed, the parallel between the two cases is
in this instance, as in most others, complete. "The
Church of God (says a German writer quoted by Walch)
is surrounded with a thousand troubles; the wolves are
quartered in the fold; almost every one now opposes the
truth; and by false preachers the world is deceived. The
Anabaptist's guile, the Quaker's demure mood, the Chiliast
fanaticism, and Bohme's giddy spirit begins, in these
times, again to renew itself. The Pietist crew storms
in perforce. These, these are they who would regenerate
the world by their false holiness, who bring God's house
into ten thousand ills, and sow in God's field the filth of
Belial."
" The doctrine of justification by faith alone (says the
pious Spener) is a holy doctrine, and we should not think
it too much to shed our blood for it. But when the great
careless multitude so shamefully abuse it, that, even
while continuing in sin and its service, they still console
themselves that they shall attain eternal life by faith
alone, will live and die in dependence upon this, — then
is such doctrines (which many entertain in order that
they may still indulge their fleshly mind and their care-
less security) not a true but a false doctrine; for it is a
shameful perversion of the truth And so it is
with other points. So that we have not only ground to
complain of evil lives, but that, with all these discourses
about faith, very little faith is left, nay that most are
wholly ignorant what faith is."
24
( 278 )
CHAPTER L.
Parallel between the Protestantism of Germany and of England conti-
nued.— Infidel writers.— Sceptical English Divines— South, Sherlock,
and Burnet. — Extraordinary work of the latter. — Socinianism of
Hoadly, Balguy, Hey, &c— Closing stage of the Parallel.— Testimo-
nies to the increasing irreligion of England.
Such a course of affairs, moral and theological, as I
have been describing, could not but lead in the end to
fatal results; and though of the two countries destined
thus to one common fate, Germany has been the more
rapid in reaching the catastrophe, England was the first
to feel and give the downward impulse. The natural
fruits of all this abuse and degradation of religion soon
manifested themselves, in the latter country, by a series
of the most deliberate and systematic attacks upon Chris-
tianity that have ever been hazarded by infidels since
first the light of the Gospel broke on this world. With
such vigour were these impious assaults carried on, that,
in the successive productions, from the year 1650, of
Hobbes, Toland, Collins, Morgan, Woolston, Tindall, and
Chubb, all the arguments of Deism may be said to have
been exhausted ; — Voltaire himself having been indebted
for the keenest of his Anti-Christian weapons to the de-
structive armoury of these acute English free-thinkers.
To them also, far more than to the French Philosophers,
or even to the example of the infidel court of Frederick
the Great, has Germany to attribute the impulse given to
her literature at the commencement of the eighteenth
century, — an impulse, seconded but too willingly by her
own Rationalizing divines, and ending, as we have seen,
in the almost total extinction of her religion. Thus, by
a signal retribution, has Germany had, by her example,
been the means of Protestantizing England, so England
has, in return, helped to unchristian ize Germany*
44 *The fatal pre-eminence of being foremost in the ranks of infidelity
is thus assigned to the English writers by Mosheim : — " There is no
country in Europe where infidelity has not exhibited its poison ; and
scarcely any denomination of Christians among whom we may not
find several persons who either aim at the total extinction of all re-
( 2VJ )
I have already remarked that the Reformed Church, <n\
the continent, from being much less concentrated than the
Lutheran, as well as less accustomed to the restraints of
fixed formularies of faith, lay proportionately more open
to the inroads of belief; and, in that sort of security
against innovation which Confessions and Articles afford,
the Church of England was no less strongly intrenched
than the Lutheran. Even into this preserve of orthodoxy,
however, strict as was the " divinity that hedged it," the
effects of the reaction produced by the excesses of Puri-
tanism began visibly to extend themselves ; — insomuch
that, before the close of that century, the University of
Oxford had to condemn, by a Decree of the Vice-Chan-
cellor, as " false, impious and heretical," certain doctrines,
concerning the Godhead, maintained publicly by a Dean
of St. Paul's!*
The controversy in which this Decree had its origin is
memorable in the annals of English theology; and not the
less so from the fact that Dr. South, with whom the Uni-
versity sided, on the occasion, was as little orthodox, on
the subject, as his Trit-heist opponent ; for while the latter
(Doctor Sherlock) maintained that the three Persons
in the Trinity are three distinct minds or spirits,f and
three individual substances, Doctor South destroyed the
ligion, or at least endeavour to invalidate the authority of the Chris-
tian system. Some carry on these unhappy attempts in an open man-
ner ; others under the mask of a Christian profession ; but no where
have these enemies of the purest religion and consequently of mankind,
whom it was-intended to render pure and happy, appeared, with more ef-
frontery and insolence than under the governments of Great Britain and
the United Provinces. In England more especially it is not uncommon
to meet with books in which not only the doctrines of the Gospel, but
also the perfections of the Deity, and the solemn obligations of piety
and virtue are impudently called into question and turned into deri-
sion."
* Doctor Sherlock. The Decree was levelled not directly at Sherlock
himself, but at a Clergyman of Oxford who had preached his doctrine.
f Doctor Wallis represents Sherlock as being of opinion that the
Three Spirits are as " really distinct as Peter, James, and John, and
one God only, as they are mutually conscious," Wallis himself, in
explaining his own view of the doctrine, is fully as Sabellian as South.
" Whereas Persona (he says,) in its true and ancient sense, before the
schoolmen put this forced sense upon it [i.e. of a distinct intelligent
being,] did not signify a man simply, but one under such and such and
such circumstances, or qualifications ; so that the same man, if capable
of being qualified thus and thus and thus, might sustain three persons,
and these three persons be the same man." — Letters concerning the
Trinity. In another place, this celebrated divine tells us gravely, that
' ! there are three somswhats" in the Trinity.
( 2S0 )
triple Personality altogether, and, in supposing- but one
substance, with something like three modes of existence,
fell into downright Sabellianism.
The language, indeed, of this latter sprightly divine,
on more than one solemn topic, would not have been ill-
suited to the present Rationalist meridian of Germany;
and, on the subject of the Book of Revelations, not even
Semler himself, in all the wantonness of his school, has
ventured to express himself so irreverently as did this
chaplain of the Protestant champion, William III., who
speaks of it, in one of his Sermons, as " a mysterious ex-
traordinary book, which, perhaps, the more 'tis studied, the
less 'tis understood, as generally rinding a man cracked
or making him so !"*
Nearly at the same time with the discreditable con-
troversy just mentioned, appeared another and still more
signal proof of the rapid advances of scepticism, not merely
within the hallowed pale of Subscription itself, but, still
more extraordinarily, on the very highways of preferment
and patronage. Doctor Thomas Burnet, the master of
the Charter-House,t and, as was supposed, destined to
* Sermons. — While South himself indulges in such license, he ac-
cuses Sherlock of still greater irreverence ; and denounces his Treatise
of the Knowledge of Christ as " a book fraught with reflections upon
God's justice, with reference to Christ's satisfaction ;" adding " that it
may deservedly pass for a blasphemous libel on both." Nor can it be
denied that there are passages in Sherlock's Treatise which fully war-
rant this description of it. For instance, Dr. Owen, the famous Cal-
vinist, having asserted " that in Christ God hath manifested the
naturalness of this righteousness unto him, in that it was impossible
that it should be diverted from sinners, without the interposing of a
propitiation," Dr. Sherlock, in ridiculing this doctrine, gives way to
the following indecent language : — " That is (for I can make no better
of it) being glutted and satiated with the blood of Christ, God may pardon
as many and as great sinners as he pleases without fear of the least im-
putation of justice:'' Again, " The sum of which is, that God is all love
and patience, when he hath taken his fill of revenge. As others use to say,
that ' the Devil is very good when he is pleased: "
t The example of orthodoxy set by these three responsible divines
(South, a Rector and King's Chaplain, Sherlock, a Dean of St. Paul's,
and Burnet, Master of the Charter-House) gave birth to a lively ballad,
of which I cannot resist the temptation ofquoting a few stanzas :
" When Preb. replied, like thunder,
And roared out 'twas no wonder,
Since Gods the Dean had three, sir,
And more by two than he, sir;
For he had sot but one,
For he had, &x. &c.
( 281 )
succeed Tiliotson in the see of Canterbury, published
about this time a work called " Archaeologiaj Philoso-
phical," in which, giving it as his opinion that Philosophy
should be made the interpreter of Scripture (the masked
battery of all infidels,) he proceeds to inquire into the
Mosaic history of the Creation of the World; and, bring-
ing* forward every argument that a learned scepticism
could suggest to throw doubt upon the credibility of the
narrative, treats the whole with a degree of sarcasm and
ridicule which would be, even in a lay infidel, offensive.
The principle on which he attempts to account for and
reconcile the presumed falsehood of this history, — namely,
that Moses, in all the details of his Cosmogony, thought
only of adapting himself to the prejudices of the vulgar,*
— is the very same that has, in later times, been made
subservient to the explaining away of most of the essence
of Christianity. Nor, even in this ulterior object, was
the Reverend Doctor much behind the age of Rationalism,
as we find him citing, in- support of the policy of thus
humouring the false fancies of the vulgar, the examples
of Christ and the Apostles, who, he says, in speaking on
such points as a Future Life, the Last Judgment, and the
nature of Heaven and Hell, did not express themselves
accurately, but, on the contrary, adapted their language
to what they knew to be the most popular imaginations on
these subjects. As a specimen of the freedom with which
this divine handles such topics, I shall merely mention
that, after demonstrating, as he supposes, the physical
impossibility of light having been created on the first
•• Now, while the two were raging,
And in dispute engaging,
The Master of the Charter
Said both had caught a Tartar,
For Gods, sir, there were none, &x.
" That all the Books of Moses
Were nothing but supposes ;
That he deserved rebuke, sir,
Who wrote the Pentateuch, sir —
'Twas nothing but a sham, &c.
11 That as for Father Adam,
With Mrs. Eve, his madam,
An 1 what the Serpent spoke, sir,
'Twas nothing but a joke, sir,
And well-invented flam," &c.
* Scripturam Sacram ad populi captum accomodare.
24*
( 282 )
day, he suggests that Moses might have thought it advisa-
ble to begin his Hexameron with this task, lest it should
seem "as if God were working three days in the dark."!*
The effects of the change produced in the actual power
of the Crown, at the Revolution, by substituting patron-
age and the force of influence for the bare sceptre of pre-
rogative, have been felt in none of those channels through
which the Royal Pactolus has since continued to flow,
more abundantly than in the Church : — and thus, in addi-
tion to whatever guard against innovation the pen-fold of
Subscription may have supplied, a new and still more
powerful incentive to orthodoxy has been found in the
grandeur and opulence that glitter within its pale. Still
so prone and irresistible is the tendency of Protestantism
to strip itself of every shred of doctrine and reason away-
all mysteries, that, notwithstanding the countless world-
ly advantages which a Church, rich in such bribes, holds
out, not only has lay dissent from her communion in-
creased to such an extent as threatens, before long, to
*' push her from her stool," but even her own divines, the
very sentinels of the Establishment, have gone on under-
mining the foundations of her faith, and surrendering,
one by one, its strongest outposts, as if to prepare her for
* Ne Deus videretur per triduum opnrari in tenebris.— He remarks
that, on some of the days, God is represented as doing very little,
and accounts for this disproportionate activity by the supposition that
Moses, intending, from the first, to institute the Sabbath, thus pur-
posely spun out the task, so as to make God rest on the seventh day.
The part of his work that gave most offence was an imaginary dia-
logue between Eve and the Serpent, and this, in a second edition of
his book, published at Amsterdam, he omitted; as well as his irreverent
remark on the sewing of the rig-leaves together: — " Behold the first ru-
diments of the tailor's art!*' En primordia artis sutoriae !
Such was the decorous divine who, but for this unlucky production,
would have succeeded, it was supposed, Tillotson as Archbi oop of
Canterbury! — Tillotson himself was, it is well known, suspected of
more than a leaning to Socinianism, and the laudatory terms in which
he speaks of the learning and candour of the followers of that creed
might well induce such a suspicion. However successfully, indeed,
he may be thought to have cleared himself from the imputation, it is
no small proof of, at least, the tendency of some of his doctrine in that
direction, that Leslie, in one of his controversial works, was able to
pass off whole pages of Tillotson's Sermon on Hell Torments, as from
the pen of a Socinian writer. " Because you could not (says Emlyn,
in his answer to Leslie) raise odium enough from their own (the So-
cinians') writings, you pick up any odious thing, even out of the
writings of their very opposers, and then make your Socinian to speak
it, and this without naming the author from whom you took tiie
passage."
( 283 )
that fall, in which her sisters of Germany have but a
short space preceded her.
J\ T or is it so much to the Burnets and the Whistons,
who, from too much honesty, overleap the Church fence,
as to the Hoadlys and Balguys, who keep insidiously
within it, that the main mischief is to be attributed. Of
the success of the two last-mentioned divines in Soci-
nianizing the Church of England Sacraments, I have al-
Teady more than once spoken ; and though they did not
.openly carry the principle any farther, the close friend-
ship which Hoadly maintained with Samuel Clarke, as
-.well as the earnestness with which, in his Life of that
.distinguished man, he defends him against the charge of
having retracted his heretical notions, concerning the
'Trinity, leave little doubt that the Bishop's own views on
that subject were, at least, equally heterodox.
The language of Doctor Balguy, in its anti-mysterious
and rationalizing tendency, was even more explicit than
that of his friend and patron, the Bishop. The very ar-
gument, indeed, advanced by the infidel, Toland, to prove
that Christianity is not mysterious, — namely, that it pro-
fesses to be a revelation, and that any thing revealed can
no longer be mysterious, — is thus brought forward, at se-
cond-hand, by the beneficed Dr. Balguy : " It is no ways
essential to a mystery to be ill understood : the word evi-
dently refers to men's past ignorance, not their present.
In this sense, the revelation of a mystery destroys the
very being of it. The moment it becomes an article of
belief, it is mysterious no longer."*
This is manifestly mere Socinianism in disguise ; — for,
to say that the moment a doctrine becomes an article of
belief, it is mysterious no longer, is but another mode of
asserting the main position of the Rationalist, that, if a
dostrine is mysterious, it cannot become an article of be-
lief. The whole of Dr. Balguy's language, on such sub-
jects, is of the same insidious description ; though occa-
sionally, as in the following passage of one of his Charges,
the mask is somewhat more boldly lifted : — " It is our busi-
ness (he says) not to swell out the slender articles of belief
contained in Scripture by mere human inventions ; and,
least of all, to censure and persecute our brethren, per-
* Discourses ', hy T. Balgvy, D. D,
( 284 )
haps for no other reason than because their nonsense and
ours wear a different dress."*
As a clew to the meaning insinuated in these suspi-
cious sentences, I shall add another remarkable passage
of the same clever divine, in which his admission of the
Pagan origin assigned by Priestly and others to the doc-
trine of the Trinity is fir too clear to be mistaken : — " A
man will have no cause to fear that he believes too little,
if he believes enough to make him repent and obey. If
we are firmly persuaded that Jesus was sent from Godrf
if we are sincerely desirous to obey his laws, and hope for
salvation in and through him, it will never be laid to our
charge that we have misconceived certain metaphysical
niceties, which have been drawn from obscure passages
of Scripture by the magical operation of Pagan philo-
sophy."
Such, all but avowal of the worst principles of Socian-
ism, from men so high in the Church, both from station
and talent, sufficiently prepares us for what otherwise
would have seemed wholly incredible, — an express prof-
fer of the hand of fellowship to the whole body of So-
cinians, from no less a quarter than the chair of the Nor-
risian professor of Theology, at Cambridge ! — In one of
his otherwise most valuable Lectures, the late Dr. Hey
thus speaks: — "We and the Socinians are said to differ,
— but about what] Not about morality or about natural
religion. We differ only about what we do not understand,
and about what is to be done on the part of God ; and if
we allowed one another to use expessions at will {and
what great matter could that be in what might be called
unmeaning icords?) we need never be on our guard
against each other. "J
In these few sceptical sentences, — in the chill and
deadly air of Indifferentism that breathes through them,
we recognise that last stage of a declining religion, be-
fore (as exemplified so signally in the instance of Ger-
* Charge to the Clergy of an Archdeaconry.
t It is plain that the Mahometans, who believe Christ to have been
a prophet M sent from God," must, on the principle here laid down, be
considered as orthodox.
\ The same learned Lecturer, in speaking of the custom, as he calls
it, in Scripture, of mentioning Father, Son, and Holy Ghost together,
says, " Did I pretend to understand what I say, I might be a Trit heist
or an infidel ; but 1 could not worship the one true God, and acknow-
ledge Jesus Christ to be the Lord of all."
( 285 )
many,) it sinks to the flat level of total unbelief; — that
stage, where Heresy, weary of its own caprices and
changes, and no longer fed by the false stimulus which
the strife of controversy once lent, sinks hopelessly into
the collapse of indifference which precedes the death of
all faith.
I have already more than once referred to the " mon-
ster of absurdity," — as Whitaker justly describes it, — of
an avowed Arian, on the bench of Bishops, in the person
of Dr. Clayton, and might here still farther, did my limits
permit, increase my list of Socinian Divines of the Church
of England by such names as Watson,* Warburton,f Jor-
tin,;!; the late Dr. Parr,§ and others, — showing how irre-
* In a charge to his clergy, in the year 1795, this latitudinarian di-
vine, speaking of the Christian doctrines, thus speaks: — " I think it
safer to tell you where they are contained than what they are. They are
contained in the Bible, and if, in reading that book, your sentiments
concerning the doctrines of Christianity should be different from those
of your neighbour, or from thoscofthe Church, be persuaded, on your part,
that infallibility appertains as little to you as it does to the Church."
The same Bishop, in the Catalogue of books affixed to his Theologi-
cal Tracts, says, "We ought to entertain no other wish than that
every man may be allowed, without loss of fame or fortune, to think
what he pleases, and say what he thinks — (et sentire quae velit et quse
sentiat dicere.") In adverting to this free and easy principle, a cor-
respondent of the reverend author of the Parriana very justly says,
"This extraordinary passage means what is nothing to the purpose,
or what is very disgraceful to the Church of England. Certainly, un-
til a man avows himself her member or teacher, she claims no autho-
thority, leaving conscience and disquisition free; but when men have
in almost a score of instances solemnly declared their assent and con-
sent to certain Articles, does the Church then permit any such indivi-
dual ' et sentire qum velit et quce sentiat dicere?' "
t In reference to some very coarse ridicule cast by Warburton, in
one of his letters to Hurd, on the Biblical account of Noah's Ark, Mr.
Barker, in his amusing work, Parriana, says, " Should William Hone,
the bookseller, have been tried for political parodies, when Bishop War-
burton could write in this manner about Biblical history?"
% The writer of a letter addressed to Gilbert Wakefield, and pub-
lished in his Memoirs, tells us that " Jortin professed himself a doubter
about the Trinity;" and adds, "he had a mind far above worldly
views ; yet, whether from a desire to be useful in his profession, or
any other good motive, (it certainly was some good motive,) he sub-
scribed repeatedly both before and after this profession."
In confirmation of this account of his opinions, we find Jortin, in
his Miscellanies, accusing those who adopt the high Trinitarian doc-
trine, of " making Jesus Christ his own Father and his own Son."
What this ingenious divine thought, in general, of the Church to which
he so repeatedly subscribed, may be collected from the following pas-
sage : — "Bacon says, 'if St. John were to write an Epistle to the
Church of England, as he did to that of Asia, it would surely contain
this clause, I have a few things against thee.'' I am afraid the clause
would be, I have not a few things against thee.'''' — Jortin.
§" Doctor Parr's avowal (says Mr. Barker) of the coincidence of his
( 286 )
sistibly, in the face of all pledgee and bribes, of all re-
straints on conscience and baits to cupidity, the sceptical
spirit of Protestantism* continues to hurry on in its
downward career to that dark plunge into infidelity
which full as surely awaits it as doth the rush down the
steep await the Niagara in its course.
Having already, however, out-gone the limits which I
had allowed myself for this sketch, I shall here only add
that the remarkable parallel which I have proved so
clearly to have existed, throughout every stage of their
respective careers, between the Protestantism of Ger-
many and that of England, has received, even while I
write, an additional, and, I might say, crowning step in
the proposal recently made for a coalition between the
Church of England and the Dissenters. This companion
picture, as it may be called, to the memorable compro-
mise between the Lutherans and Calvinists of Germany,
owes its first outline to a Church of England divine, of
own opinion with those of Bishop Hoadley, Dr. Bell, and Dr. Taylor,
on the Real Presence, seems to confirm Mr. Gibbon's assertion of the
actual prevalence, among the Reformed Churches, of the opinion of
Zwinglius, that the Sacrament of the Altar is no more than a spiritual
communion, a simple memorial of Christ's death and passion."— Par-
riana.
The following anecdotes, from the same work, respecting Dr. Parr,
are curious : — "At a friend's house in Norwich, the conversation turned
upon the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. From what the Doc-
tor said, I understood him to mean, that nothing more was intended
than an ordinary birth. I took a much higher position, and, con-
vinced of the strength of my ground, asked him whether it was possi-
ble that the Evangelist, in penning the sentence, ' The Word was made
flesh,' &c. could mean no more than the conception and birth of a mere
human being?— Without pursuing the subject, he merely said, "You
are rierht, you are right!"
" I had once the pleasure of driving the Doctor a few miles into the
country, to visit a former pupil. When we returned together, it was
a bright starlight night, and the beauty of the scene over our heads
led me to ask him, with reference to the Mosaic record, how long, in
his opinion, those orbs had rolled and glittered. He made some re-
marks on the term (created) employed by the sacred penman, distin-
guishing between creation, strictly understood, and formation, or put-
ting the then chaos into its present order. I did not then admire the
distinction which throws back the creation to an indefinite period, and
thrusts the Creator from what seems his proper place ; and if Moses
should fail us here, and the same mode of criticism be adopted in other
parts of Scripture. I fear we shall have no proof of the creation of the
material world at least."
* Doctor Parr having, as it appears, intimated that Bishop Porteus
had been a Socinian before he came to the mitre, the British Critic for
January, 16-28, in taking up the cause of the latter, says, " That the
calumniator of Porteus should be the panegyrist of such prelates as
.Clayton and Hoad'y is a mere matter of course. But Doctor Parr
( 28? )
high character and attainments,* who grounds I113 views
of the expediency and even urgency of such a step, both
on the extent to which dissent from the Established
Church prevails, and the reconcileable nature of the doc-
trines out of which that dissent arises. That this penul-
timate scene of the drama must before long arrive, none
who read the signs of the times aright can harbour a sin-
gle doubt ; and some notion may be formed of the amount
of sacrifice that will, in such case, be required of the
Church, by her new allies, from the following items of
what one of her own living divines considers objectionable
in her ritual : —
" What, (asks the Rev. Mr. Riland) do we gain by the
party spirit of the preface to the Liturgy: the ill selec-
tion of proper lessons, epistles, and gospels ; the reten-
tion of legendary names and allusions in the calendar ;
the lection of the Apocrypha and the omission of the
Apocalypse ; the mention of feasts and fasts never ob-
served ; the repetition of the Paternoster, Kyrie Eleison,
and Gloria Patri ; the wearisome length of the services ;
the redundance and assumptions in the state prayers ; the
unsatisfactoriness of the three creeds; the disputable cha-
racter of the baptismal and the burial offices; the incom-
pleteness and dubious construction of the catechism, and
of the order of confirmation ; the inapplicable nature and
absolution of the visitation of the sick ; the imperfection
of the commination service; the discordance between the
Prayer Book and Bible translation of the Psalms; the
contumelious and offensive language of the state ser-
vices ; and, added to all these sources of weakness, simi-
lar causes of inefficiency in the Articles and Homilies ?" — •
Riland.
could only admire at a distance their good fortune which threw them
on those happier days when it was permitted to an Arian and a Soci-
nian to avow their principles and yet retain their mitres."'
*Dr. Arnold. — The following is an extract from the itev. Doctor's
pamphlet: — "We are by no means bound to inquire, whether all who
pray to Christ entertain exactly the same ideas of his nature. I be-
lieve that Arianism involves in it some very erroneous notions as to
the object of religious worship; but if an Arian will join in our wor-
ship of Christ, and will call him Lord and God, there is neither wisdom
nor charity in insisting th.it he shall explain what he means by these
terms; nor in questioning the strength and sincerity of his faith in
his Saviour, because he makes too great a distinction between the di-
vinity of the Father, and that which he allows to be the attribute of
the Son.
( 288 )
\ V hile such are the symptoms, so formidably similar to
all that occurred in Germany, of the advance of indiffe-
rentism and scepticism among the Clergy of this country,
we have the authority of the Clergy themselves for the
progress of the same demoralizing principles among the
Laity. " Infidelity," says Bishop Watson, in his Apology
for the Bible, u is a rank weed ; it threatens to overspread
the land ; its root is principally found among the great
and opulent." In the same manner Bishop Prettyman
complains, in one of his Charges, M that the characteris-
tics of the present times are confessedly incredulity, and
an unprecedented indifference to the religion of Christ."
— And Bishop Barrington said, in 1797, " Even in this
country there is an almost universal lukewarmness, re-
specting the essentials of religion."
At the same time, too, that these and other eminent
Church of England authorities* bear such testimony to
the irreligion of the higher classes of the country, we
find in the Reports of Home Missionaries and other such
sources an equally lamentable picture of the demoraliza-
tion of the lower.
. At the first annual meeting of the Parent Home Mis-
sionary Society, 1820, it is stated, in reference to North-
umberland, Cumberland, Durham, and part of Lancashire^
that M darkness covers this part of England, and gross
darkness the people :" — while the County of Worcester,
it is said, may, " in a moral light, be regarded as a waste,.
howling wilderness." In the same Report, Staffordshire
is stated to contain three hundred thousand inhabitants,
" the greater part of whom sit in darkness and the gloomy
shades of overspreading death." Again, Oxfordshire, we
are told, presents a " moral wilderness of awful dimen-
sions," and, in a part of Berkshire, M the villages are in a
state of complete mental darkness."
In a second Report of the same Society, it is stated
•%
* The writers of the British Critic, who, to do them but justice, de-
fend the interests of their religion with a degree of zeal and ability
which is rare among the theologians of this age, thus acknowledge
and deplore the state of Protestant England, as hastening fast to a
similar doom with that of Protestant Germany :—" There is quite
enough of infidelity amongst us already. Liberal principles, that is,
no fixed principles whatever, are professed in every quarter; and, in
spite of the apparent tranquillity which reigns around, the day may not
be distant, in which there will be as little belief amongst the gentlemen of
England as there w now amongst the philosophers of Germany— that it.
none at all.''
( 289 )
that Mr. Sparkes preached in four places which were
" moral wildernesses, and knew nothing of evangelical
truth ;" and in the third Report, one of the Missionaries
says of his station, " I verily believe that this is the worst
place under the heavens, for men, women, and children
seem to glory in blaspheming the Lord !"
-» i » ^ & ©+<««*-
CHAPTER LI.
Return to Ireland. — Visit to Tovvnsend-street Chapel.— Uncertainty
and unsafety of the Scriptures, as a sole Rule of Faith: — Proofs. — Au-
thority of the Church.— Faith or Reason. — Catholic or Deist.— Final
Resolution.
On the 23d of April, 1830, — completing just a year
and a week from the date of that memorable evening,
when, in my chambers, up two pair of stairs, Trinity
College, I declared so emphatically, " I will be a Protes-
tant," — I found myself once more safely landed, on Irish
ground, and, I need hardly add, a far better and honester
Catholic than when I left it. That disreputable hanker-
ing after the flesh-pots of Ballymudragget which had so
long blinded me to the light of truth, or rather tempted
me, with that light full before me, to turn my back upon
its beams, was now cast away with scorn and loathing
from my mind ; and the very first Sunday after my arrival
beheld me once more in the old Townsend Street Chapel,
with a conscience lightened of self-reproach, and a heart
full of the humblest gratitude to that Being whose eye
had watched over me through the temptations with which
I had had to struggle.
On looking back to the wide field over which my in-
quiries had led me, I could not but see that the main
source of all the heresies and blasphemies which have
arisen, like phantoms, along the pathway of Christianity,
from the first moment of its appearance in this world, lay
in that free access to the perusal of the Scriptures and
that free exercise of private judgment in interpreting
them, which heretics have, in all ages, contended for, and
the Catholic Church has, in all ages, as invariably con-
25
( 290 )
demned. It was, therefore, with a sigh to think how long-
lived and unconquerable is error, that I found, on landing
in Ireland, the very same cry of " the Bible, the whole
Bible, and nothing but the Bible,' 1 which the Gnostics of
the second century first turned to the detriment of Chris-
tianity, employed by those far from Gnostic persons, the
Lortons and Rodens of the nineteenth, — however uncon-
sciously and ignorantly, on their parts, to the same bale-
ful purpose.
The mischievous consequences of leaving the Scrip-
tures to be interpreted according to individual fancy and
caprice have been pointed out, in opposition to the Dis-
senters* and the advocates of Bible Societies, by Dr. Bal-
guy, Bishop Marsh, the Rev. Mr. Callaghan, and other
Protestant divines; and the arguments advanced by them,
in support of this truly Catholic view of the subject, are
far too valuable to the cause of true morality and religion
to allow us to indulge in any taunts at the utter incon-
sistency with the first and main principles of Protestant-
ism which they exhibit, f Referring for the general view
of the question to these writers, I shall here employ the
brief space that remains to me in endeavouring to show,
by a few facts and authorities, that the Scriptures as a
rule of faith, cannot be otherwise than obscure, uncer-
tain, and unsafe without the aid of that guidance which
Tradition alone can supply, and which the Church, as the
depository of all Christian Tradition, alone can furnish.
And, first, to begin with the difficulties which uninstruct-
ed and unguided Reason has to encounter in the main,
preliminary point of understanding the meaning of Scrip-
ture, — " Open your Bibles," says Dr. Balguy; " take the
first page that occurs in either Testament, and tell me,
without disguise, is there nothing in it too hard for your
understanding? If you find all before you clear and easy,
you may thank God for giving you a privilege which
* " We find as yet (said Dr. Owen, speaking ofliimself and his bro-
ther non-conformists) no arrows shot against ns but such as are ga-
thered u p in the fields, shot against them that use them out of the Ro-
man quiver." — Inquiry into the Origin and Institution of Churches.
t A shrewd Catholic clergymen,, the Rev. Mr. Gandolphy, did not
fail to remind Bishop Marsh of this inconsistency: — "This,'" says the
Rev. gentleman, " is exactly the steady, sober language which the Ca-
tholics have been using for two hundred years, whilst the Reformers
have run mad with the Bible fever."
( 291 ).
he has denied to so many thousands of sincere be-
lievers."
With respect to the Old Testament, we have but too
clear a proof, in the utter misconception, on the part of
the Jews, of the true nature and character of the expect-
ed Messiah, how far a whole nation may be deceived in
interpreting* the Sacred Writings, even on a point touch-
ing their own interests, essentially and vitally:* and
when to the difficulties and obscurities which prevented
even the Jews themselves from understanding their own
Scriptures are added all those that, from the lapse of
time, from the corruption of copies, from our compara-
tive ignorance of the language and the incorrectness of
translators,! have since gathered round the meaning of
the text, it is surely little less than utter madness to as-
sert that the ordinary race of mankind should be left to
sift and distort to their own fancies and whims a series
of records left so awfully open to misapprehension.
Let us but hear what Lowth, in recommending a revi-
sion of the Vulgar translation of the Old Testament, says
of the state of the Hebrew text on which that translation
is founded : — " With regard to the Old Testament, the
Church of Christ is no longer a slave to the synagogue,
nor does the Christian interpreter blindly follow those
blind guides, the Jewish teachers. Their infallible Ma-
* The Jews, too, after having thus rejected the real Messiah suf-
fered themselves to be deceived by several impostors who usurped that
title ; and the writer of a Dissertation on the subject (quoted by Gre-
goire) counts no less than seventeen different false Messiahs from
Bar Barcochebaz down to Sabbathai Zevi, who made the eighteenth.
t All the great German Reformers accused each other of misinter-
preting and mistranslating the Scriptures. Beza found fault with the
translation by CEcolampadius. Castalio condemned Beza's version,
and Molinseus condemned both Beza's and Castalio's. Zwinglius
charged Luther with corrupting the word of God, while Luther ad-
vanced the same charge against Munzer.
In a petition addressed to James I. by some zealous Protestants, it
is stated, "Our Translation of the Psalms, comprised in our Book of
Common Prayer, doth in addition, subtraction and alterations differ
from the truth of the Hebrew in at least two hundred places." The
Ministers of the Lincoln Diocess. addressing also the king, pronounced
the English translation of the Bible to be " a translation which is ab-
surd and senseless, perverting in many places the meaning of the Holy
Ghost;*' — and Broughton a red-hot Protestant, in his Advertisements
of Corruptions, t« Us the Bishops, that "their public translation of
Scripture into English is such as that it perverts the texts of the
Old Testament in eight hundred and forty places, and that it causes
millions of millions to reject the New Testament and to run to eter-
nal flames."
( 292 )
sora, boasted to have been an edifice raised by wise master-
builders on the rock of divine authority, proves to have
been framed by unskilful hands, and built on the sand; its
foundations have been shaken, and it now totters to its
fall. The defects of the Hebrew text itself, — for it can-
not be denied that it hath its defects, nor, as it has been
transmitted to us by human means, could it possibly be
without defects, — these have been pointed out and re-
medies have in part been applied to them, and may be
farther applied by an accurate collation of ancient versions
and of various copies."
While such, as regards the Old Testament* are the
vague and shifting sands on which the presumption of
Private Judgment has to build its conclusions, the diffi-
culties which stand in the way of an inquirer into the
New Testament are hardly of a less perplexing or unsur-
mountable nature; nor did even the gross misconception
of the Jews, respecting the Messiah, afford a much
stronger proof of the fallibility of human reason, on such
subjects, that does the total perversion of all the doctrines
of the Gospel into which the Gnostics of the first ages
were, by the same self-will ed mode of interpreting, led.
When we recollect, too, that the men who thus mistook
or perverted the sense of Scripture were some of them
contemporaries of the Apostles themselves, spoke the
language of the New Testament and the Septuagint ver-
sion, and, from being natives of the countries where the
Gospel was first preached, possessed all those clews to
interpretation which a knowledge of customs and man-
ners affords, — when we see that, in spite of all such fa-
cilities towards the true understanding of the Word,
they yet, from their rejection of the lights of Tradition
and of the authority of the Church, fell into the coarsest
and most puerile misinterpretations of Christian doctrine,
— what other, I ask, than proportionably ruinous conse-
quences are to be expected from the illiterate and pre-
sumptuous Bible-searchers of the present day, who to an
equally arrogant defence of tradition and authority add
* It was the opinion of Whiston that tha text of the Old Testament
had been greatly corrupted, both in the Hebrew and Septiia<:int, by
the Jews themselves, for the purpose of rendering, as he supposes, the
reasoning of the Apostles from the Old Testament inconclusive and
ridiculous.
( 293 )
the profound est ignorance of all that even modern scio-
lists know upon the subject]
From the obscurity thus shown to exist in the meaning
of Scripture, — an obscurity which those most qualified to
see their way through it have been always the foremost
to acknowledge,* — Hows naturally the second defect of
the Sacred Volume, as a sole guide of faith, namely, its
endless uncertainty. Those who have gone through the
preceding pages can sufficiently form to themselves a no-
tion of the endless varieties of doctrine to which this un-
certainty has, among Protestants, given rise. Even
where the text itself is simple and unmistakeable, the
facility of evading its real sense in which Heresy is so prac-
tised, comes ever readily into play. We have seen that
of the words " This is my body," no less than two hun-
dred different interpretations appeared before the end of
the sixteenth century; and Osiander, as quoted by Jere-
my Taylor, asserts that there were, during the same pe-
riod, " twenty several opinions, concerning Satisfaction,
all drawn from the Scriptures by the men only of the
Augustan Confession, — sixteen several opinions concern-
ing Original Sin, and as many distinctions of the Sacra-
ments as there were sects of men that disagreed about
them!"
Most frightful, too, is it — to all but those who, relying
on Christ's promises to his Church, know that from her,
at least, the spirit of Truth will never be suffered to de-
part, — to think on what trivial points the great stake of
salvation is made to depend by those who are guided in
their faith by the text of Scripture alone. The difference
* For instance, Locke, in the Essay prefixed to his Commentary on
the Epistles, says '• Though 1 had heen conversant in Ihese Epistles,
as well as in other parts of the sacred Scripture, yet I found that I un-
derstood them not, — I mean the doctrinal and discursive parts of them."
After pointing out what he conceives to he the reasons of this obscu-
rity, he adds, "To these causes of obscurity common to St. Paul with
most of the other penmen of the several books of the New Testament,
we may add those that are peculiarly owing to his style and temper."
Macknight, too, remarks no less strongly, " the obscure manner
of writing used by the Apostle Paul," and his "dark forms of ex-
pression." But a still more formidable source of error, in this Apos-
tle's style, has been glanced at by the Hon. Mr. Boyle {Style of .Scrip.)
who tells us that there are, in St. Paul's writings, many passages so
penned as to contain a tacit kind of dialogue ; and that of these, some
parts have been taken as arguments, which St Paul himself meant evi-
dently as objections.
25*
( 294 )
of a comma, of a note of interrogation, arising through
the carelessness of transcribers, will produce a change
of meaning by which the eternal destiny of millions may
be influenced. We are told by Lowth, in a passage just
cited, that the modo of interpreting the Old Testament
adopted by the Masorites is now entirely exploded, as erro-
neous and deceptive. On this mode of interpretation,
nevertheless, the English translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures is, for the greater part, founded; and how
great is the havoc which it makes with other parts of the
sacred text, may be concluded from the single instance,
that, in the Prophecy of Daniel (ix. 24, 25) it completely
alters the nature of the prediction, — insomuch as to
"make it wholly unserviceable to Christians," — by putting
a semicolon in a place where there ought to have been
a comma !*
The very text, indeed, which the Protestants bring
forward as their chief authority for the unlimited perusal
of the Scriptures, varies essentially in its meaning and
its applicability to their purpose, according as the verb is
taken in the imperative or the indicative mood, — "Search
the Scriptures," or "You seareh the Scriptures," — St.
Cyril being for the latter acceptation of the sentence, and
St. Augustine, Theophylactus, and other Fathers having
declared for the former. If the indicative mood of the
verb be admitted, it then becomes a question, whether a
note of interrogation should not be added, so as to make
it " Do you search the Scriptures:"
But it is on the great and vital doctrine of the Trinity
that these grammatical uncertainties must, to all who
rest their belief of that mystery on the words of Scripture
alone, be the most awfully perplexing. One of the strong-
est authorities, in favour of the Divinity of Christ, that of
Rom. ix. 5, was got rid of by the Socinians by the mere
* " Our English translators took the present Hebrew text as it is
printed by the Masorites to be the only sense and meaning of the Old
Testament. In Dan. ix. 25, they put their ' athnach,' or semicolon,
after the seven weeks, and thus cutting off the seven weeks from the
threescore and two weeks, make the prophecy wholly unserviceable to
Christians; but, if they had placed a comma after seven weeks, and
their ' athnach,' or semicolon, after threescore and two weeks, the
number of years, viz. 483 (GO weeks) would exactly point out the time
when the Christian Messiah came.''— Johnson. —See Recs" Cyclopedia,
art. Ma? or a.
( 295 )
substitution of a point for a comma.* The text in 1 Tim.
iii. 16, " God was manifest in the flesh," has been, in like
manner, withdrawn from the aid of the Trinitarians, by
showing that the true reading is o;. not Oecc, — " he was
manifest," not " God was manifest," — so that the omission
of two letters, out of four, makes all the difference here
between Christ's humanity and his Divinity !f The read-
ing of xvpiou, instead of ©sew, in Acts xx. 28, has precise-
ly the same humanizing effect; while the famous verse,
1 John v. 7, — that long-contested scriptural basis of the
doctrine of a Tri-une God, — is now, on all sides, aban-
doned, as unquestionably spurious.
What then, let me ask, remains to the Protestant who
has been taught to acknowledge no other rule of faith
than the Written Word, but to surrender at once all be-
lief in a dogma of which the sole props are thus, one by
one, taken away? And such unhappily has been the re-
sult necessarily attendant on that fatal rejection of the
ancient authority of Tradition into which so large a por-
tion of the Christian world was hurried rashly by the Re-
* Thus printed in the Vulgate : — M Ex quibus est Christus, secundum
carnem qui est super omnia Deus benedictus in scecula."— Grotius \va3
also for the Socinian reading of this passage.
fThe introduction of the word " God," in this verse, is suspected by
Erasmus to have been an Athanasian forgery, — " Mini subdolet," he
says, " Deum additum fuisse adversus Kaereticos Arianos." Grotius
is of the same opinion.
The following curious particulars respecting this disputed text, will
show on what awfully minute props the Protestants' sole Rule of
Faith may depend. In the Alexandrine MS., to which both parties re-
ferred for the text, the Unitarians found only '02, while the Trinita-
rians thought they could discover a transverse line in the first letter,
which made it 02, i. e. 0EO2. In order to ascertain the matter,
Dr. Berriman, who was of the orthodox interest, took with him two
friends, as witnesses, Messrs. Ridley and Gibson, and examined the
manuscript, in the sun with the assistance of a glass. His report was
decidedly in favour of the Trinitarian reading; and he concluded his
statement by saying, that ;t if at any time hereafter the old line should
become indiscernible, there never will be just reason to doubt but that
the genuine reading of this M8. was 02." The most curious part,
however, of the whole transaction was that Dr. Berriman openly ac-
cused his opponent, M. Wettestein, with having admitted to a com-
mon friend that he saw the transverse line of the ©2; and the only
explanation M. Wettestein was able to make of his concession on this
point was that, in admitting the fact, he was deceived by the trans-
verse line of an E, on the opposite page, which appeared through the
vellum!
After all, however, the Trinitarian reading is now universally
abandoned. Jortin saw it to be untenable, and Bishop Marsh resigned
it without a struggle.
( 296 )
formation.* Not only at the mercy of every wind of
doctrine that blows from all the countless points of the
compass of Private Judgment, but depending for his faith
on the various readings of manuscripts, on the position
even of semicolons and commas, the Protestant loses, at
every step, some hold, some footing in Christianity, and
sees the creed of his fathers vanishing, like fairy money,
out of his grasp, f
Far different are the grounds on which the Catholic
Church asserts her claims to belief. Holding the Scrip-
tures in one hand, she points, with the other, to the
ancient authority of Tradition, — that authority under
whose sanction the doctrine " delivered by the Saints "
has been handed down, and by which alone the inspira-
tion of the Scriptures themselves can be authenticated.
From this apostolical source, before, a single word of the
New Testament was written, she received, in trust for
all time, the imperishable deposite of the two great Chris-
tian Mysteries, the Trinity! an ^ tne ^ ea ^ Presence; and
* Well may the learned and able Lingard ask, " Have not the Re-
formed Churches, by rejecting the authority of Tradition, destroyed
in effect the authority of Scripture, taken away the certainty of reli-
gious belief, and undermined the very foundations of Christianity?"
— Strictures on Dr.JSlarslis Comparative View, ^-c
t How long this catastrophe has been foreseen the following extract
from the French Encyclopaedia will prove: — " It is certain that the
most learned and intelligent amongst them (Protestants) have for
«ome time made considerable advances towards the Anti-trinitarian
dogmas. Add to this, the spirit of toleration which, happily for hu-
manity seems to have gained ground in all communions, Catholic as
-well as Protestant, and you have the true cause of the rapid progress
Socinianism has made in our days ; of the deep roots it hath castinto
most minds, the branches of which, continually unfolding and extend-
ing themselves, cannot fail soon to convert Protestantism, in general,
into perfect Socinianism/'
This writer falls into the common mistake (as does my friend, in-
deed, very frequently in these pages) of confounding Socinianism
with Unitarianism, — an error now become almost too prevalent to be
easily got rid of. "Unitarian (says a very ingenious and learned
member of that body) has a general, Socinian a specific meaning; —
every Socinian is a Unitarian, but every Unitarian is not a Socinian,
A Unitarian is a believer in the Personal Unity of God; a Socinian
is a believer in the Personal Unity of God, who also believes Jesus
Christ to be both a man and an object of religious worship n So far
from Socinianism, according to its true sense, gaining ground, it may
be pronounced, on the contrary, wholly extinct; and " if the charge of
idolatry." says the writer just quoted, "can be justly brought against
•any Christians, which many of us doubt, it is against such as hold Christ
to be a man only, and yet pay him divine honours; that is, in fact,
against Socinians.'* — Plea for Unitarian Dissenters, by Robert Jlspland.
I " Separate not (says St. Basil) the Holy Spirit from the Patter ani
( 297 )
these, through chance and change, and among all the
defections and heresies that surround her, she has main-
tained, in their first perfect holiness, to the present hour.
It matters not to her safety how Heresy and Schism may,
from time to time, raise their bold fronts against her
power. In the very first ages of her existence, this re-
bellion of the Evil Principle began ; and the Ebionites
denied the Trinity and the Docetae the Real Presence
full as confidently as the Unitarians and the Zwinglians
assail those bulwarks of her faith in modern times. It
matters not to her Unity how text-hunters and commen-
tators, how all that tribe whom St. Paul styles " the dis-
putersof this world," may succeed in torturing the Word
of God by their perverse ingenuity. That unwritten au-
thority, upon which the Scriptures themselves are but a
Comment, guides her, safe and triumphant, through a
path high above all such disturbing influences.
The strange and startling discovery, upon which Criti-
cism, in its prying course, has lately lighted, — that the
three first Gosples are but transcriptions from some older
documents, and not the works of the writers whose names
they bear, — however calculated it may be to strike con-
sternation into Protestants, who find there sole rule of
faith thus unsettled, leaves the Church which Christ
founded and instructed still secure on her old Apostolical
grounds. The lamp of Tradition, delivered down by the
Apostles, at which the light of the Scriptures themselves
was kindled, still burns, with saving lustre, in her hands ;
and, were it possible that every vestige of the Written
Word could be swept away, at this moment, from the
earth, the Catholic Church would but find herself as she
was, before a syllable of the New Testament was written,
and remembering the promise of Christ to be " with her
all days " would still hold on her course unfaltering and
the Son : let Tradition deter you."—(Homil. 24, adv. Sabell.) The fol-
lowing circumstance, mentioned by Erasmus, affords a happy illustra
tion of this point. Giving an account of a slight dispute which he
had with Farel, respecting the Invocation of Saints, he says, "'I
asked him, why he rejected this doctrine? and whether it was not be-
cause the Scriptures were silent about it.' — ' Yes,' said he — ' Show me
then, evidently,' said I, ' from the Scriptures, that we ought to invoke
the Holy Ghost.' " Farel, when pressed, produced the passage in John,
" These three are one ;" but Erasmus, who was one of the many that
reject that te.xt, would not admit of his authority.
( 398 )
unchanged, the sole " source of Truth and dwelling-
place of Faith,"* to the last.
Here, then, under the safe shelter of this unerring au-
thority, do I finally fix my resting-place, — submitting im-
plicitly to the only guidance which promises peace to
the soul, and convinced that Reason which, even in this
world's affairs, proves but a sorry conductress, is, in all
heavenly things, a rash and ruinous guide. The low
value which it is plain our Saviour himself set on the
inductions of human reason sufficiently shows how little
the faith which he came to teach was meant to be ame-
nable to such a tribunal.! The Apostle Paul denounces
the ''foolishness of the wisdom of this world," with a
warmth and vehemence which leave no doubt that he
foresaw mischief to the cause of Christianity from that
source; and the Holy Fathers of the first ages, though
so gifted with all human learning themselves, not only
knew the nothingness of such ^ifts in the eyes of a Su-
preme God, but felt that Faith, paramount Faith, de-
manded the sacrifice of them all, as well as of stubborn
Reason itself, at the foot of the altar.
" When faith is in question," says St. Ambrose, " away
with all arguments!" — " Why do you search into what
is inscrutable ]" asks St. Ephrem, — " Doing this, you
prove your curiosity, not your faith." St. Chrysostom
held it to be no less than blasphemy to attempt to judge
of things divine by reason, — seeing "that human reason-
ing hath nothing in common with the Mysteries of God;"
* Sola Catholica Ecclesia est quse verum cultum retinet. Hie est
fons veritatis, hoc est domicilium fidei. — Lactant. Inst.L. 4.
f M How did Christ himself proceed ?"— says an intelligent writer —
" Knowing that that Faith must be very wavering which is built on
the sandy foundation of human Reason, he did not so much as once
attempt to show the conformity of his Gospel to it ; but whpn Nico-
demus, amazed at the strange doctrine of ' being born again,' de-
manded 'how can these thines be?' he only tells him that ' he spake
of heavenly things' and ' wh;it he knew,' — urging that as a reason
for him ' not to wonder ' at it He desired them not to be-
lieve if they were not satisfied he came from God ; but, after being
once convinced of that, he exacts an absolute submission ; insomuch
that when the ' eating his flesh and drinking his blood ' was as great
' a scandal ' to some of his own disciples as it can be to modern Pro-
testants; and when they began to ask ' How c.n this man give us his
flesh to eat ?' he merely reiterates his assertion of the same thing, and
seems to have taught this • hard doctrine ' then, on purpose to distin-
guish who they were that believed his authority,"
( 299 )
and St. Cyril of Alexandria declares that " in matters of
faith, all curiosity must cease."*
Nor is it only hy these great Church authorities that
such limits have heen set to the exercise of human judg-
ment. Two of the greatest masters of the faculty of
reasoning that ever existed, — the one commanding its
most comprehensive range, the other wielding its acutest
subtleties, — have alike advanced the same Catholic and,
I may add, philosophic opinion. " We must not," says the
wise Lord Bacon, " submit the mysteries of Faith to our
Reason ;" and the acute Bayle agrees with him: — " Si la
Raison etoit d'accord avec elle-meme, on devriot etre
plus fache qu'elle s'accordat mal aisement avec quelques-
uns de nos articles de Religion ; mais c'est une coureuse
qui ne sait ou s'arreter, et qui comme une autre Penelope
detruit ellememe son propre ouvrage — ' diruit, aedificat,
mutat quadrata rotundis.' Elle est plus propre a demo-
lir qu'a batir ; elle connoit mieux ce que les choses ne
sont pas que ce qxCelles so?it."f
Seeing thus the judgment pronounced in Scripture,
and in the writings of the Fathers, respecting the utter
unfitness of Reason to be the judge of Faith, confirmed
by the opinions of men so accomplished in all the wis-
dom of this world, and rinding, still farther, a but too con-
vincing corroboration of the same truth in the ruin
brought upon Christianity wherever Reason has been al-
lowed to career through its mysteries, I could not hesi-
tate as to the conclusion to which my mind should come.
" Either Catholic or Deist," said Fenelon, " there is no
other alternative ;" — and the appearance which the Chris-
tian world wears, at this moment, fully justifies his as-
sertion.]:
* To ttittiIt TntgstcT ix,rcv ct.7roKv7rQJLyiJ.owTW zivcti %g>u
f This keen truth is put even more pointedly in the words of Lac-
tantius, whom he cites: — " Ita philosophi quod summum fuit hu-
man© scientiae assecuti sunt, ut intelligerent quid non sit; illud asse-
qui nequiverunt, ut dicerent quid sit."
\ Much the same process, indeed, as we know took place in the
mind of a celebrated searcher of the Scriptures, Doctor Priestly, must,
sooner or later, and in a more or less degree, operate throughout a
whole nation of searchers. Beginning, as he himself confesses, by
being a Calvinist, and that of the strictest sort, he became afterwards
a high Arian, next a low Arian, then a Socinian, and, in a little time,
a Socinian of that lowest scheme, in which Christ is considered as a
mere man. the son of Joseph and Mary, and naturally as fallible and
peccable as Moses or any other prophet. Even at this stage, too, thy
( 300 )
Hail, then, to the, thou one and only true Church,
which art alone the way of life, and in whose tabernacle
alone there is shelter from all this confusion of tongues.
In the shadow of thy sacred Mysteries let my soul hence-
forth repose, remote alike from the infidel who scoffs at
their darkness, and the rash believer who vainly would
pry into its recesses ; — saying to both, in the language of
St. Augustine, " Do you reason, while I wonder ; do you
dispute, while I shall believe ; and, beholding the heights
of Divine Power, forbear to approach its depths."*
Doctor honestly avowed, that " he did not know when his creed would
be fixed."
In like manner, Chillingworth, the great modern promoter of the
cry of " the Bible, the whole Bible," &c. passed from Protestantism
to Popery, from Popery back to Protestantism again, then repented
almost immediately his reconversion, and, in the end, died, it is sup-
posed, a Socinian. How far gone he was in this latter direction even
at the time when he wrote his famous Protestant work, appears from
a letter which he wrote to a friend, while employed on that task, and
in which, after referring to some ancient authorities, on the subject
of the Trinity, he says that whosoever shall freely and impartially
consider the matter 1, shall not choose but confess, or at least be very
inclinable to believe, that the doctrine of Arius is either a truth or at least
no damnable heresy."— S;e Life prefixed to his Works.
* Tu ratiocinare, ego miror. Tu disputa, ego credam: altitudinem
video, ad profundum non pervenio.— He adds, 4i To you who come to
scrutinize what is inscrutable, and to investigate what cannot be in-
vestigated, I say, Stop, and Believe,— or you perish!"
;$i©ar2£S<
Page 23.
Irenacus, in citing the Shepherd, calls it " Scripture, " from
which some have concluded that he really held it to be Ca-
nonical : — "illud etiam non omittendum quod Herme Pas-
torem velut canonicam Scripturam laudet Irenaeus." (~ Ma-
suet Dissert. Prsev. in Iren.J Lardner, however, has shown
that Irenaeus uses the word, here, merely as a " writing*," or
"book."
St. Clement of Alexandria, no less than Origen, seems to
have considered the Shepherd as a divinely inspired work. —
Buceg toivw m fovct/mtg n vot Eg^ua kxtsl ct,7rox.xXu^iv KUkovrsL. —
Strom. Lib * 1.
Page 24.
So strict a faster was St. Ambrose, that he never dined,
we are told, but on Saturdays, on Lord's Days, and the Fes-
tivals of Martyrs. It is said that Monica, St. Augustine's mo-
ther, was greatly offended, on her coming to Milan, to find
Ambrose dining on the Saturday; having observed that day
to be kept as a solemn fast of Rome, and in other places,
and therefore wondering that it should be held as a festival
at Milan.
Page 27.
" The Heal Presence," &c.
It is hardly necessary to say that whenever in these pages,
I make use of the phrase Real Presence, I mean to include
also the necessary consequence of that miracle, Transubstan-
tiation. Once the corporal Presence is admitted, the change
of the substance of the sacramental elements follows as a
matter of course. It has been always the policy, however,
of Protestants, and for very evident reasons, to direct their
attacks solely against the absurd process, as they choose to
term it, of Transubstantiation; which is about as shallow and
unfair a way of arguing as it would be to assume the mere
numerical difficulty attendant on the doctrine of the Trinity
as the sole grounds for objecting to it.
In the disputations between Catholics and Protestants in
the reign of Edward VI., the latter invariably took this un-
fair vantage ground; the Catholics anxiously, but vainly en-
26
( 302 )
deavouring to have the question of the Real Presence settled,
in its natural order, previously to the discussion of the ques-
tion of Transubstantiation. Both the motives and the futility
of this subterfuge have been thus well exposed by Bossuet :
— "Pour conserver dans les coeurs des peuples la haine du
dogme Catholique il a faller la toumer contre un autre objet
que la Presence Reelle. La Transubstantiation est main-
tenant le grand crime : ce n 9 est plus rien de mettre Jesus Christ
present; de mettre tout un corps dans chaque pareilk; le grand
crime est d' avoir ote le pain: ce qui regarde Jesus Christ est
pen de chose,- ce qui regarde le pain est essentielle"
Page 30.
"I am so far from being ashamed," says St. Augustine,
" of the Cross, that I do not put the Cross of Christ in some
hidden place, but cany it on my forehead-"
Page 32.
The employment of the fish as a symbol of the name of
Christ arose from the word r^Sus being composed of the
initial letters of the words ln<rov; Xgi^rog, ©ssy vio;, lum^. In
the spurious Sibylline verses, there are some acrostics begin-
ning with these letters. For the same reason, as well as no
doubt from their vise of the rite of Baptism, Christians them-
selves were, in the first ages, called Fishes. " Sed nos
Pisciculi (says Tertullian) secundum /^3-t/v, secundum nos-
trum Jesum Christum in aqua noscimurv"
Page 33.
" On the subject of exclusive salvation as Catholic as need he. 17
This is also the language, however, of the Protestant
Church. " The visible Church consists of all those through-
out the world who profess the true religion, out of which
there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. " (~ Westminster
Confession, ratified hy Parliament, A. D. 1649.) "Christ,"
says Bishop Pearson, "never appointed two roads to heaven,
nor did he build a Church to save some, and another for other
men's salvation. As none, then, were saved in the Deluge,
but those who were within the ark of Noah, so none shall
ever escape the eternal wrath of God, who belong not to the
Church of God." — Exposition of the Creed.
In cases of invincible ignorance or invincible necessity, the
Catholic Church admits of exceptions to this sweeping sen-
tence. Thus, in the Censure passed by the Sorbonne on
Rousseau's Emile, we find it laid down; — "Tout homme
qui est dans l'ignorance invincible des rentes de h Foi ne
sera jamais puni de Dieu pour n'avoir pas cm ces verites.
( 303 )
Telle est la doctrine Chretienne et Catholique (Art 26) —
Quant aux communions separees de l'Eglise, les enfants et les
simples qui vivent dans ces communions ne participent ni a
la heresie ni au schisme; ils en sont excuses par leur ignorance
invincible de l'etat des choses. II n'est pas du tout impos-
sible a ceux qui vivent dans des communions separees de
l'Eglise Catholique de parvenir, autant qu'il est necessaire
pour leur sault a la connaissance de la revelation Chretienne
(art. 32.")
The eminent Catholic Prelate, Frayssinous, thus asserts
the same reasonable and charitable doctrine: "L'igno-
rance involontaire de la revelation n'est pas une faute pu-
nissable La revelation Chretienne est une loi
positive, et il est de la nature d'une loi de n'etre obligatoire
que lorsqu'elle est publiee et connue." — Conferences.
Page 42.
" The Injudicious excess of zeal which led Bonaventura," £Jc.
The Psaltery of Bonaventura is one of those monuments
of extravagant zeal which, though constantly condemned by
Catholics themselves, will as constantly be taken advantage
of by their enemies, for the purpose of casting* imputations
on them. The late Mr. Charles Butler, in replying* to the
attacks of Mr. Southey and Dr. Philpotts, as well on the sub-
ject of this Psaltery, as of the Catholic hymn, Impera Re-
demptori, does not seem to have been aware that Grotius had
to perform the same task before him. In reference to a
work written by one James Laurence, this great man, writing
to his brother, says, " In defiance of all justice, he charges
the Psaltery of Bonaventura upon the whole body of Ca-
tholics (though it was condemned by the Doctors of the Sor-
bonne,) and those verses to the Virgin Mary which com-
mence with Impera JRedemptori, as well as some others which
he has quoted from their books."
In the same letter, with his usual enlightened candour,
Grotius does justice to the views of the Catholics, on other
essential points of their faith. ' ' It is also possible," he says,
" for persons in that Communion to avoid idolatry, by ho-
nouring the Saints only as the servants of God, by using
images as refreshing excitements to their memories, and by
venerating in the Sacrament that which is its principal part;
as the Council of Trent has made the Adoration of the Sacra-
ment to be tantamount to adoring Christ in the Sacrament."
For an account of the efforts made ineffectually by Grotius
to inspire with a portion of his own enlarged and conciliatory
( 304 )
spirit the contending 1 parties of his day, the reader will do
well to consult NichoWs Jlrminianism and Calvinism com-
pared, — a work full of interesting' reflection and research.
Page 45.
With a like view of the subject, Dr. Johnson says, that
** the generality of mankind are neither so obstinately wicked
as to deserve everlasting punishment, nor so good as to merit
being admitted into the society of celestial spirits, and that
God is therefore generously pleased to allow a middle state,
where they may be purified by a certain degree of suffer-
ing-"
These testimonies of Paley and Johnson to the Catholic
doctrine of Purg-atory suggest to me to lay before the reader
a few other such candid admissions, on the part of Protestants,
of the truth of our Catholic tenets, which I shall here class un-
der their respective heads, referring" for farther examples
to Chapter XXXIV. of this work.
PROTESTANT TESTIMONIES IN FAVOUR OF CATHOLIC
DOCTRINES.
Primacy of the Pope,
The canonical grounds of the Primacy, as well as the ne-
cessity of such a jurisdiction for the preservation of unity,
are thus strongly asserted by Grotius: —
" Restitutionem Christianorum in unum idemque corpus
semper optatum a Grotio sciunt qui eum norunt, Existi-
mavit autem aliquando incipi a Protestantium inter se con-
junctione. Posteavidit id plane fieri nequire; quia praeter-
quam quod Calvinistomm ingenia ferme omnium ab omni
pace sunt alienissima, Protestantes nullo inter se Communi
Ecclesiastico regimine sociantur. Quae causae sunt cur facile
partes in unum Protestantium Corpsu colliginequent; immo
et cur partes ali?e atque aliae sunt exsurrecturae. Quare nunc
plane sentit Grotius, et multi cum ipso, non posse Protestantes
inter sejungi nisi simul jung-antur cum iis qui Sedi Romanae
cohaerent, sine qua nullum sperari potest in Ecclesia Com-
mune Regimen, Ideo optat ut ea divulsio quae evenit et
causae divulsionis tollantur. Liter est causat non est Primatus
Episcopi Romani, secundum Ca?iones> fatente Melancthone,
qui eum Primatum etiam necessarium putat ad retinendam
Unitatem." — Last Reply to Rivetus, Apol. Discuss.
Grotius had held nearly the same language, with respect to
what he calls ' ( the force of the Primacy," in his first Reply
vo Rivetus; — Quae vero est causa eur qui opinionibus dissi-
dent inter Catholicos. maneant eodem corpore non rupt$
( 305 )
communione : contra, qui inter Protestantcs dissident idem
facere nequeant, utcumque multa de dilectione Fraterna
loquantur? Hoc qui recte expendent invenient quanta sit
vis Primatus" — Ad Art. 7.
"Whosoever reads their writings will find those of the
fourth and fifth ages giving the supremacy to the Bishop of
Rome, and asserting, that to him belongs the care of all
Churches. " — Dumoulin, Vocation of Pastors.
"Rome being a Church consecrated by the residence of
St. Peter, whom antiquity acknowledged as the Head of the
Apostolic Church, might easily have been considered, by
the Council of Chalcedon, as the Head of the Church." —
Blondel on the Supremacy.
In the course of some observations on the subject of the
Papal Power and its advantages during the middle ages,
Daines Barrington says, " There was a great use to Europe
in general from their being a common referee in all national
controversies, who could not himself ever think of extend-
ing his dominions, though he might often make a most im-
proper use of his power as a meditator. " He adds, "The
ancients seem to have found the same convenience, in re-
ferring their disputes to the Oracle at Delphi." — Observations
on the ancient Statutes.
After acknowledging the uncertainty of the Scriptures as
a rule of faith, a living writer, Dr. Arnold, continues thus : —
"Aware of this state of things, and aware also, with charac-
teristic wisdom, of the deadly evil of religious divisions, the
Roman Catholic Church ascribed to the sovereign power in
the Christian society, in eveiy successive age, an infallible
spirit of truth, w T hereby the real meaning of any disputed
passage of Scripture might be certainly and authoritatively
declared; and if the Scripture were silent, then the living
voice of the Church might supply its place; and being
guided by the same Spirit which had inspired the Written
Word, might pronounce upon any new point of controversy
with a decision of no less authority." — Principles of Church
Reform,
Penance, Confession, &c.
" Even the long and tedious penances, which were of old
enjoined to excommunicated persons, were only proofs of
the faithful tenderness of the primitive pastors towards the
souls of their people. Divines of late years, have laboured
to prove that Repentance imports nothing but an act of the
mind; and 'tis true, that the repentance which fits grown
26*
( 300 )
men for baptism, does imply no more than a mere change
of our resolution .... but that repentance which is required
of Christians, who, fallen from grace, and run into habits of
vice or acts of very grievous sin, is of another sort, and was
believed by the Guides and Fathers of the Apostolic age to
import outward austerities, frequent fastings, and a long
course of humiliation, in public as well as in private, as they
sufficiently showed by their constant practice "We
have reason to believe, that when St. Paul speaks of some
at Corinth, that * they had not repented of the uncleanness
which they had committed,' his meaning was, that they had
not openly and solemnly humbled themselves in the face of
the congregation for their crimes,'' — Johnson's Unbloody
Sacrifice.
The same writer continues, "Christians have lost the true
notion of perfect repentance for sins after baptism, which
the Primitive Church did justly believe to consist in a long
course of fasting, praying, confessing openly in the Church,
deploring and bewailing former sins. . . . This was the 'Re-
pentance to salvation never to be repented of which the
Apostles and Primitive fathers required of those Christians
who had sinned with a high hand.
"It is confessed, that all priests, and none but priests,
have power to forgive sins; that private confession to a priest
is a very ancient practice in the Church," — Bishop Mon-
tague's Gagger Gagged,
" Our confession must be Integra etperfecta, not by halves.
All our sins must be confessed, — omnia venialia et omnia
mortalia. God alone blots jout sin: — true. But there is
another confessor that would not be neglected- He who
would be sure of pardon, let him find a priest, and make his
humble confession to him. Heaven waits and expects the
priest's sentence here, and what he binds or looses, the
Lord confirms in Heaven/' — Bishop Sparrow's Sermon on
Confession..
" When you find yourselves charged and oppressed.,
have recourse to your spiritual physician, and freely disclose
the nature and malignancy of your disease. Nor come to him
only with such mind as you would go to a learned man, as
one that can speak comfortable things to you, but as to one
that hath authority delegated to him from God himself, to
Absolve you from your sins .."-—Ckillinguxorth.
"Confession is an excellent institution — a check to vice.
Jt is admirably calculated to win over hearts, which have
been ulcerated by hatred, to forgiveness; and to induce those
( 307 )
who have been guilty of injustice, to make restitution."
Voltaire.
"What restitutions and reparations does not confession
produce among" the Catholics!" — Rousseau.
Tradition. *
" It is evident, from the Scriptures themselves, that the
whole of Christianity was at first delivered to the Bishops
succeeding" the Apostles, by oral tradition, and they were
also commanded to keep and deliver it to their successors
in like manner. Nor is it any where found in Scripture, by
St. Paul or any other Apostle, that they would either
jointly or separately, write down all they had taught as ne-
cessary to salvation, or make such a complete canon of them,
that nothing should be necessary to salvation but what
should be found in those writings. 5 ' — Br. Brett, Tradition
Necessary.
"Here (2 Thessalon. vi.) we see plain mention of St.
Paul's traditions, consequently of Apostolic Traditions, de-
livered by word of mouth, as well as by writing, and a con-
demnation of those who do not equally observe both." —
Ibid.
"Traditions instituted by Christ, in points of faith, have
divine authority, as the written word hath : traditions from
the Apostles have equal authority with their writings; and
*On the truth of the Catholic doctrine, respecting Tradition, the
reader will find all that is most cogent and convincing in Dr. Lingard's
powerful Strictures upon Bishop Marsh's Comparative View, fyc. The
arguments by which this eminent divine shows that, without the aid
of Tradition, the inspiration of the Scriptures themselves cannot be
proved, are altogether unanswerable. M How (he asks) can the Scrip-
tures prove their own inspiration ? It is on their inspiration that all
their doctrinal authority depends, You must show that they are in-
spired before you can deduce a single point of doctrine from their testi-
mony. If in "attempting to demonstrate the inspiration of any book,
you pre-suppose its inspiration, you fall into a pctitio principii ; you
take for granted what you have undertaken to prove. If you do not
pre-suppose its inspiration, then its testimony on that point is of no
more authority than the testimony of any profane or ecclesiastical
writer Perhaps it may be said that the writers appear, from
the tradition of testimony, to have been the apostles of Christ ; that
they were under the guidance of the Holy Spirit ; that they could not
teach a false doctrine; and that, of course, their writings must be in-
spired. But whence is all this information obtai ned? If from the tradition
of testimony, it is then false that the inspiration of the Scripture can be
proved from Scripture only ; if from the Scripture, then you must prove
its inspiration before you can exact the belief of the reader to such as-
sertions. Hence, I conclude, that to determine the Canon or the in-
spiration of the Scripture from the Scripture alone is impracticable:
the knowledge of both must be derived from Tradition,
( 308 )
no Protestant in his senses will deny that the Apostles spoke
much more than is written." — Montague's Gagger Gagged.
Dr. Waterland, observing", on the authority of Irenaeus,
that "Polycarphad converted great numbers to the Faith
by the strength of Tradition," adds that it " was a sensible
argument, and more affecting at that time than any dispute
from the bare letter of Scripture could be." — Imp. of the
Doct. of the Trin.
Prayers for the Dead, and Purgatory.
"Let not the ancient practice of praying 1 and making* ob-
lations for the Dead, be any more rejected by Protestants as
unlawful. It is a practice received throughout the universal
Church of Christ, which did ever believe it both pious and
charitable. Many of the Fathers were of opinion that some
light sins, not remitted in this life, were forgiven, after death,
by the intercession of the Church in her public prayers, and
especially those which were offered up in the celebration of
the tremendous mysteries; and it is no absurdity to believe
so. The practice of praying for the Dead is derived, as" Chry-
sostom asserts, from the Apostles." Bp. Forbes on Purgatory.
" That Austin concludes, very clearly, that some souls do
suffer temporal pains after death cannot be denied." —
Fulke's Confutation of Purgatory.
After mentioning the different opinions of the Fathers re-
specting the purgatorial process through which souls are to
pass, Leibnitz thus beautifully, and in the true Catholic spi-
rit, concludes: — "Quidquid hujus sit, plerique omnes con-
senserunt in castigationem sive purgationem posthanc vitam,
qualiscunque ea esset, quam ipsae animae ab excessu ex cor-
pore, illuminatze et conspecta tunc imprimis praeteritae vitae
imperfectione, et peccati faeditate maxima tristitia tactae sibi
accersunt lib enter, nollentque aliter ad culmen beatitudinis
pervenire. " — Sy sterna Theologicum.
"There is one proof of the Propitiatory nature of the Eu-
charist according to the sentiments of the ancient Church
which will be thought but only too great; and that is, the de-
votions used in the Liturgies and so often spoken of by the
Fathers, in behalf of deceased souls. There is, I suppose,
no Liturgy without them, and the Fathers frequently speak
of them. St. Chrysostom mentions it as an institution of the
Apostles. St. Austin asserts that such prayers are beneficial
to those who have led lives so moderately good as to deserve
them. Cyril of Jerusalem mentions a prayer for those who
are gone to sleep before us; and St. Cyprian mentions the
( 309 )
denial of those prayers, as a censure passed upon some men
by his predecessors. Tertullian spoke of this practice as
prevailing* in his time, and the Constitutions do require Priests
and people to use these sorts of devotion for the souls of those
that die in the Faith." — Johnson's Unbloody Sacrifice,
"Dr. Whitby," says the same writer, " has fully proved,
in his annotations on 2 Tim. iv. 4, that the primitive Fathers,
and even the Apostles, did not believe that the souls of the
Faithful are admitted into Heaven before the Day of Judg-
ment. It was, I suppose, from hence concluded that they
were, in the interim, in a state of expectance and were ca-
pable of an increase of light and refreshment. Since pray-
ing" for them, while in this state, was no where forbidden,
they judged it, therefore, lawful, and if it were lawful, no
more need be said, — Nature will do the rest. The only use
I make of it is to prove that the ancients believed the Eu-
charist to be a Propitiatory Sacrifice, and therefore put up
these prayers for their deceased friends, in the most solemn
part of the Eucharistic Office, after the symbols had received
the finishing consecration."
"It must be admitted that there are, in Tertullian's wri-
tings, passages which seem to imply that in the interval be-
tween death and the general resurrection, the souls of those
who are destined to eternal happiness undergo a purification
from the stains which even the best men contract during
their lives." — Bishop Kaye.
Among Protestant testimonies to this ancient and Chris-
tian custom of praying for the Dead, we should not omit
the two Epitaphs written for themselves by Bishop Barrow,
of St. Asaph, and Mr. Thorndike, Prebendary of Westmin-
ster. In the Epitaph of the Bishop are the following words;
— " O vos transeuntes in domum Domini, domum orationis,
orate pro conservo vestro, ut inveniat misericordiam in die
Domini." — " Oh ye, who pass into the House of the Lord,
into the House of prayer, pray for your fellow-servant, that
he may find mercy in the day of the Lord." In like manner
Thorndike, in his epitaph, intreats that the reader will pray
for rest to his soul: " Tu lector requiem eiet beatam in Chris*
to resurrectionem precare."'
Invocation of Saints.
"If the Roman Church will declare at once that she has
no other confidence in the Saints than in the living, and that
in whatsoever terms her prayers to them may be couched,
they are to be understood of simple intercession alone, that
( 310 )
is, c Holy Mar}', pray for me to thy divine Son,' — if, I say, the
Catholics will but declare this,* then all danger in such
prayers is over." — Molanus's Answer to Bossuet.
"I do not deny but the Saints are mediators of prayer and
intercession for all in general. They interpose with God
* Such is, and ever has been, the declaration of Catholics; as will
appear from the following exposition of their faith on this point,
given in a tract of high authority, entitled Roman Catholic Principles,
and quoted in that standard work, li The Faith of Catholics." — "Ca-
tholics are persuaded that the angels and the saints in heaven re-
plenished with charity, pray for us, the fellow-members of the latter
here on earth; that they rejoice in our conversion: that, seeing God,
they see and know in him all things suitable to their happy state;
and that God may be inclined to hear their requests made in our be
half, and for their sakes may grant us many favours — therefore, we
believe that it is good and profitable to invoke their intercession. —
Can this manner of invocation be more injurious to Christ our media-
tor than it is for one Christian to beg the prayers of another here on
earth ? However, Catholics are not taught so to rely on the prayers
of others as to neglect their own duty to God, in imploring his divine
mercy and goodness in mortifying the deeds of the flesh; in despising
the world ; in loving and serving God and their neighbours ; in follow-
ing the footsteps of Christ our Lord, who is the way, the truth, and
the life."
Another point upon which Catholics have, as constantly and as
unavailingly, to disclaim the gross notions imputed to them, is their
veneration for Holy Pictures and Images — a veneration which they
give, " Not as believing (says the Council of Trent) that there is in
such pictures and images any divinity or virtue for which they should
be honoured ; or that any thing is to be asked of them, or any trust
to be placed in them, as the Gentiles once did on their idols: but be-
cause the honour given to pictures is referred to the Prototypes
which they represent." In the Catechism of the Roman Catholics,
one of the questions asked is, " Whether the Catholics pray to images?"
— The answer to which is, " No, they do not ;" and this reason is
added, " because they neither can see, nor hear, nor help us." So far,
indeed, from sanctioning the adoration of Images, the Catholics are
accustomed to repeat every week the 97th Psalm, in which are these
emphatic words : " Confounded be all they that serve graven images,
that boast themselves of idols ;" and every Sunday, at Even Song,
they repeat Psalm cxv. equally denouncing idols, and containing a
sort of imprecation on isolators, that " all men may become like
them (the idols) who make them and put their trust in them."
The great Leibnitz thus philosophically explains and defends the
Catholic reverence for images: — "Posito igitur nullam aliam admitti
venerationem imaginum^ quam quse sit veneratio prototypi coram
imagine, non magis in ea erit idololatria quam in veneratione quse
Deo et Christo exhibetur, sanctissimo ejus nomine pronuntiato. —
Nam et nomina sunt notse et quidem imaginibus longe inferiores
rem enim multo minus repraesentant ..."..... coram imagine
externa adorare non magis reprehendendum esse quam adorare co-
ram imagine interna quae in phantasia nostra depicta est : nullus
enim alius usus externa? imaginis quam ut interna expressior fiat." —
Systema Theologicum.
We lind Archbishop Wake, as quoted by Middleton, saying, "he
did not scruple to declare that, as to the honours due to the genuine
relics of the Martyrs or Apostles, no Protestant would ever refuse
whatever the Primitive Churches paid to them."
( 311 )
by their intercessions and meditate by their prayers." — BU
shop Montague* Antidote.
" Indeed, I grant that Christ is not wronged in his media-
tion. n — Montague on Invocation of Saints.
" It is no impiety to say, as Papists say, ■ Holy Mary, pray
forme!' — Nay, could I come at the Saints, I would, without
any question, willingly say, 'Holy Peter, pray for me!' I
would run with open arms, fall upon my knees, and desire
them to pray for me. I see no absurdity in nature, no re-
pugnancy at all to Scripture, much less impiety, for any man
to say 'Holy Angel Guardian, pray for me! 5 " — lb.
"I confess that Ambrose, Austin, and Jerome, did hold
invocation of Saints to be lawful." — Fulke, Rejoinder to
Bristow.
"It is confessed that all the Fathers of both Greek and
Latin Churches, Basil, Nazianzem, Ambrose, Jerome, Austin,
Chrysostom, Leo, and all after their time, have spoken to
the Saints and desired their assistance." — Thorndyke's Epi-
logue.
The Sacrifice in the Eucharist.
"The Sacrifice of the Supper is not only propitiatory
and may be offered up for the remission of our daily sins,
but impetratory, and may be rightly offered to obtain all
blessings; and, though the Scripture does not teach this in
express words, yet the Holy Fathers, with unanimous con-
sent, have thus understood the Scriptures, as has been de-
monstrated by many and must be evident to all." — Bishop
Forbes, de Eucharistia.
" It seems strange to you 'that a matter of so great impor-
tance, as I seem to make this Sacrifice to be, should have so
little evidence in God's word and antiquity, and depend
merely upon certain conjectures. ' As for Scripture, if you
mean the name of Sacrifice, neither is the name Sacrament
nor Eucharist (according to our expositions) there to be
found, — no more than c/uoounos, — yet may not the thing be?
But when you speak of so little evidence to be found in an-
tiquity, I cannot but think such an affirmation far more
strange than you can possibly think my opinion. For, what
is there in Christianity for which more antiquity can be
brought than for this ? Eusebius Altkircherus, a
Calvinist, printed at Newstadt, in the Palatinate, in 1584 and
1591, De Mystico et incruento Ecclesiae Sacrificio, in which
he says, l This was always the standing, accordant, and una-
nimous opinion of all the ancient Fathers of the Church, that
the memorial of the passion and death of Christ, in the Holy
( 812 )
SuppCt instituted by him, contained also in itself the com-
mendation of a Sacrifice." — Mede, Letter to Twisse.
" I suppose all Protestants will allow that Christ's sacri-
fice was intended for the expiation of sin; and, if so, they
cannot think it strange that it was offered before it was slain,
and that by the Priest himself — for it is clear this was the
method prescribed by Moses of old. It will presently be
shown that the body and blood of Christ were intended as a
sacrifice of consecration, as well as expiation, and that there-
fore the proper time of offering them was before he was ac-
tually slain as a sacrifice .... And if Christ gave or offered
himself in the Eucharist, I presume I need not labour to
prove that Priests are to do what he then did. We have his
express commands to do or offer this in Remembrance of
him, and I have abundantly demonstrated that this was the
constant, unanimous judgment of the Primitive Church for
the first 400 years after Christ" — Johnson, Unbloody Sacri-
fice.
" There is yet a more evident proof to be found in the
Scripture, even in the very words of the Institution, to prove
that we are required to offer the bread and wine to God,
when we celebrate the Holy Eucharist, * This do in remem-
brance of me.' Dr. Hickes, in his Christian Priesthood, p.
58, &c. proves, by a great many instances, that the word
Trotuv, to do, also signifies to offer, and is very frequently used
both by profane authors, and by the Greek translators of the
Old Testament in that sense; and so also is the Latin word
facer e. I will transcribe a few of those instances, and those
who desire more may consult Dr. Hickes's book.
"Herodotus, lib. 1, cap. cxxxii. says, 'Without one of
the Magi, it is not lawful for them, noim, to offer a sacrifice.
And in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament,
which all the learned know is followed by the writers of the
New Testament, even where they cite the words and
speeches of our Saviour, it is so used; as Exod. xxix. 36.
' Thou shalt offer, 7rct»a-cig, a bullock;' verse 38, 'This is that
which, 7rGt»7&is, thou shalt offer upon the altar;' verse 39,
* The one lamb, 7roino-u;, thou shalt offer in the morning, and
the other lamb, 7rot»o-us 9 thou shalt offer in the evening.' So
likewise Exod. x. 25. In all which places the word, which
is translated offer, and which in this last text is translated sa-
crifice, and which in these and many other places will bear
no other sense, is the very word which in the institution of
the Eucharist is translated Do. And even our English trans-
lators have sometimes used the word Do in this sacrificial
( 313 )
sense; as particularly Lev. iv. 20. Here our English trans-
lation is, * And he shall do with the bullock, as he did with the
bullock for a sin offering, so shall he do with this. ■ Here,
indeed, they have put in the word with, without any autho-
rity. The Greek is, * he shall do the bullock, as he did the
bullock, so shall he do this;' where do plainly signifies offer <
That the words of the institution, rouro rrcmTt, do
this, are to be understood in this sacrificial sense, is manifest
from the command concerning the cup, which is, ' This do
ye, as oft as you drink it, in remembrance of me*' For ex-
cept we understand the words in such a sense, they will be
a plain tautology. But translate it, as I have showed the
words w r ill very probably bear, ' Offer this: make an obla-
tion or libation of this,, as oft as ye drink it in remembrance
of me? and the sense is very good. A Priest, therefore, is
necessary and essential to the due administration of the sa-
crament." — Dr. Brett, True Scrip. Account of the Eucharist.
For the best Catholic arguments on all the above points, I
beg to refer to the Earl of Shrewsbury's comprehensive and
able Reasons for not taking the Test, &c, and Dr. Baines,
lively and acute Answers to Archdeacon Daubeny, &c*
Page 50.
" The Eucharist prefigured in the offerings of the Old Law. iT
Clement of Alexandria, among the rest, expressly says,
that Melchisedeck distributed bread and wine, as conse-
crated food, for a type of the Eucharist: — mv »ytx,7{Aivnv tT/cTc-
us <T£o<pnv u; <rv7ror iv%*y<rTicts. — Stromat. Lib. 4+
Page 52,
"If it had so great power in the type, &c."
In the same sense, Eusebius says "We with good reason
daily celebrating the memorial of Christ's body and blood,
and being dignified with a better victim and Hierurgy than
the old people, do not think it safe to fall back to the for-
mer weak elements that contain symbols and images, not the
Verity." — ovtt tm criov wyov/Ai&a, KATct7rt7r<TUv em <tcl 7rgoe f rct kai
gitXovr*. — Demonstrate Evangel.
Page 58.
To Schelstrate, who held that the Discipline of the Secret
was in full force of operation, during the second century, this
instance of boldness, on the part of St. Justin, in promul-
gating the doctrine of Transubstantiation to the Gentiles, ap-
pears naturally a disconcerting and puzzling fact. "Cum
27
( 314 )
enim Romanum Senatum Gentilem tanc fuisse, Antoninum
quoqae cum ejus filiis Paganos extitisse, certum sit, ostendi
debet quomodo, salva disciplina Arcani tan clare de Baptis-
mi ritibus et Eucharistia Sacramentis ti*actare potuerit Justi-
nus." His solution of the difficulty is, that Justin was led
to so daring- a step by the necessity of vindicating the Chris-
tians against the calumnies of which they were then the
object.
Page 64.
Among the clearest and strongest arguments that have
been advanced as well for the application of John vi. to the
Eucharist as for the connexion of the Eucharist itself with
the Incarnation, may be accounted those brought forward
by the famous Bretschneider in his Treatise on the Gospel
and Epistles of St. John; nor is the opinion of this writer the
less worthy of attention from his being himself wholly un-
interested in the decision of the question, (at least as it
stands between Protestants and Catholics,) the object of his
book being no fess than to prove that this Gospel was not
written by St. John at all, but by some Gnostic imposter of
a later period.
I shall here subjoin, for the learned reader, a passage from
this Treatise, in which, comparing the account given of the
Docets by Ignatius, and the repugnance felt by these here-
tics to the doctrine of a Real Presence, with the announce-
ments made by Jesus in the sixth Chapter of St. John, Bret-
schneider shows that our Saviour's language was directed
against their heresy, and had no other object than to esta-
blish, in opposition to their views, the reality and verity of his
own flesh in the Sacrament: —
" Non vero omnibus eandem fuisse sententiam, et Docetas
nominatim negasse in eucharistia adesse Jesu carnem s. cor-
pus, ex Ignatii epistolis videmus, quae vel maxime non sint
genuinae, tamen haud dubie seculo secundo debentur. Hie
vero, et quidem epist. ad Smymaeos c 6. p. 37, ed. Cleric,
legitur locus, mimm in modum cum nostro congruens. Ig-
natius enim de Docetis, &vK*£i;ridic, inquit, xxi Tr^ociu^n; (i. e.
precum in eucharistia faciendarum, puto ms &ri)t\ho-ites tou
7TViUfXiL<TCg ftyiw') OL7ri%0VTsU efj* TO (AY) CJU0\0yitV THV iV%cL£l?Tl<X.V
<r»AZK% uvcli toxj coom^o; h/uw 'Iho-gv 'Kqistou, t»v U7ng 'Ujuatgrtctv
h/uav 7r*d-:inrx.v y m th^ivtcthti 7tx,t>ii> yryetgevt- 01 ovvavti xeyev-
Tic <th cfa>g§*. tov &zov, rvfyTovvTec ct7ro^vno-Kovs-i' o-vvtqegw cTg ctc-
rag cLyx7rxv (i. e. agapen celebrare) iv* kxi clvastuxtovjiv. —
"Vide vero, quam apta sint ea, quae Jesu in nostro loco
tribuuntur, ad refellendos ejusmodi eucharistiaecontemtores!
( 315 )
" 1. Negant: tw ev%xyc-
Ttctv 0-d^x.x. mcti tow' Ihitou, mv
V7Tig CLf/.O.g<TlG?V H/UUV 7TCL&QV7CLV.
"2. Appellatur o-agf Chris-
ti Sagex, <tgu Sew.
"3. Dicuntur adversarii
eucharistiae et corporis do-
mini o-vfyTovvre; a.7rc&v)i<Tx.uv t
sine spe immortalitatis esse,
cum contra si eucharistia ute-
rentur efficeretur tvac ttai civet-
crao-tv, ut etiam ipsi, ut re-
liqui fideles, resurgerent ad
vitam.
" 1. Affirmavit Jesus v. 51 :
o ctgroc ov zyto£too-U) n <rctg% /mou-
egriv, hv eyoo Jaxra> vtti^ thc tcu
Kocr/uou £ans. v. 55: h ctcl^c, (*w
cLXyiScvs «?tj finals, xcli to a///*
" 2. Dicitur <r*g v. 51. 58.
CtgTO?, fa <T0V OUQCtVOU K4.TCtficte %
"3. D ocet Jesus :majorem
judaeorum panem coelestem
Mosis quidem comedisse, sed
tamen mortuos esse, v. 49,
58. — negat, v. 53: s*v /u» <p*~
ytilZ <THV (TAgXCt <T0V VlOV VGV OLV-
Sr^OOTTOV, K.CLI 7rt»Ti AVTOV TO CLljUCt,
oux. i'xyre (^mv tv ezurois — affir-
mat. contra: o rgoym t uou <r»v
a-a,^Kct t adit 7riva>v /uou to a.t/uct t
STMO-G) AVTOV TH i^^jLTH tijULigdL,
Idem promiv. 50. 51. 57.
Page 65.
Remarking on the lame and impotent manner, m which
Dr. Whitby endeavours to explain away the import of 1 Cor.
x. 16, 17, Johnson says, " The most that the learned Dr.
Whitby can make out of this is, — ' The Bread broken and
shared out maybe said to be the Communion or Communica-
tion of the Body of Christ as being the communication of
that Bread which represented his broken body; and the Cup
they severally drink of may be styled the Communication of
the Blood of Christ, as being the communication of that wine
that represented his bloodshed. ' It may be said, it may be
styled, says the Doctor, — by which it is intimated that, if it
be so said or styled, it is in a very remote and improper sense,
only so as to bring our Saviour and the Apostle off from be-
ing guilty of an absurdity.
In reference to Whitby's attempt to class the text of
" This bread is my body "with "the Three Branches are
three days" — "the seven good kine are seven years," (Gen.
xli. 26,) " The four great beasts are four kings," (Dan. vii.
17,) "Thou art that head of gold," (Dan. ii. 38,) Johnson
remarks, " So that it should seem the bread of the Eucharist
is, in the Doctor's judgment, no otherwise the body of Christ
than the visionary head of gold was Nebuchadnezzar ! " He
then adds, "Our Saviour having positively affirmed <It is
( 310 )
my body, 4 Dr. Whitby, in good manners, thinks himself
obliged not to contradict Christ Jesus, and, therefore, con-
fesses it may be so said, it may be so styled, just as the
Three Branches are said to be Three Days. But Irenxus,
Justin Martyr, and Ignatius did not thus expound away the
life and efficacy of the Sacrament into mere cold and empty
types.
" The learned writer just referred to cites the following re-
markable passage from St. Augustine, confirmatory alike
of the two Catholic points of belief, the high authority of
tradition, and the vital nature of the Eucharist, as asserted
in John vi. — 'The Punick Christians do rightly call Baptism
nothing but Salvation, and the Sacrifice of the Body of Christ
nothing but Life. — And whence have they this but from an
ancient and, I think, apostolical tradition, by which they
hold it to be a principle innate in the Church of Christ that
the kingdom of Heaven (or Salvation) cannot be had with-
out Baptism. And what do they hold who call the Sacra-
ment of the Lord's Table, Life, but that which was said, 'I
am the Bread of Life, and except ye eat of the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you/ "
"This (remarks Johnson) is a most ample testimony that
the African Churches did believe John vi. to be meant of
the Sacrament; and it seems this way of speaking was of so
long standing that St Austin thought it an Apostolic tradi-
tion, an innate principle of Christianity— r-« qua Ecclesiae
£hristi institutum tenent.' "
Page 66.
"In speaking of those heretics who abstained from the
Eucharist, Ignatius pronounces sentence upon them in these
words, 'It were better for them to receive it (the Eucharist,)
-that, through it, they might one day rise again.' Now, that
the Eucharist is the means of a happy resurrection cannot
be allowed to be the doctrine of Scripture, except John vi.
be meant of the Eucharist, and therefore this Holy Martyr,
when he does once and again assert that this is a privilege
conferred on us by the Eucharist must, of consequence, be
of this sentiment that our Saviour there spoke of his sacra-
mental body and blood."
"Moreover, I insist that there were several doctrines
which prevailed in the first ages of Christianity that CGuld
not be grounded on any other authority of Scripture than
this of John vi., as understood of the Eucharist, viz. — that,
by abstaining from the Holy Eucharist Christians do incur
the penalty of eternal damnation, — that the Holy Spirit is
{ 317 )
particularly present in the Eucharist, — that the Eucharist
conveys to all worthy receivers a principle of happy immor-
tality." — Johiison.
." The ancients knew," adds the same writer, "that our
Saviour there spoke of the Eucharist, and they did by no
means believe that Christ in the Holy Sacrament feeds the
souls of men with mere diy metaphors or catachreses. —
Though they did not understand Christ in a literal sense, as
the Capernaites did, yet neither, on the other hand, did they
suppose that it was the intention of Christ to puzzle his au-
ditors, and even stagger his own disciples, with strained
enigmatical sayings, — for they believed he spoke of a real
mystery; and that he was now opening his intention of esta-
blishing the most divine Sacrament of his Flesh and Blood,
and to raise in them just thoughts and apprehensions of that
heavenly Mystery, he speaks of it in the most elevated
words. "
•CONNEXION BETWEEN THE EUCHARIST AND THE MYSTERY OF
THE INCARNATION.
"The difficulties," says the Rev. Mr. Rutter, "which
Protestants allege against Transubstantiation are not greater
than those which the Socinians may and do urge against the
Incarnation: as will appear from the following parallel: —
Protestants reject Transub- The Socinians may equally
stantiation, reject the Incarnation,
1. Because the senses judge 1. Because the senses judge
the host to be mere bread. Christ to be a mere man.
2. Because one body will be 2. Because one person will
in two or more places. be in two natures.
3. Because the same body 3. Because the same person
will move and not move, will be both God and man,
be visible and not visible, visible and not visible,
mortal and immortal, pas- mortal and immortal, pas-
sible and impassible. sible and impassible, &c.
4. Because Christ would be 4. Because an immense God
in the form of a wafer. would be in the form of a
simple man.
3. Because Christ's body 5. Because God would be
would be in a form oppo- in a form opposite to the
site to human nature. divine nature.
6. Because Christ's body 6. Because God would be
would be eaten by sinners. crucified by sinners.
.7. How can Christ's body be 7. How can Christ be con-
27*
( 318 )
Confined in the tabernacle, fined in the womb of a vir-
and be also in heaven ? gin, and be also in heaven ?
8. Because it appears absurd 8. Because it appears absurd
to adore Christ in the sa- to adore him who was bom
crament. of a woman, and after-
wards crucified by man.
Page 70.
" St. Justin, in affirming that Christians were, in his time,
instructed that the Bread and Wine were the Flesh and
Blood, and that they were made so by Prayer, must intend
something more than naked types: for there is no occasion
for Prayer, or for the Divine Concurrence, toties quoties, to
render any thing a resemblance of another; and I dare say
that the Arminians and Socinians will bear witness that no-
thing but breaking the bread and pouring out the wine is
necessary to make the elements the Body and Blood in their
sense, who believe them to be nothing more than mere me-
morandums. ' ' — Johnson.
Page 71.
In his Homily on the 10th chapter of the first Epistle to
the Corinthians, v. 16, 17, St Chrysostom says, "The
Apostle speaks so as to make us believe and tremble, for he
asserts, that what is in the cup is that which flowed out of
Christ's side, and of this we partake." In referring to this
passage, Johnson pertinently asks, " What is there in a
Type to make a man tremble?"
Page 78.
A curious testimony to the strictness with which, on the
subject of the Eucharist, the Discipline of the Secret con-
tinued to be observed even in the Fourth Century is to be
found in the arguments brought forward by Deylingius
against Peiresc, on the subject of a coin of Constantine the
Great, discovered by the latter, upon which he had per-
suaded himself he could trace the figure of an altar, bearing
on it the Eucharistic wafer, or Host. Deylingius, a fierce
opponent of the Sacrifice of the Mass, and therefore inte-
rested in getting rid of all proois of its antiquity, con-
tended, and I believe with truth (as far as the coin was
concerned) that the round figure which Peiresc took for the
Host was but the common emblem of the "globus mundi,"
— that, at the time when the coin was struck, Constantine
had not yet been baptized, and could, therefore, know no*
thing of the Eucharist; and that, even had he known of it,
the rules of the Discipline of the Secret would have pre-
vented his revealing to the Pagans any thing connected with
such a mystery.
( 319 )
Page 89.
"Testimonies of the Fathers respecting the Eucharist."
To these extracts, on the subject of the Eucharist, I shall
venture to add a few more which seem to have escaped the
notice of my friend, and for which I am indebted to the in-
valuable work of the Rev. Mr. Berington, "The Faith of
Catholics."
Origen. — " In former times, Baptism was obscurely repre-
sented in the cloud and in the sea, but now regeneration is
in kind, in water and in the Holy Ghost. Then, obscurely,
manna was the food; but now, in kind, the flesh of the Word
of God is the true Jood; even, as he said, * My flesh is meat
indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.' " — Horn. 7, in Num.
St. Ambrose. — "If Heretics deny that adoration should be
paid to the mysteries of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, they
may read in the Scripture, that the Apostles also adored him,
after he had risen again in a glorified body." He then speaks
of " the very flesh of Jesus Christ , which, to this day, we adore
in our sacred mysteries." (Quam hodie quoque in myste-
riis adoramus. )
St. Gaudentius. — " Believe v! A at is announced to thee;
because what thou receivest is the body of that celestial
bread, and the blood of that sacred Vine; for when he de-
livered consecrated bread and wine to his disciples, thus he
said, 'This is my bod}*, this is my blood.' Let us believe
him, whose faith ive profess; for truth cannot lie" — Tract.
II. de Pasch.
St. Gregory of Nyssa. — "It is by virtue of the benedic-
tion that the nature of the visible species is changed into
his body. The bread, also, is at first common bread, but
when it has been sanctified it is called, and is made the body
of Christ. T» r»? ivxoyix; Swx.(j.u 7r^o<; ikuvo fAirctr<TGt%U6o<rcte
Tav <pmvc/uevu)v t»v qvo-iv." — Orat. in Bapt. Christi.
Before those heretical notions which prevailed, respecting
the Trinity and the Real Presence, had rendered it necessa-
ry, in speaking of these mysteries, to employ a word de-
noting actual substance, the Fathers of the Church employed
a variety of terms to describe the change which takes place
in the Eucharist. isWroo-rot^zicoa-i; is, we see, the phrase used
in the passage just cited, by Gregory of Nyssa. In Theo-
phylect we find Mira-rotho-is employed for the same purpose,
and the different words, MstaCcah, M<r*c-Xn/uA<rtT/uos, MctvTtfg-
guBjuio-i;, Mrr'j.7MucL<r/!Ao; have each been used, by some one or
other of the Fathers, to express the miraculous change . —
When the Phantastic heretics, however, had begun to spi-
( 320 )
ritualize away the reality of the Presence, and the opposers
of the Trinity to resolve into mere concord and consent the
mysterious Oneness of the Father and Son, it became neces-
sary for the orthodox to assert the substantiality in both
mysteries; and hence the introduction of those two words,
equally unauthorized by Scripture — Consubstantial and
Transubstantiatiom
Page 91.
In the Liturgy used by St Cyril of Jerusalem we find the
sense both of himself and his Church expressed — n*£oot*Aot/-
,(xtv vov <pi\*v$'fa)7rcv Qzov to atytov 7rvw[/.ct e%3L7rGsru\tttZ7rt ret ?rgo-
HUfxtv*. ivct TrotnTi) rev [xiv ctgrov 0-tofj.ct Xgirrou rov efe oivov At/net
X^KTTOV 7roLVTCcg y*£ 00 CIV i^A^AtrO TO 'ctytOV 7TVW[Jt.dL TCVTO
ayicta-rcti k±i /utGraE&hxrtu. " We beseech of God, the lover
of souls, to send down his Holy Spirit upon these gifts laid
m open view, that he may make the bread the body of Christ
and the wine the blood of Christ. For, to whatever the
Holy Ghost gives a contact, that thing* is consecrated and
changed.' 1
Page 95.
*' The special selection by the Christians of those days for
Festivals" &c.
"Onvoitpar le Calendrier de Bucherus et par d'autres
que les Romains avoient le 25 Decembre une fete marquee
Dies Tnvicti, en l'honneur du retour du Soliel. Elle se faisait
avec de grandes rejouissances. Ce fut apparemment pour
s'opposer a la licence de cette Fete que l'Eglise Romaine
placa en ce meme jour celle de lanaissance de Jesus Christ
De meme qu'on institua la procession du jour de S. Marc,
pour l'opposer a celle que faisoient les Paiens ce meme jour
25 Avril, en l'honneur du Dieu Rubigo, et les luminaires de
la fete de la Purification tout de meme-" — Longuerue.
On comparing my friend's account of the numerous in-
stances in which the early Christians borrowed from Pagan-
ism, with the famous Letter of Middleton, in which the same
task is, with a very different object, undertaken, the reader
will perceive how meagre and limited were Middle-ton's in-
quiries on the subject.
Page 105.
The following is the grave and matter of fact language in
which Luther described his theological controversy with the
Devil: — "Contigit me semel sub mediam noctem subito ex-
pergefieri. Ibi Satan mecum caspit ejusmodi disputationem
Aude inquit, Luthere, doctor perdocte, Nocte etiam te quin-
( 321 )
decim annis celebrasse massas privates pene quotidie ? Quod
si tales massx private horrendaesset idololatria? Cui respond i,
sum unctus sacerdos . * . haec omnia feci ex mandato et
obedientia majorum: haec nosti. Hoc inquit, totum est ve-
rum; sed Turcee et Gentilis etiam faciunt omnia in suis tem-
plis ex obedientia. In his angustiis, in hoc agone contra
Diabolum volebum retundere hostem armis quibus assuetuc
sum sub papatu, &c. Yemm Satan e contra fortius et ve-
liementius instans, age, inquit, prome ubi scriptum est quod
homo impius possit consecrare, &c, &c. Hxc fere erat dis-
putationis summa." — Deund. et. Mis. Privat.
Chilling-worth supposes that the intention of Satan in ar-
guing- against the Mass was to induce his antagonist to perse-
vere in saying it. (Relig. of ProL )
Page 110.
"My fitsh which I will give for the Life of the worid"
"Nor are we to wonder if Christ made something* else be-
sides Faith and obedience to -the moral laws necessaiy to
eternal salvation. Man, even in Paradise, had a positive Law
given him, over and above the Laws of Nature and of Reason,
namely, that he should not eat of the fruit of the Tree of
Good and Evil. If he had even obeyed in this, he could not
have attained eternal happiness without eating of the Tree of
Life, — to show that eternal Life and perfect obedience are
two things that have no necessary dependence on each other.
For the same reason he hath required Christians not only to
believe and obey in other respects, but in order to secure
ourselves a happy resurrection, he directs us to feed on the
Bread of Life, the Holy Eucharist. For, by making this a
necessary condition, without which we cannot attain immor-
tal happiness, he gives us a demonstration that Eternal Life
is the gift of God, and not the wages of our righteousness
and obedience. When, therefore our Saviour says, t He
that believeth in me hath eternal life,' the meaning is, not
that Faith alone is sufficient to salvation, but that a *rue be-
liever, by being a member of Christ's Church aTid enjoying
the Eucharist, has the means of eternal life provided for him
by Christ Jesus, as Adam, by living in Paradise, and having
the Fruit of the Tree of Life within his reach, might be said
to have eternal life; and it is very observable how unanimous
the ancient writers of the Church are, not only in asserting
that this Sacrament is necessary to Salvation, but that it is
the means by which our bodies have a principle of a happy
resurrection conveyed to them." — Johnson.
^ 322 )
Page 113. Note.
" But the Sacrament was an institution perfectly new and
unheard of before, when our Saviour first administered it, in
the opinion of those who deny John vi. to relate to this mat-
ter. It, therefore, must be supposed that our Saviour did
extempore institute and oblige his Apostles to receive the Sa-
crament without giving* them any previous notice or informa-
tion whereby they might be prepared for it, — unless it be
acknowledged that here, in this context, he did give them
this notice; for we have not the least intimation of his doing
so in any other place of the Histories of the Evangelists.
And, therefore, to acquit our Saviour of any such imputation,
it ought in reason to be acknowledged that he did it here;
and that St John, observing that the other Evangelists had
omitted this discourse, thought it necessary to be inserted in
his Gospel: whereas, the history of the Institution being re-
lated by the other three, there was no occasion for him to
repeat It." — lb,
Page 125.
" To show how opposite were the characters of the Jewish and
the Christian God"
" The difference between the style of the Old and New
Testament is so very remarkable, that one of the greatest
sects in the primitive times did, upon tins very ground, found
their heresy of Two Gods; the one evil, fierce, and cruel,
whom they called the God of the Old Testament; the other
good, kind, and merciful, whom they called the God of the
New Testament. So great a difference is there between the
representations which are made of God, in the Books of the
Jewish and Christian religions, as to give at least some co-
lour and pretence for an Imagination of two Gods." —
Tilbtson.
Page 136.
In giving an account of the Carpocratians, another branch
of these Gnostics, the author of L'Histoire du Gnosticisme,
says;^- c *C*est la Gnosis, c'est la science des Carpocratiens
qui donne cette science. Ce n'est pourtant ni une science
nouvelle ni une science exclusive; elle a ete donne a tous
les peuples, ou plutot les grands hommes de tous les peuples
ont pu s'elever jusqu'a elle — Payens ou Juifs, Pythagore,
Platon, Aristote, Moise et Jesus Christ ont possede cette
Gnosis, la Verite. Cette Gnosis affranchet deslois du monde
(HcL\»§udL e/.ivS-^too-uvjuAs) — elle fait plus; elle affranchit de
tout ce que le vulgaire appelle Religion." In a note, the
( 323 )
author adds; — " Voila une ecole meprisable qui proclame il
y a seize siecles l'Universalisme le plus philosophique et le
plus religieux que connaisse notre terns."
Page 137.
" The Gnostics forerunners of the Anabaptists" &c.
Of the Carpocratians, the historian of Gnosticism says,
"Tout ce que les docteurs orthodoxes appeloient les bonnes
ceuvres ils le traitoient de choses exterieures, indiflferentes
.... C'est par lafoi et sans les ceuvres que les orthodoxes
se recommendaient a cote d'elles." The similarity between
these fanatics and the ravers of the Reformation did not
escape the observation of this writer. "Rien," he says,
"ne nous parait plus propre a faire juger les Carpocratiens
de la Cyrena'ique que les anabaptistes de Minister."
Page 207.
In the sermons published by the Executors of Dr. Crisp,
one of the founders of Antinomianism in England, it is as-
serted, (on the authority of the text, "He hath made him
to be sin for us,") that Christ was actually Sin itself!
Page 226.
" Dispositions of Luther towards the Jews."
Severam deinde sententiam adversus eos promit, censet-
que, synagogas illorum funditus destruendas, domos quoque
diruendas, libros precationum et Talmudicos omnes
immo et ipsos sacros codices Veteris Testamenti, quia illis
tarn male utunter, auferendos, &c. &c. — Seckendorf. Comm.
de Lath. lib. 3, sect. 27.
Such was the tolerance of this champion of Private Judg-
ment! Even Seckendorf thinks it right to affix a brand of
disapprobation to such sentiments: — "Acria hsec sunt, et
quae approbationem non invenerunt."
Page 235.
The ministers of Geneva, in their Declaration in answer to
D'Alembert's Article Geneve, in the Encyclopedic, said that
they had for Jesus Christ "plus que due respect"
Page 240.
"Negative code of Christianity"
" The greatest unity the Protestants have, is not in be-
lieving, but in not believing; in knowing rather what they
are against than what they are for; not so much in knowing
( 324 )
what they would have, as in knowing what they would not
have. But let these negative Religions take heed they meet
not with a negative Salvation." — Marquis of Worcester 3 a
Paper in his Conference with Charles I. at Ragland,
Page 242.
Boxhornius, the grandfather of the celebrated Marcus
Zuerius, was also one of those who gave up the Church for
a wife, at the time of the Reformation. "Lorsqull fut
question (says Baillet) de prendre une femme a la place de
son Breviaire, et de se rendre hommes de qualite, il se dit de
la Maison de Boxhorns > noblesse connue dans le Brabant." —
Anti-CuycMus.
Page 247 .
As the almost incredible grossness of this scene at the Black
Bear, might well induce some suspicion as to my friend's fide-
lity in describing it, I think it right to extract the passage of
Hospinian from which he has taken his account: — "Tandem
hinc inde multis inter ipsos permutatis sermonibus exacerba-
to utrinque ammo Lutherus Carlostadium ut contra se pub-
lice scribat, invitat. Simul ex concitato isto animi fervore au-
reum nummum extractum ex pera ipsi oflfert, inquiens, ' En
accipe, et quantum potes animose contra me dimica. Age,
verb, vergas in me alacriter.' Quod etsi recusaret prim urn
Carlostadius, et rem cognitioni pix permittendam moneret
ac peteret, tandem, cum urgeretur, hunc aureum nummum
accepturum se respondit, eumque omnibus astantibus osten-
dens, dixit «En, chari fratres, istud est signum et arrabo,
quod potestatem acceperim contra doctorem Lutherum
scribendi. Rogo itaque vos, ut ejus rei testes esse velitis.'
Cumque aureum nummum marsupio suo recondidisset, Lu-
thero manum in sponsionem pactae et susceptse contentionis
porrexit, pro cujus confirmatione Lutherus ipsi vicissim haus-
tum vini propinavit, adhortans eum, ne sibi parceret, sed
quanto vehementius et animosius contra se ageret, tanto il-
ium sibi chariorem futurum." Hist Sacram. Pars Alter a>
de prima origine Certaminis Sacramentarii.
Hospinian adds, " H?ec te, Christiane lector, fuerunt infeli-
cissimi istius Certaminis, quod ex pacto et sponsione suscep-
tum, tot jam annis Ecclesiam gi-avissime exercuit, infausta
auspicia."
Page 255.
The following is a specimen of the views of Zanchius on
this head:—" Damus reprobos necessitate peccandi eoque et
pereundi ex hac Dei ordinatione constringi, atque ita con-
( 325 )
string!, ut nequc aut non peccare et perire." — " We grant
that reprobates are constrained by a necessity of sinning, and
therefore, of perishing through this ordination of God, and
that they are constrained in such a manner as to be unable to
do otherwise than sin and perish*"
Page 266.
" A provision for future changes" &c.
This was entirely on the principle of the Socinians, of
whose Catechism Mosheim says: — "It never obtained among
them the authority of a public Confession or rule of faith ;
and hence the Doctors of that sect were authorized to cor-
rect and contradict it, or to substitute another form of doc-
trine in its place."
Accordingly, in a subsequent Edition of this Catechism
published by Crellius, Schlichtingius, and the Wissowatii,
some parts were altered, and others corrected.
Page 270.
"Their Liturgie, (which began in the nonage reign of
Edward VI. and, after some years' interruption, got stronger
footing by an Act of Parliament in Queen Elizabeth's day,
and so was become almost of fourscore years' prescription,
half as old as one of our grandfathers) is decried, antiquated
by the present Parliament, contemned by the people, and
succeeded by a new thing called a Directory of four or five
years' unquiet standing, which already begins to lose credit
with its first acceptors." — Dr. Carter's Motives, &c, 1649.
Page 275.
It would appear that Antinomianism still flourishes, to a
frightful extent, in England. Robert Hall, in one of his
Sermons, says, "While Antinomianism is making rapid
strides through the land, and has already convulsed and dis-
organized so many of our churches." A recent writer, too,
in speaking of Dr. Hawkins, who, like the founder of the
English Antinomians, Dr. Crisp, belongs to the Church of
England, says, "his books and converts have infected our
churches as with a kind of pestilence, and are perverting
the minds of multitudes within the pale of the establish*
ment." — James on Dissent.
Few have laid open more powerfully than does the illus-
trious Grotius the baleful workings of the Calvinistic doc
trine. His opponent, Rivetus, having complained that there
was no longer the means of providing fit and proper ministers
28
( 326 )
for the Consistories, Grotius remarks, that in the Churches
of former times, though there were not then so many rich
people as among* the followers of Rivetus, there was yet an
abundant supply for all such purposes; — the doctrine of
imputed justice having" not yet chilled their hearts to charity
and good works: — " Cur ergo ilia necessaria nunc minus
suppetunt? Quia non docentur nunc ea de necessitate ac
dignatione operum liberalitatis et misericordise quae olim do-
cebantur. Justitia imputata frigus injecit et plebi et plebis
ducibus." — In Rivet. Apohg. Discuss. Of the doctrine of
Perseverance, Grotius truly says, "Nullum potuit in Chris-
tianismum induci dogma perniciosius quam hoc." He adds,
" None of the ancients taught this doctrine? none of them
would have borne its being taught" — Hoc nemo veterum
docuit; nemo docentem tulisset. — In Animadv. pro suis ad
Cassandrum notis. By Beza it was held that David even when
polluted with adultery and homicide, did not lose the Holy
Spirit, nor the less continue to be a man after God's own
heart: — " Non desiit tamen tunc temporis esse yir secundum
eor Dei."
Page 286.
J'ai voulu indiquer comment les croyances Protestantes
ont dii disparoitre toutes, et laisser la religion vacantes dans
leurs contrees respectives J'ai la conscience intime
d' avoir ecrit sans passion et je donne comrae resultat certain,
d'apres mes recherches et mes meditations la disposition to-
tale du Protestantisme. II n'y a reellement, plus de Luthe-
riens ni de Calvinistes.il n'y a plus de mystiques dans les
rangs des Reformes; il ne s'y trouve meme plus de Sociniens;
on n'y reconnoit qu'une masse de sentimens confus com-
poses de raisonnemens et de sensations indefinees.
Page 289.
C£ Roman Catholics (says Plowden) rejoice to find such
honour done to their doctrine of submitting private to the
Church's public interpretations of the Scriptures, when the
Vigornian prelate (Hurd) puts St. Augustine's words to the
Manichseans into the mouth of his deceased friend (Warbur-
ton) to strike dumb and confound some modern free inter-
preters of the Word — ' Ye who believe what you will in the
Gospel and disbelieve what you will, assuredly believe not
the Gospel itself, but yourselves only.' "
Page 291.
In addition to the difficulties thrown in the way of a clear
understanding of the Scriptures, by the incorrectness of
( 327 )
translators, by false punctuation, &c. &c. are to be taken into
account also such corruptions of the meaning of the text as
may have arisen from design. Thus, in an edition printed in
166, the verse in Acts vi. 3, referring to the choosing of
Deacons, stands thus, "Wherefore brethren, look ye out
among you seven men of honest report, full of the Hdiy
Ghost and wisdom, whom ye may appoint over this business,"
instead of "we may appoint," — an alteration, intended it is
supposed, for the purpose of establishing the people's power,
not only in electing but also ordaining their ministers. A
misrepresentation of the meaning of Scripture for a like
covert purpose, occurs in the quarto Bible printed in Queen
Anne's time, 1708, where the heading or contents prefixed
to the 149th Psalm run thus: "The Prophet exhorteth to
praise God for his love to the Church and for that power
which he hath given to the Church to rule the consciences of
men" This innovation on the edition of 1614, (where the
heading is, " An exhortation to the Church to praise the
Lord for his victory and conquest that he giveth his saints
against all man's power") was supposed to have been intro-
duced by the partisans of the Stuarts, for the purpose of
sanctioning their arbitrary principles.
Page 292,
By no writer have the difficulties of expounding Scripture
been set forth, with more alarming force, than by the great
Jeremy Taylor himself, in the following passage of his Liberty
©f Prophesying: — "Since there are so many copies (of
Scripture) with infinite variations of reading 5 since a various
interpunction, a parenthesis, a letter, an accent, may much
alter the sense; since some places have divers literal senses,
may have spiritual, mystical and allegorical meanings; since
there are so many tropes, metonymies, ironies, hyperboles,
proprieties and improprieties of language, whose understand-
ing depends upon such circumstances that it is almost im-
possible to know the proper interpretation .... since there
are some mysteries which, at the best advantage of expres-
sion, are not easy to be apprehended, and whose explication,
by reason of our imperfection, must needs be dark and some-
times unintelligible; and, lastly, since these ordinary means
of expounding Scripture, as searching the originals, con-
ference of places, parity of reason, analogy of faith, are all
dubious, uncertain and very fallible, he that is the wisest and
by consequence the likeliest to expound truest in all proba-
bility of reason will be very far from confidence, because
every one of these, and many more, arc like so many de-
( 328 )
gTces of improbability and incertainty, all depressing 1 our
certainty of finding 1 out truth in such mysteries and amidst so
many difficulties." — Liberty of Prophesying sect* 4.
Yet this is the Book, so awfully beset with difficulties,
which those ineffable blockheads of the Second Reforma-
tion, in Ireland, the * * s, * * s, &c, would throw open,
by wholesale, to the indiscriminate perusal of the multitude!
"St. August. Lib. de Haeres. numbereth ninety several
heresies (so many Reformations were they) sprung up be-
tween Christ's time and his — i. e. in about four centuries. So
many more rose between St. Augustine's days and Luther's —
i. e. one hundred and eighty heresies in fifteen hundred years.
Betwixt Luther's apostacy from St. Austin's rule and defec-
tion from the Catholic Church in 1517 and the year 1595
(which is but an interval of seventy-eight years) modern
authors, Staphilus, Hosius, Prateolus and others do reckon
two hundred and seventy new sects, all Reformations of what
was some days or some hours before." — Dr. Carie? %, s Mo-
tives, &c.
Page 293.
The Protestant Episcopius was at least consistent when,
from his persuasion of the fallibility of all modern translations,
he insisted that all sorts of persons, labourers, sailors, wo-
men, &c, ought to learn Hebrew and Greek.
" Obscurity in the meaning of Scripture. "
In speaking of what are called plain texts, which, as he
alleges, all parties claim on their side, and much wonder
that their adversaries can mistake their meaning, an acute
sceptical writer says, "The plain texts, from St. Austin's
days, at least in the West, were all in favour of Predestina-
tion, and upon those plain texts the Articles of our Church
and all other Protestant Churches were founded. It is true in
Queen Elizabeth's time there were some few among the in-
ferior Clergy for Free-Will; but then those ' incorrigible
Free-will men,' as they were called, were, by direction of
the Bishop, sent to prison But since the Court in
Charles the First's time helped to open the eyes of our
divines, they, no longer blinded by their Articles, clearly see
that all those plain texts are all for Free-Will."
THE END.