The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VI Part 23

"The achievement of Christ in founding by his single will and power a structure so durable and so universal is like no other achievement which history records. The masterpieces of the men of action are coa.r.s.e and commonplace in comparison with it, and the masterpieces of speculation flimsy and unsubstantial. When we speak of it the commonplaces of admiration fail us altogether. Shall we speak of the originality of the design, of the skill displayed in the execution? All such terms are inadequate. Originality and contriving skill operate indeed, but, as it were, implicitly. The creative effort which produced that against which it is said the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail cannot be a.n.a.lyzed. No architect's designs were furnished for the New Jerusalem; no committee drew up rules for the universal commonwealth. If in the works of nature we can trace the indications of calculation, of a struggle with difficulties, of precaution, of ingenuity, then in Christ's work it may be that the same indications occur. But these inferior and secondary powers were not consciously exercised; they were implicitly present in the manifold yet single creative act. The inconceivable work was done in calmness; before the eyes of mea it was noiselessly accomplished, attracting little attention. Who can describe that which unites men? Who has entered into the formation of speech, which is the symbol of their union? Who can describe exhaustively the origin of civil society? He who can do these things can explain the origin of the Christian Church.

For others it must be enough to say, 'The Holy Ghost fell on those that believed'. No man saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the workmen crowded together, the unfinished walla and unpaved streets; no man heard the clink of trowel and pickaxe: 'it descended out of heaven from G.o.d.'"*

* "Ece h.o.m.o," Conclusion, p. 329, Fifth Edition. Macmillan, 1886.

And yet the writer is, as he was then, still outside of Christianity.

III. We come now to our third point, that Christianity has always claimed a Divine origin and a Divine presence as the source of its authority and powers.

To prove this by texts from the New Testament would be to transcribe the volume; and if the evidence of the whole New Testament were put in, not only might some men deny its weight as evidence, but we should place our whole argument upon a false foundation. Christianity was anterior to the New Testament and is independent of it. The Christian Scriptures presuppose both the faith and the Church as already existing, known, and believed. _Prior liber quam stylus_: as Tertullian argued. The Gospel was preached before it was written. The four books were written to those who already believed, to confirm their faith. They were written at intervals: St. Matthew in Hebrew in the year 39, in Greek in 45. St.

Mark in 43, St. Luke in 57, St. John about 90, in different places and for different motives. Four Gospels did not exist for sixty years, or two generations of men. St. Peter and St. Paul knew of only three of our four. In those sixty years the faith had spread from east to west.

Saints and Martyrs had gone up to their crown who never saw a sacred book. The Apostolic Epistles prove the antecedent existence of the Churches to which they were addressed. Rome and Corinth, and Galatia and Ephesus, Philippi and Colossae, were Churches with pastors and people before St. Paul wrote to them. The Church had already attested and executed its Divine legation before the New Testament existed; and when all its books were written they were not as yet collected into a volume.

The earliest collection was about the beginning of the second century, and in the custody of the Church in Rome. We must, therefore, seek to know what was and is Christianity before and outside of the written books; and we have the same evidence for the oral tradition of the faith as we have for the New Testament itself. Both alike were in the custody of the Church; both are delivered to us by the same witness and on the same evidence. To reject either, is logically to reject both. Happily men are not saved by logic, but by faith. The millions of men in all ages have believed by inheritance of truth divinely guarded and delivered to them. They have no need of logical a.n.a.lysis. They have believed from their childhood. Neither children nor those who _infantibus oquiparantur_ are logicians. It is the penance of the doubter and the unbeliever to regain by toil his lost inheritance. It is a hard penance, like the suffering of those who eternally debate on "predestination, freewill, fate."

Between the death of St. John and the mature lifetime of St. Irenaeus fifty years elapsed. St. Polycarp was disciple of St. John. St. Irenaeus was disciple of St. Polycarp. The mind of St. John and the mind of St.

Irenaeus had only one intermediate intelligence, in contact with each. It would be an affectation of minute criticism to treat the doctrine of St. Irenaeus as a departure from the doctrine of St. Polycarp, or the doctrine of St. Polycarp as a departure from the doctrine of St. John.

Moreover, St. John ruled the Church at Ephesus, and St. Irenaeus was born in Asia Minor about the year A. D. 120--that is, twenty years after St. John's death, when the Church in Asia Minor was still full of the light of his teaching and of the accents of his voice. Let us see how St. Irenaeus describes the faith and the Church. In his work against Heresies, in Book iii. chap. i., he says, "We have known the way of our salvation by those through whom the Gospel came to us; which, indeed, they then preached, but afterwards, by the will of G.o.d, delivered to us in Scriptures, the future foundation and pillar of our faith. It is not lawful to say that they preached before they had perfect knowledge, as some dare to affirm, boasting themselves to be correctors of the Apostles. For after our Lord rose from the dead, and when they had been clothed with the power of the Holy Ghost, Who came upon them from on high, they were filled with all truths, and had knowledge which was perfect." In chapter ii. he adds that, "When they are refuted out of Scripture, they turn and accuse the Scriptures as erroneous, unauthoritative, and of various readings, so that the truth cannot be found by those who do not know tradition"--that is, their own. "But when we challenge them to come to the tradition of the Apostles, which is in custody of the succession of Presbyters in the Church, they turn against tradition, saying that they are not only wiser than the Presbyters, but even the Apostles, and have found the truth." "It therefore comes to pa.s.s that they will not agree either with the Scriptures or with tradition." (Ibid. c. iii.) "Therefore, all who desire to know the truth ought to look to the tradition of the Apostles, which is manifest in all the world and in all the Church. We are able to count up the Bishops who were inst.i.tuted in the Church by the Apostles, and their successors to our day. They never taught nor knew such things as these men madly a.s.sert." "But as it would be too long in such a book as this to enumerate the successions of all the Churches, we point to the tradition of the greatest, most ancient Church, known to all, founded and const.i.tuted in Rome by the two glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, and to the faith announced to all men, coming down to us by the succession of Bishops, thereby confounding all those who, in any way, by self-pleasing, or vainglory, or blindness, or an evil mind, teach as they ought not. For with this Church, by reason of its greater princ.i.p.ality, it is necessary that all churches should agree; that is, the faithful, wheresoever they be, for in that Church the tradition of the Apostles has been preserved." No comment need be made on the words the "greater princ.i.p.ality," which have been perverted by every anti-Catholic writer from the time they were written to this day. But if any one will compare them with the words of St. Paul to the Colossians (chap. i. 18), describing the primacy of the Head of the Church in heaven, it will appear almost certain that the original Greek of St.

Irenaeus, which is unfortunately lost, contained either [--Greek--], or some inflection of [--Greek--] which signifies primacy. However this may be, St. Irenaeus goes on: "The blessed Apostles, having founded and instructed the Church, gave in charge the Episcopate, for the administration of the same, to Linus. Of this Linus, Paul, in his Epistle to Timothy, makes mention. To him succeeded Anacletus, and after him, in the third place from the Apostles, Clement received the Episcopate, he who saw the Apostles themselves and conferred with them, while as yet he had the preaching of the Apostles in his ears and the tradition before his eyes; and not he only, but many who had been taught by the Apostles still survived. In the time of this Clement, when no little dissension had arisen among the brethren in Corinth, the Church in Rome wrote very powerful letters _potentissimas litteras_ to the Corinthians, recalling them to peace, restoring their faith, and declaring the tradition which it had so short a time ago received from the Apostles." These letters of St. Clement are well known, but have lately become more valuable and complete by the discovery of fragments published in a new edition by Light-foot. In these fragments there is a tone of authority fully explaining the words of St. Irenaeus. He then traces the succession of the Bishops of Rome to his own day, and adds: "This demonstration is complete to show that it is one and the same life-giving faith which has been preserved in the Church from the Apostles until now, and is handed on in truth." "Polycarp was not only taught by the Apostles, and conversed with many of those who had seen our Lord, but he also was const.i.tuted by the Apostles in Asia to be Bishop in the Church of Smyrna. We also saw him in our early youth, for he lived long, and when very old departed from this life most gloriously and n.o.bly by martyrdom. He ever taught that what he had learned from the Apostles, and what the Church had delivered, those things only are true." In the fourth chapter, St. Irenaeus goes on to say: "Since, then, there are such proofs (of the faith), the truth is no longer to be sought for among others, which it is easy to receive from the Church, forasmuch as the Apostles laid up all truth in fullness in a rich depository, that all who will may receive from it the water of life."

"But what if the Apostles had not left us the Scriptures: ought we not to follow the order of tradition, which they gave in charge to them to whom they intrusted the Churches? To which order (of tradition) many barbarous nations yield a.s.sent, who believe in Christ without paper and ink, having salvation written by the Spirit in their hearts, and diligently holding the ancient tradition." In the twenty-sixth chapter of the same book he says: "Therefore, it is our duty to obey the Presbyters who are in the Church, who have succession from the Apostles, as we have already shown; who also with the succession of the Episcopate have the _charisma veritatis certum_," the spiritual and certain gift of truth.

I have quoted these pa.s.sages at length, not so much as proofs of the Catholic Faith as to show the ident.i.ty of the Church at its outset with the Church before our eyes at this hour, proving that the acorn has grown up into its oak, or, if you will, the ident.i.ty of the Church at this hour with the Church of the Apostolic mission. These pa.s.sages show the Episcopate, its central princ.i.p.ality, its succession, its custody of the faith, its subsequent reception and guardianship of the Scriptures, Its Divine tradition, and the charisma or Divine a.s.sistance by which its perpetuity is secured in the succession of the Apostles. This is almost verbally, after eighteen hundred years, the decree of the Vatican Council: _Veritatis et fidei nunquam deficientis charisma_.*

* "Const. Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia Christi," cap. iv.

But St. Irenaeus draws out in full the Church of this day. He shows the parallel of the first creation and of the second; of the first Adam and the Second; and of the a.n.a.logy between the Incarnation or natural body, and the Church or mystical body of Christ. He says:

Our faith "we received from the Church, and guard.... as an excellent gift in a n.o.ble vessel, always full of youth, and making youthful the vessel itself in which it is. For this gift of G.o.d is intrusted to the Church, as the breath of life (_was imparted_) to the first man, so this end, that all the members partaking of it might be quickened with life.

And thus the communication of Christ is imparted; that is, the Holy Ghost, the earnest of incorruption, the confirmation of the faith, the way of ascent to G.o.d. For in the Church (St. Paul says) G.o.d placed Apostles, Prophets, Doctors, and all other operations of the Spirit, of which none are partakers who do not come to the Church, thereby depriving themselves of life by a perverse mind and worse deeds. For where the Church is, there is also the Spirit of G.o.d; and where the Spirit of G.o.d is, there is the Church, and all grace. But the Spirit is truth. Wherefore, they who do not partake of Him (_the Spirit_), and are not nurtured unto life at the breast of the mother (_the Church_), do not receive of that most pure fountain which proceeds from the Body of Christ, but dig out for themselves broken pools from the trenches of the earth, and drink water soiled with mire, because they turn aside from the faith of the Church lest they should be convicted, and reject the Spirit lest they should be taught."* Again he says: "The Church, scattered throughout the world, even unto the ends of the earth, received from the Apostles and their disciples the faith in one G.o.d the Father Almighty, that made the heaven and the earth, and the seas, and all things that are in them." &c.**

*St. Irenaeus, Cont. Hezret lib. iii. cap. xxiv.

** Lib. i. cap. x.

He then recites the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Pa.s.sion, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His coming again to raise all men, to judge men and angels, and to give sentence of condemnation or of life everlasting. How much soever the language may vary from other forms, such is the substance of the Baptismal Creed. He then adds:

"The Church having received this preaching and this faith, as we have said before, although it be scattered abroad through the whole world, carefully preserves it, dwelling as in one habitation, and believes alike in these (doctrines) as though she had one soul and the same heart: and in strict accord, as though she had one mouth, proclaims, and teaches, and delivers onward these things. And although there may be many diverse languages in the world, yet the power of the tradition is one and the same. And neither do the Churches planted in Germany believe otherwise, or otherwise deliver (the faith), nor those in Iberia, nor among the Celtae, nor in the East, nor in Egypt, nor in Libya, nor they that are planted in the mainland. But as the sun, which is G.o.d's creature, in all the world is one and the same, so also the preaching of the truth shineth everywhere, and lightened all men that are willing to come to the knowledge of the truth. And neither will any ruler of the Church, though he be mighty in the utterance of truth, teach otherwise than thus (for no man is above the master), nor will he that is weak in the same diminish from the tradition; for the faith being one and the same, he that is able to say most of it hath nothing over, and he that is able to say least hath no lack."*

* St. Irenaeus, lib. i. c. x.

To St. Irenaeus, then, the Church was "the irrefragable witness of its own legation." When did it cease so to be? It would be easy to multiply quotations from Tertullian in A. D. 200, from St. Cyprian a. d. 250, from St. Augustine and St. Optatus in A. d. 350, from St. Leo in a. d.

450, all of which are on the same traditional lines of faith in a divine mission to the world and of a divine a.s.sistance in its discharge. But I refrain from doing so because I should have to write not an article but a folio. Any Catholic theology will give the pa.s.sages which are now before me; or one such book as the Loci Theologici of Melchior Ca.n.u.s will suffice to show the continuity and ident.i.ty of the tradition of St. Irenaeus and the tradition of the Vatican Council, in which the universal church last declared the immutable faith and its own legation to mankind.

The world-wide testimony of the Catholic Church is a sufficient witness to prove the coming of the Incarnate Son to redeem mankind, and to return to His Father; it is also sufficient to prove the advent of the Holy Ghost to abide with us for ever. The work of the Son in this world was accomplished by the Divine acts and facts of His three-and-thirty years of life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension. The office of the Holy Ghost is perpetual, not only as the Illuminator and Sanctifier of all who believe, but also as the Life and Guide of the Church. I may quote now the words of the Founder of the Church: "It is expedient to you that I go: for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you."* "I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever."** "The Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not nor knoweth Him; but you shall know Him, because He shall abide with you and shall be in you."***

* St. John, xvi. 7.

** Ibid, xiv. 16.

*** St.John, xiv. 16, 17.

St. Paul in the Epistles to the Ephesians describes the Church as a body of which the Head is in heaven, and the Author of its indefectible life abiding in it as His temple. Therefore the words, "He that heareth you heareth Me." This could not be if the witness of the Apostles had been only human. A Divine guidance was attached to the office they bore. They were, therefore, also judges of right and wrong, and teachers by Divine guidance of the truth. But the presence and guidance of the Spirit of Truth is as full at this day as when St. Irenaeus wrote. As the Churches then were witnesses, judges, and teachers, so is the Church at this hour a world-wide witness, an unerring judge and teacher, divinely guided and guarded in the truth. It is therefore not only a human and historical, but a Divine witness. This is the chief Divine truth which the last three hundred years have obscured. Modern Christianity believes in the one advent of the Redeemer, but rejects the full and personal advent of the Holy Ghost. And yet the same evidence proves both. The Christianity of reformers, always returns to Judaism, because they reject the full, or do not believe the personal, advent of the Holy Ghost. They deny that there is an infallible teacher, among men; and therefore they return to the types and shadows of the Law before the Incarnation, when the Head was not yet incarnate, and the Body of Christ did not as yet exist.

But perhaps some one will say, "I admit your description of the Church as it is now and as it was in the days of St. Irenaeus; but the eighteen hundred years of which you have said nothing were ages of declension, disorder, superst.i.tion, demoralization." I will answer by a question: was not this foretold? Was not the Church to be a field of wheat and tares growing together till the harvest at the end of the world? There were Cathari of old, and Puritans since, impatient at the patience of G.o.d in bearing with the perversities and corruptions of the human intellect and will. The Church, like its Head in heaven, is both human and divine. "He was crucified in weakness," but no power of man could wound His divine nature. So with the Church, which is His Body. Its human element may corrupt and die; its divine life, sanct.i.ty, authority, and structure cannot die; nor can the errors of human intellect fasten upon its faith, nor the immoralities of the human will fasten upon its sanct.i.ty. Its organization of Head and Body is of divine creation, divinely guarded by the Holy Ghost, who quickens it by His indwelling, and guides it by His light. It is in itself incorrupt and incorruptible in the midst of corruption, as the light of heaven falls upon all the decay and corruption in the world, unsullied and unalterably pure. We are never concerned to deny or to cloak the sins of Christians or of Catholics. They may destroy themselves, but they cannot infect the Church from which they fall. The fall of Lucifer left no stain behind him.

When men accuse the Church of corruption, they reveal the fact that to them the Church is a human inst.i.tution, of voluntary aggregation or of legislative enactment. They reveal the fact that to them the Church is not an object of Divine faith, as the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar. They do not perceive or will not believe that the articles of the Baptismal Creed are objects of faith, divinely revealed or divinely created. "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins," are all objects of faith in a Divine order. They are present in human history, but the human element which envelops them has no power to infect or to fasten upon them. Until this is perceived there can be no true or full belief in the advent and office of the Holy Ghost, or in the nature and sacramental action of the Church. It is the visible means and pledge of light and of sanctification to all who do not bar their intellect and their will against its inward and spiritual grace. The Church is not on probation.

It is the instrument of probation to the world. As the light of the world, it is changeless as the firmament As the source of sanctification, it is inexhaustible as the Rivex of Life. The human and external history of men calling themselves Christian and Catholic has been at times as degrading and abominable as any adversary is pleased to say. But the sanct.i.ty of the Church is no more affected by human sins than was Baptism by the hypocrisy of Simon Magus. The Divine foundation, and office, and mission of the Church is a part of Christianity. They who deny it deny an article of faith; they who believe it imperfectly are the followers of a fragmentary Christianity of modern date. Who can be a disciple of Jesus Christ who does not believe the words? "On this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail against it;" "As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you;"* "I dispose to you, as My Father hath disposed to Me, a kingdom;"** "All power in heaven and earth is given unto Me. Go, therefore, and teach all nations;"*** "He that heareth you heareth Me;"**** "I will be with you always, even unto the end of the world;"(v) "When the days of Pentecost were accomplished they were all together in one place: and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty wind coming, and there appeared to them parted tongues, as it were, of fire;" "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost;" (vi) "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no other burdens."(vii) But who denies that the Apostles claimed a Divine mission? and who can deny that the Catholic and Roman Church from St. Irenaeus to Leo XIII. has ever and openly claimed the same, invoking in all its supreme acts as witness, teacher, and legislator the presence, light, and guidance of the Holy Ghost? As the preservation of all created things is by the same creative power produced in perpetual and universal action, so the indefectibility of the Church and of the faith is by the perpetuity of the presence and office of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Therefore, St. Augustine calls the day of Pentecost, Natalis Spiritus Sancti.

*St. John, xx. 21.

** St. Luke, xxii. 29.

*** St. Matthew, xxviii. 18, 19.

**** St. Luke, x. 10.

(v) St. Matthew, xxviii. 20.

(vii)Acts, ii. 1-5.

(viii) Acts, xv. 28.

It is more than time that I should make an end; and to do so it will be well to sum up the heads of our argument. The Vatican Council declares that the world-wide Church is the irrefragable witness of its own legation or mission to mankind.

In proof of this I have affirmed:

1. That the imperishable existence of Christianity, and the vast and undeniable revolution that it has wrought in men and in nations, in the moral elevation of manhood and of womanhood, and in the domestic, social and political life of the Christian world, cannot be accounted for by any natural causes, or by any forces that are, as philosophers say, _intra possibilitatem natures_, within the limits of what is possible to man.

2. That this world-wide and permanent elevation of the Christian world, in comparison with both the old world and the modern world outside of Christianity, demands a cause higher than the possibility of nature.

3. That the Church has always claimed a Divine origin and a Divine office and authority in virtue of a perpetual Divine a.s.sistance. To this even the Christian world, in all its fragments external to the Catholic unity, bears witness. It is turned to our reproach. They rebuke us for holding the teaching of the Church to be infallible. We take the rebuke as a testimony of our changeless faith. It is not enough for men to say that they refuse to believe this account of the visible and palpable fact of the imperishable Christianity of the Catholic and Roman Church.

They must find a more reasonable, credible, and adequate account for it. This no man has yet done. The denials are many and the solutions are many; but they do not agree together. Their multiplicity is proof of their human origin. The claim of the Catholic Church to a Divine authority and to a Divine a.s.sistance is one and the same in every age, and is identical in every place. Error is not the principle of unity, nor truth of variations.

The Church has guarded the doctrine of the Apostles, by Divine a.s.sistance, with unerring fidelity. The articles of the faith are to-day the same in number as in the beginning. The explicit definition of their implicit meaning has expanded from age to age, as the everchanging denials and perversions of the world have demanded new definitions of the ancient truth. The world is against all dogma, because it is impatient of definiteness and certainty in faith. It loves open questions and the liberty of error. The Church is dogmatic for fear of error. Every truth defined adds to its treasure. It narrows the field of error and enlarges the inheritance of truth. The world and the Church are ever moving in opposite directions. As the world becomes more vague and uncertain, the Church becomes more definite. It moves against wind and tide, against the stress and storm of the world. There was never a more luminous evidence of this supernatural fact than in the Vatican Council. For eight months all that the world could say and do, like the four winds of heaven, was directed upon it. Governments, statesmen, diplomatists, philosophers, intriguers, mockers, and traitors did their utmost and their worst against it. They were in dread lest the Church should declare that by Divine a.s.sistance its Head in faith and morals cannot err; for if this be true, man did not found it, man cannot reform it, man cannot teach it to interpret its history or its acts. It knows its own history, and is the supreme witness of its own legation.

I am well aware that I have been writing truisms, and repeating trite and trivial arguments. They are trite because the feet of the faithful for nearly nineteen hundred years have worn them in their daily life; they are trivial because they point to the one path in which the wayfarer, though a fool, shall not err.

Henry Edward, (Cardinal Manning), Card. Archbishop of Westminster.

ROME OR REASON: A REPLY TO CARDINAL MANNING.

Superst.i.tion "has ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision."

I.

CARDINAL MANNING has stated the claims of the Roman Catholic Church with great clearness, and apparently without reserve. The age, position and learning of this man give a certain weight to his words, apart from their worth. He represents the oldest of the Christian churches. The questions involved are among the most important that can engage the human mind. No one having the slightest regard for that superb thing known as intellectual honesty, will avoid the issues tendered, or seek in any way to gain a victory over truth.

Without candor, discussion, in the highest sense, is impossible.