[BBC List] popery

[Mike Abendroth]

The Road Back To Rome

 

Preface

"In 1833 a new religious movement began in England to "renew" Anglicanism by
reviving certain Roman Catholic doctrines and rituals. Known as the Oxford
Movement (or the Tractarian Movement), its leaders (like John Henry Newman)
advocated the restoration of practices that had been abandoned during the
Reformation-emphasizing the beautification of churches, the wearing of
vestments, and the revival of ceremonial customs. John Henry Newman
eventually abandoned his Protestant roots altogether, fully embracing Roman
Catholicism and even being named a cardinal.

While the specifics are certainly different, there are considerable
similarities between Newman (and his associates) and N. T. Wright. Newman
was an Anglican bishop, as is Wright. Newman led an influential and
controversial movement, as does Wright. Newman sought to bring Protestants
and Catholics together, and in the end compromised everything. It seems the
same could be said about Wright.

Of course, the Protestants of Newman's time reacted strongly. Crowds
protested and Parliament even passed the Public Worship Regulation Act to
help control the situation. Charles Spurgeon wrote a scathing tract, among
other documents, to show his concern.

So what is it that some Anglicans (and other Protestants) find so attractive
about Roman Catholicism? Why are so many, even within Evangelicalism, trying
to undo the Reformation? The American Presbyterian minister, R. L. Dabney
(1820-1898) addresses this exact issue in his article: "The Attractions of
Popery." Although written over a century ago, Dabney's clear warning to
Protestant ministers sounds like it was penned only yesterday."--Comments
from the Shepherds' Fellowship <http://www.gracechurch.org/sfellowship/> .  

  _____  

The Attractions of the Roman Catholic Church
(Original title: The Attractions of Popery)

by

R. L. Dabney
(1820-1898) 
 

Dr. John H. Rice, with the intuition of a great mind, warned Presbyterians
against a renewed prevalence of popery in our Protestant land. This was when
it was so insignificant among us as to be almost unnoticed.

Many were surprised at his prophecy, and not a few mocked; but time has
fulfilled it. Our leaders from 1830 to 1860 understood well the causes of
this danger. They were diligent to inform and prepare the minds of their
people against it. Hence General Assemblies and Synods appointed annual
sermons upon popery, and our teachers did their best to arouse the minds of
the people.

Now, all this has mainly passed away, and we are relaxing our resistance
against the dreaded foe just in proportion as he grows more formidable. It
has become the fashion to condemn controversy and to affect the widest
charity for this and all other foes of Christ and of souls. High
Presbyterian authority even is quoted as saying, that henceforth our concern
with Romanism should be chiefly irenical! The figures presented by the
census of 1890 are construed in opposite ways. This gives the papists more
than fourteen millions of adherents in the United States, where ninety years
ago there were but a few thousands. Such Protestant journals as think it
their interest to play sycophants to public opinion try to persuade us that
these figures are very consoling; because, if Rome had kept all the natural
increase of her immigrations the numbers would have been larger. But Rome
points to them with insolent triumph as prognostics of an assured victory
over Protestantism on this continent. Which will prove correct?

For Presbyterians of all others to discount the perpetual danger from
Romanism is thoroughly thoughtless and rash. We believe that the
Christianity left by the apostles to the primitive church was essentially
what we now call Presbyterian and Protestant. Prelacy and popery speedily
began to work in the bosom of that community and steadily wrought its
corruption and almost its total extirpation. Why should not the same cause
tend to work the same result again? Are we truer or wiser Presbyterians than
those trained by the apostles? Have the enemies of truth become less
skillful and dangerous by gaining the experience of centuries? The popish
system of ritual and doctrine was a gradual growth, which, modifying true
Christianity, first perverted and then extinguished it. Its destructive
power has resulted from this: that it has not been the invention of any one
cunning and hostile mind, but a gradual growth, modified by hundreds or
thousands of its cultivators, who were the most acute, learned, selfish, and
anti-Christian spirits of their generations, perpetually retouched and
adapted to every weakness and every attribute of depraved human nature,
until it became the most skillful and pernicious system of error which the
world has ever known. As it has adjusted itself to every superstition, every
sense of guilt, every foible and craving of the depraved human heart, so it
has travestied with consummate skill every active principle of the Gospel.
It is doubtless the ne plus ultra of religious delusion, the final and
highest result of perverted human faculty guided by the sagacity of the
great enemy.

This system has nearly conquered Christendom once. He who does not see that
it is capable of conquering it again is blind to the simplest laws of
thought. One may ask, Does it not retain sundry of the cardinal doctrines of
the Gospel, monotheism, the trinity, the hypostatic union, Christ's
sacrifice, the sacraments, the resurrection, the judgment, immortality? Yes;
in form it retains them, and this because of its supreme cunning. It retains
them while so wresting and enervating as to rob them mainly of their
sanctifying power, because it designs to spread its snares for all sorts of
minds of every grade of opinion. The grand architect was too cunning to make
it, like his earlier essays, mere atheism, or mere fetishism, or mere
polytheism, or mere pagan idolatry; for in these forms the trap only
ensnared the coarser and more ignorant natures. He has now perfected it and
baited it for all types of humanity, the most refined as well as the most
imbruted.

I. Romanism now enjoys in our country certain important advantages, which I
may style legitimate, in this sense, that our decadent, half-corrupted
Protestantism bestows these advantages upon our enemy, so that Rome, in
employing them, only uses what we ourselves give her. In other words, there
are plain points upon which Rome claims a favorable comparison as against
Protestantism; and her claim is correct, in that the latter is blindly and
criminally betraying her own interests and duties.

(1) A hundred years ago French atheism gave the world the Jacobin theory of
political rights. The Bible had been teaching mankind for three thousand
years the great doctrine of men's moral equality before the universal
Father, the great basis of all free, just, and truly republican forms of
civil society. Atheism now travestied this true doctrine by her mortal
heresy of the absolute equality of men, asserting that every human being is
naturally and inalienably entitled to every right, power, and prerogative in
civil society which is allowed to any man or any class. The Bible taught a
liberty which consists in each man's unhindered privilege of having and
doing just those things, and no others, to which he is rationally and
morally entitled. Jacobinism taught the liberty of license-every mans
natural right to indulge his own absolute will; and it set up this fiendish
caricature as the object of sacred worship for mankind.

Now, democratic Protestantism in these United States has become so ignorant,
so superficial and willful, that it confounds the true republicanism with
this deadly heresy of Jacobinism. It has ceased to know a difference. Hence,
when the atheistic doctrine begins to bear its natural fruits of license,
insubordination, communism, and anarchy, this bastard democratic
Protestantism does not know how to rebuke them. It has recognized the
parents; how can it consistently condemn the children? Now, then, Rome
proposes herself as the stable advocate of obedience, order, and permanent
authority throughout the ages. She shows her practical power to govern men,
as she says, through their consciences (truth would say, through their
superstitions). Do we wonder that good citizens, beginning to stand aghast
at these elements of confusion and ruin, the spawn of Jacobinism, which a
Jacobinized Protestantism cannot control, should look around for some moral
and religious system capable of supporting a firm social order? Need we be
surprised that when Rome steps forward, saying, I have been through the
centuries the upholder of order, rational men should be inclined to give her
their hand? This high advantage e a misguided Protestantism is now giving to
its great adversary.

(2) The Reformation was an assertion of liberty of thought. It asserted for
all mankind, and secured for the Protestant nations, each man's right to
think and decide for himself upon his religious creed and his duty toward
his God, in the fear of God and the truth, unhindered by human power,
political or ecclesiastical. Here, again, a part of our Protestantism
perverted the precious truth until the manna bred worms, and stank.

Rationalistic and skeptical Protestantism now claims, instead of that
righteous liberty, license to dogmatize at the bidding of every caprice,
every impulse of vanity, every false philosophy, without any responsibility
to either truth or moral obligation. The result has been a diversity and
confusion of pretended creeds and theologies among nominal Protestants,
which perplexes and frightens sincere, but timid, minds. Everything seems to
them afloat upon this turbulent sea of licentious debate. They are fatigued
and alarmed; they see no end of uncertainties. They look around anxiously
for some safe and fixed foundation of credence. Rome comes forward and says
to them, You see, then, that this Protestant liberty of thought is fatal
license; the Protestants rational religion turns out to be but poisonous
rationalism, infidelity wearing the mask of faith. Holy Mother Church offers
you the foundation of her infallibility, guaranteed by the indwelling of the
Holy Ghost. She shows you that faith must ground itself in implicit
submission, and not in human inquiry. She pledges herself for the safety of
your soul if you simply submit; come, then, trust and be at rest. Many are
the weary souls who accept her invitations; and these not only the weak and
cowardly, but sometimes the brilliant and gifted, like a Cardinal Newman.
For this result a perverted Protestantism is responsible. If all nominal
Protestants were as honest in their exercise of mental liberty as the fear
of God and the loyalty to truth should make them; if they were as humble and
honest in construing and obeying Gods word in his Bible, as papists profess
to be in submitting to the authority of the Holy Mother Church, honest
inquirers would never be embarrassed, and would never be fooled into
supposing that the words of a pope could furnish a more comfortable
foundation for faith than the Word of God.

II. I now proceed to explain certain evil principles of human nature which
are concurring powerfully in this country to give currency to popery. These
may be called its illicit advantages. I mention:

(1) The constant tendency of American demagogues to pay court to popery and
to purchase votes for themselves from it, at the cost of the people's
safety, rights, and money.

Nearly two generations ago (the men of this day seem to have forgotten the
infamy) William H. Seward, of New York, began this dangerous and dishonest
game. He wished to be Governor of New York. He came to an understanding with
Archbishop Hughes, then the head of the popish hierarchy in that state, to
give him the Irish vote in return for certain sectarian advantages in the
disbursement of the state revenues. Neither Rome nor the demagogues have
since forgotten their lesson, nor will they ever forget it. It would be as
unreasonable to expect it as to expect that hawks will forget the poultry
yard.

It is the nature of the demagogue to trade off anything for votes; they are
the breath in the nostrils of his ambition. The popish hierarchy differs
essentially from the ministry of any other religion, in having votes to
trade. The traditional claim of Rome is that she has the right to control
both spheres, the ecclesiastical and the political, the political for the
sake of the ecclesiastical. The votes of her masses are more or less
manageable, as the votes of Protestants are not, because Rome is a system of
authority as opposed to free thought. Rome instructs the conscience of every
one of her members that it is his religious duty to subordinate all other
duties and interests to hers. And this is a spiritual duty enforceable by
the most awful spiritual sanctions. How can a thinking man afford to disobey
the hierarchy which holds his eternal destiny in its secret fist; so that
even if they gave him in form the essential sacraments, such as the mass,
absolution, and extreme unction, they are able clandestinely to make them
worthless to him, by withholding the sacramental intention? Hence it is that
the majority of American papists can be voted in blocs; and it is virtually
the hierarchy which votes them. The goods are ready bound up in parcels for
traffic with demagogues.

We are well aware that numerous papists will indignantly deny this,
declaring that there is a Romanist vote in this country which is just as
independent of their priesthood and as free as any other. Of course there
is. The hierarchy is a very experienced and dexterous driver. It does not
whip in the restive colts, but humors them awhile until she gets them well
harnessed and broken. But the team as a whole must yet travel her road,
because they have to believe it infallible. We assure these independent
Romanist voters that they are not good Catholics; they must unlearn this
heresy of independent thought before they are meet for the Romanist
paradise.

Men of secular ambition have always sought to use the hierarchy to influence
others for their political advantage; the example is as old as history. Just
as soon as prelacy was developed in the patristic church, Roman emperors
began to purchase its influence to sustain their thrones. Throughout the
Middle Ages, German kaisers and French, Spanish, and English kings
habitually traded with Rome, paying her dignities and endowments for her
ghostly support to their ambitions. Even in this century we have seen the
two Napoleons playing the same game-purchasing for their imperialism the
support of a priesthood in whose religion they did not believe. If any
suppose that because America is nominally democratic the same thing will not
happen here, they are thoroughly silly. Some Yankee ingenuity will be
invoked to modify the forms of the traffic, so as to suit American names;
that is all.

Intelligent students of church history know that one main agency for
converting primitive Christianity first into prelacy and then into popery
was unlimited church endowments. As soon as Constantine established
Christianity as the religion of the State, ecclesiastical persons and bodies
began to assume the virtual (and before long the formal) rights of
corporations. They could receive bequests and gifts of property, and hold
them by a tenure as firm as that of the fee-simple. These spiritual
corporations were deathless. Thus the property they acquired was all held by
the tenure of mortmain. When a corporation is thus empowered to absorb
continually, and never to disgorge, there is no limit to its possible
wealth.

The laws of the empire in the Middle Ages imposed no limitations upon
bequests; thus, most naturally, monasteries, cathedrals, chapters, and
archbishoprics became inordinately rich. At the Reformation they had grasped
one-third of the property of Europe. But Scripture saith, Where the carcass
is, thither the eagles are gathered together. Wealth is power, and ambitious
men crave it. Thus this endowed hierarchy came to be filled by the men of
the greediest ambition in Europe, instead of by humble, self-denying
pastors; and thus it was that this tremendous money power, arming itself
first with a spiritual despotism of the popish theology over consciences,
and then allying itself with political power, wielded the whole to enforce
the absolute domination of that religion which gave them their wealth. No
wonder human liberty, free thought, and the Bible were together trampled out
of Europe.

When the Reformation came, the men who could think saw that this tenure in
mortmain had been the fatal thing. Knox, the wisest of them, saw clearly
that if a religious reformation was to succeed in Scotland the
ecclesiastical corporations must be destroyed. They were destroyed, their
whole property alienated to the secular nobles or to the State (the remnant
which Knox secured for religious education); and therefore it was that
Scotland remained Presbyterian. When our American commonwealths were
founded, statesmen and divines understood this great principle of
jurisprudence, that no corporate tenure in mortmain, either spiritual or
secular, is compatible with the liberty of the people and the continuance of
constitutional government.

But it would appear that our legislators now know nothing about that great
principle, or care nothing about it. Church institutions, Protestant and
Romanist, are virtually perpetual corporations. Whatever the pious choose to
give them is held in mortmain, and they grow continually richer and richer;
they do not even pay taxes, and there seems no limit upon their
acquisitions.

And last comes the Supreme Court of the United States, and under the pretext
of construing the law, legislates a new law in the famous Walnut-Street
Church case, as though they desired to ensure both the corruption of
religion and the destruction of free government by a second gigantic incubus
of endowed ecclesiasticism. The new law is virtually this: That in case any
free citizen deems that the gifts of himself or his ancestors are usurped
for some use alien to the designed trust, it shall be the usurper who shall
decide the issue. This is, of course, essentially popish, yet a great
Protestant denomination has been seen hastening to enroll it in its digest
of spiritual laws. The working of this tendency of overgrown ecclesiastical
wealth will certainly be two-fold: First, to Romanize partially or wholly
the Protestant churches thus enriched; and, secondly, to incline, enable,
and equip the religion thus Romanized for its alliance with political
ambition and for the subjugation of the people and the government. When
church bodies began, under Constantine, to acquire endowments, these bodies
were Episcopal, at most, or even still Presbyterian. The increase of
endowment helped to make them popish. Then popery and feudalism stamped out
the Bible and enslaved Europe. If time permitted, I could trace out the
lines of causation into perfect clearness. Will men ever learn that like
causes must produce like effects?

(2) The democratic theory of human society may be the most rational and
equitable; but human nature is not equitable; it is fallen and perverted.
Lust of applause, pride, vain-glory, and love of power are as natural to it
as hunger to the body. Next to Adam, the most representative man upon earth
was Diotrephes, who loves to have the pre-eminence. Every man is an
aristocrat in his heart. Now, prelacy and popery are aristocratic religions.
Consequently, as long as human nature is natural, they will present more or
less of attraction to human minds. Quite a number of Methodist,
Presbyterian, or Independent ministers have gone over to prelacy or popery,
and thus become bishops. Was there ever one of them, however conscientious
his new faith, and however devout his temper, who did not find some elation
and pleasure in his spiritual dignity? Is there a democrat in democratic
America who would not be flattered in his heart by being addressed as my
lord? Distinction and power are gratifying to all men. Prelacy and popery
offer this sweet morsel to aspirants by promising to make some of them lords
of their brethren. This is enough to entice all of them, as the crown
entices all the racers on the race-course. It is true that while many run,
one obtains the crown; but all may flatter themselves with the hope of
winning.

Especially does the pretension of sacramental grace offer the most splendid
bait to human ambition which can be conceived of on this Earth. To be the
vicar of the Almighty in dispensing eternal life and heavenly crowns at will
is a more magnificent power than the prerogative of any emperor on Earth.
Let a man once be persuaded that he really grasps this power by getting a
place in the apostolic succession, and the more sincere he is, the more
splendid the prerogative will appear to him; for the more clearly his faith
appreciates the thing that he proposes to do in the sacraments, the more
illustrious that thing must appear. The greatest boon ever inherited by an
emperor was finite. The greatest boon of redemption is infinite; to be able
to dispense it at will to one sinner is a much grander thing than to conquer
the world and establish a universal secular empire. The humblest
hedge-priest would be a far grander man than that emperor if he could really
work the miracle and confer the grace of redemption which Rome says he does
every time he consecrates a mass.

How shall we estimate, then, the greatness of that pope or prelate who can
manufacture such miracle workers at will? The greatest being on Earth should
hardly think himself worthy to loose his sandals from his feet. The Turkish
ambassador to Paris was certainly right when, upon accompanying the King of
France to high mass in Notre Dame, and seeing the king, courtiers, and
multitude all prostrate themselves when the priest elevated the host, he
wondered that the king should allow anybody but himself to perform that
magnificent function. He is reported to have said: Sire, if I was king, and
believed in your religion, nobody should do that in France except me. It is
a vastly greater thing than anything else that you do in your royal
functions.

As long as man is man, therefore, popery will possess this unhallowed
advantage of enticing, and even entrancing, the ambition of the keenest
aspirants. The stronger their faith in their doctrine, the more will they
sanctify to themselves this dreadful ambition. In this respect, as in so
many others, the tendency of the whole current of human nature is to make
papists. It is converting grace only which can check that current and turn
men sincerely back toward Protestantism. I am well aware that the functions
of the Protestant minister may be so wrested as to present an appeal to
unhallowed ambition. But popery professes to confer upon her clergy every
didactic and presbyterial function which Protestantism has to bestow; while
the former offers, in addition, this splendid bait of prelatic power and
sacramental miracle-working...

(3) In sundry respects I perceive a sort of hallucination prevailing in
people's minds concerning old historical errors and abuses, which I see to
have been the regular results of human nature. Men will not understand
history; they flatter themselves that, because the modes of civilization are
much changed and advanced, therefore the essential laws of man's nature are
going to cease acting; which is just as unreasonable as to expect that
sinful human beings must entirely cease to be untruthful, sensual,
dishonest, and selfish, because they have gotten to wear fine clothes.

Of certain evils and abuses of ancient history men persuade themselves that
they are no longer possible among us, because we have become civilized and
nominally Christian. One of these evils is idolatry with its two branches,
polytheism and image-worship. Oh! they say, mankind has outgrown all that;
other evils may invade our Christian civilization, but that is too gross to
come back again. They are blind at once to the teachings of historical facts
and to common sense. They know that at one time idolatry nearly filled the
ancient world. Well, what was the previous religious state of mankind upon
which it supervened? Virtually a Christian state, that is to say, a worship
of the one true God, under the light of revelation, with our same Gospel
taught by promises and sacrifices. And it is very stupid to suppose that the
social state upon which the early idolatry supervened was savage or
barbaric. We rather conclude that the people who built Noah's ark, the tower
of Babel, and the pyramid of Cheops, and who enjoyed the light of God's
recent revelations to Adam, to Enoch, to Noah, were civilized. Men made a
strange confusion here: They fancy that idolatry could be prevalent because
mankind were not civilized. The historical fact is just the opposite:
Mankind became uncivilized because idolatry first prevailed. In truth, the
principles tending to idolatry are deeply laid in man's fallen nature. Like
a compressed spring, they are ever ready to act again, and will surely begin
to act, whenever the opposing power of vital godliness is withdrawn.

First, the sensuous has become too prominent in man; reason, conscience, and
faith, too feeble. Every sinful man's experience witnesses this all day
long, every day of his life. Why else is it that the objects of sense
perception, which are comparatively trivial, dominate his attention, his
sensibilities, and his desires so much more than the objects of faith, which
he himself knows to be so much more important? Did not this sensuous
tendency seek to invade man's religious ideas and feelings, it would be
strange indeed. Hence, man untaught and unchecked by the heavenly light
always shows a craving for sensuous objects of worship. He is not likely, in
our day, to satisfy this craving by setting up a brazen image of Dagon, the
fish-god; or of Zeus, or the Roman Jupiter; or of the Aztec's
Huitzilopochtli [sun god]. But still he craves a visible, material object of
worship. Rome meets him at a comfortable half-way station with her relics,
crucifixes, and images of the saints. She adroitly smoothes the downhill
road for him by connecting all these with the worship of the true God.

Again, man's conscious weakness impels him almost irresistibly in his
serious hours to seek some being of supernatural attributes to lean upon.
His heart cries out, Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I. But when
pure monotheism proposes to him the supreme, eternal God-infinite not only
in his power to help, but in his omniscience, justice, and holiness-the
sinful heart recoils. This object is too high, too holy, too dreadful for
it. Sinful man craves a god, but, like his first father, shuns the infinite
God; hence the powerful tendency to invent intermediate gods, whom he may
persuade himself to be sufficiently gracious and powerful to be trusted, and
yet not so infinite, immutable, and holy as inevitably to condemn sin. Here
is the impulse which prompted all pagan nations to invent polytheism. This
they did by filling the space between man and the supreme being with
intermediate gods. Such, among the Greeks, were Bacchus, Hercules, Castor
and Pollux, Theseus, Aesculapius, etc.

It is a great mistake to suppose that thoughtful pagans did not recognize
the unity and eternity of a supreme god, Father of gods and of men. But
sometimes they represent him as so exalted and sublimated as to be at once
above the reach of human prayers and above all concernment in human affairs.
Others thought of him as too awful to be directly approached, accessible
only through the mediation of his own next progeny, the secondary gods. Here
we have precisely the impulse for which Rome provides in her saint worship.
Mary is the highest of the intermediate gods, next to the Trinity, the
intercessor for Christ's intercession. The apostles and saints are the
secondary gods of this Christian pantheon. How strangely has God's
predestination led Rome in the development of her history to the unwitting
admission of this indictment! Pagan Rome had her marble temple, the gift of
Agrippa to the Commonwealth, the Pantheon, or sanctuary of all the gods.
This very building stands now, rededicated by the popes as the temple of
Christ and all the saints. So fateful has been the force of this analogy
between the old polytheism and the new.

The attempt is made, indeed, to hide the likeness by the sophistical
distinction between latria and dulia; but its worthlessness appears from
this, that even dulia cannot be offered to redeemed creatures without
ascribing to them, by an unavoidable implication, the attributes peculiar to
God. In one word, fallen men of all ages have betrayed a powerful tendency
to image-worship and polytheism. Rome provides for that tendency in a way
the most adroit possible, for an age nominally Christian but practically
unbelieving. To that tendency the religion of the Bible sternly refuses to
concede anything, requiring not its gratification, but its extirpation.

This cunning policy of Rome had sweeping success in the early church. The
same principle won almost universal success in the ancient world. It will
succeed again here. Many will exclaim that this prognostic is wholly
erroneous; that the great, bad tendency of our age and country is to
agnosticism as against ill religions. I aim not mistaken. This drift will be
as temporary as it is partial. M. Guizot says in his Meditations: One never
need go far back in history to find atheism advancing half way to meet
superstition. A wiser analyst of human nature says: Even as they did not
like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate
mind. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the
glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man,
and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. This is the exact
pathology of superstition.

When the culture of the Augustan age taught the Romans to despise the
religious faith of their fathers, there was an interval of agnosticism. But
next, the most refined of the agnostics were seen studying the mysteries of
Isis, and practicing the foulest rites of the paganism of the conquered
provinces. Atheism is too freezing a blank for human souls to inhabit
permanently. It outrages too many of the heart's affections and of the
reason's first principles. A people who have cast away their God, when they
discover this, turn to false gods. For all such wandering spirits Rome
stands with open doors; there, finally, they will see their most convenient
refuge of superstition in a catalogue of Christian saints transformed into a
polytheism. Thus the cravings of superstition are satisfied, while the crime
is veiled from the conscience by this pretence of scriptural origin.

(4) I proceed to unfold an attraction of Romanism far more seductive. This
is its proposal to satisfy mans guilty heart by a ritual instead of a
spiritual salvation. As all know who understand the popish theology, the
proposed vehicle of this redemption by forms is the sacraments. Romanists
are taught that the New Testament sacraments differ from those of the Old
Testament in this: that they not only symbolize and seal, but effectuate
grace ex opere operato in the souls of the recipients. Rome teaches her
children that her sacraments are actual charismatic power of direct
supernatural efficiency wrought upon recipients by virtue of a portion of
the Holy Spirits omnipotence conferred upon the priest in ordination from
the apostolic succession.

The Bible teaches that in the case of all adults a gracious state must
pre-exist in order for any beneficial participation in the sacrament, and
that the only influence of the sacraments is to cherish and advance that
pre-existing spiritual life by their didactic effect, as energized by God's
Spirit, through prayer, faith, watchfulness, and obedience, in precisely the
same generic mode in which the Holy Spirit energizes the written and
preached word. Hence, if watchfulness, prayer, obedience, and a life of
faith are neglected, our sacraments become no sacraments. If thou be a
breaker of the law, then circumcision is made uncircumcision. But Rome
teaches that her sacraments, duly administered by a priest having apostolic
succession, implant spiritual life in souls hitherto dead in sin, and that
they maintain and foster this life by a direct power not dependent on the
recipients diligent exercise of Gospel principles. Provided the recipient be
not in mortal sin unabsolved, the sacrament does its spiritual work upon the
sinful soul, whether it receives it in the exercise of saving grace or not.

Now let no Protestant mind exclaim: Surely this is too gross to be popular;
surely people will have too much sense to think that they can get to Heaven
by this species of consecrated jugglery! History shows that this scheme of
redemption is almost universally acceptable and warmly popular with sinful
mankind. Apprehend aright the ideas of paganism, ancient and modern. We
perceive that this popish conception of sacraments is virtually the same
with the pagan's conception of their heathen rites. They claim to be just
this species of saving ritual, working their benefit upon souls precisely by
this opus operatum agency. What a commentary have we here upon this tendency
of human nature to a ritual salvation. The evangelists and apostles
reintroduced to the world the pure conception of a spiritual salvation
wrought by the energy of divine truth, and not of church rites; received by
an intelligent faith in the saved man's soul, and not by manual ceremonial;
and made effectual by the enlightening operation of the Holy Ghost upon
heart and mind in rational accordance with truth, not by a priestly
incantation working a physical miracle. The gospels and epistles defined and
separated the two conceptions as plainly as words could do it. But no sooner
were the apostles gone than the pagan conception of salvation by ritual,
instead of by rational faith, began to creep back into the patristic church.
In a few hundred years the wrong conception had triumphed completely over
the correct one in nearly the whole of Christendom, and thenceforward
sacramental grace has reigned supreme over the whole Roman and Greek
communions, in spite of modern letters and culture. How startling this
commentary upon that tendency of human nature! Surely there are deep-seated
principles in man to account for it.

These are not far to seek. First, men are sensuous beings, and hence they
naturally crave something concrete, material, and spectacular in their
religion. Dominated as they are by a perpetual current of sensations, and
having their animality exaggerated by their sinful nature, they are sluggish
to think spiritual truths, to look by faith upon invisible objects; they
crave to walk by sight rather than by faith. The material things in mammon,
the sensual pleasures which they see with their eyes and handle with their
fingers, although they perfectly know they perish with the using, obscure
their view of all the infinite, eternal realities, notwithstanding their
professed belief of them. Need we wonder that with such creatures the
visible and manual ritual should prevail over the spiritual didactic? Does
one exclaim, But this is so unreasonable-this notion that a ritual
ceremonial can change the state and destiny of a rational and moral spirit!
I reply, Yes, but not one whit more irrational than the preference which the
whole natural world gives to the things which are seen and temporal, as it
perfectly knows, over the things which are unseen and eternal; an insanity
of which the educated and refined are found just as capable as the ignorant
and brutish. But the other principle of human nature is still more keen and
pronounced in its preference for a ritual salvation. This is its
deep-seated, omnipotent preference for self-will and sin over spiritual
holiness of life. The natural man has, indeed, his natural conscience and
remorse, his fearful looking for of judgment, his natural fear of misery,
which is but modified selfishness. These make everlasting punishment very
terrible to his apprehension.

But enmity to God, to his spiritual service, to the supremacy of his holy
will, is as native to him as his selfish fear is. Next to perdition, there
is no conception in the universe so repulsive to the sinful heart of man as
that of genuine repentance and its fruits. The true Gospel comes to him and
says: Here is, indeed, a blessed, glorious redemption, as free as air, as
secure as the throne of God, but instrumentally it is conditional on the
faith of the heart; which faith works by love, purifies the heart, and can
only exist as it coexists with genuine repentance, which repentance turns
honestly, unreservedly, here and now, without shuffling or procrastination,
from sin unto God, with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience;
which is, in fact, a complete surrender of the sinful will to God's holy
will, and a hearty enlistment in an arduous work of watchfulness,
self-denial, and self-discipline, for the sake of inward holiness, to be
kept up as long as life lasts. Soul, embrace this task and this splendid
salvation shall be yours; and the gracious Savior, who purchases it for you,
shall sustain, comfort, and enable you in this arduous enlistment, so that
even in the midst of the warfare you shall find rest, and at the end Heaven;
but without this faith and this repentance no sacraments or rights will do a
particle of good toward your salvation.

Now, this carnal soul has no faith; it is utterly mistrustful and skeptical
as to the possibility of this peace of the heart in the spiritual warfare,
this sustaining power of the invisible hand, of which it has had no
experience. This complete subjugation of self-will to God, this life of
self-denial and vital godliness, appears to this soul utterly repulsive,
yea, terrible. This guilty soul dreads Hell; it abhors such a life only less
than Hell. When told by Protestantism that it must thus turn or die, this
carnal soul finds itself in an abhorrent dilemma; either term of the
alternative is abominable to it.

But now comes the theory of sacramental grace and says to it with oily
tongue: Oh! Protestantism exaggerates the dilemma! Your case is not near so
bad! The sacraments of the church transfer you from the state of
condemnation to that of reconciliation by their own direct but mysterious
efficiency; they work real grace, though you do not bring to them this deep,
thoroughgoing self-sacrifice and self-consecration. No matter how much you
sin, or how often, repeated masses will make expiation for the guilt of all
those sins ex opere operato. Thus, with her other sacraments of penance and
extreme unction, Holy Mother Church will repair all your shortcomings and
put you back into a salvable state, no matter how sinfully you live.

Need we wonder that this false doctrine is as sweet to that guilty soul as a
reprieve to the felon at the foot of the gallows? He can draw his breath
again; he can say to himself: Ah, then the abhorred dilemma does not urge me
here and now; I can postpone this hated reformation; I can still tamper with
cherished sins without embracing perdition. This is a pleasant doctrine; it
suits so perfectly the sinful, selfish soul which does not wish to part with
its sins, and also does not wish to lie down in everlasting burnings.

This deep-seated love of sin and self has also another result: The soul is
conscious that, if it must do many things which it does not like in order to
avoid perdition, it is much pleasanter to do a number of ceremonial things
than to do any portion of spiritual heartwork.

After I stood my graduate examination in philosophy at the University of
Virginia, my professor, the venerable George Tucker, showed me a cheating
apparatus which had been prepared by a member of the class. He had unluckily
dropped it upon the sidewalk, and it had found its way to the professor's
hands. It was a narrow blank-book, made to be hidden in the coat-sleeve. It
contained, in exceedingly small penmanship, the whole course, in the form of
questions from the professors recitations with their answers copied from the
text-book. It was really a work of much labor.

I said, The strange thing to me is that this sorry fellow has expended upon
this fraud much more hard labor than would have enabled him to prepare
himself for passing honestly and honorably.

Mr. Tucker replied, Ah, my dear sir, you forget that a dunce finds it easier
to do any amount of mere manual drudgery than the least bit of true
thinking.

Here we have an exact illustration. It is less irksome to the carnal mind to
do twelve dozen paternosters by the beads than to do a few moments of real
heart-work. Thoughtless people sometimes say that the rule of Romish piety
is more exacting than that of the Protestant. This is the explanation, that
Rome is more exacting as to form and ritual; Bible religion is more exacting
as to spiritual piety and vital godliness. To the carnal mind the latter are
almost insufferably irksome and laborious; the form and ritual, easy and
tolerable. And when remorse, fear, and self-righteousness are gratified by
the assurance that these observances really promote the soul's salvation,
the task is made light. Here Rome will always present an element of
popularity as long as mankind are sensuous and carnal.

(5) To a shallow view, it might appear that the popish doctrine of purgatory
should be quite a repulsive element of unpopularity with sinners; that
doctrine is, that notwithstanding all the benefit of the church's sacraments
and the believers efforts, no Christian soul goes direct to Heaven when the
body dies, except those of the martyrs, and a few eminent saints, who are,
as it were, miracles of sanctification in this life. All the clergy, and
even the popes, must go through purgatory in spite of the apostolic
succession and the infallibility.

There the remains of carnality in all must be burned away, and the
deficiencies of their penitential work in this life made good, by enduring
penal fires and torments for a shorter or longer time. Then the Christian
souls, finally purged from depravity and the reaum paenae, enter into their
final rest with Christ. But the alms, prayers, and masses of survivors avail
much to help these Christian souls in purgatory and shorten their
sufferings. It might be supposed that the Protestant doctrine should be much
more attractive and popular, viz.: that there is no purgatory or
intermediate state for the spirits of dead men, but that the souls of
believers, being at their death made perfect in holiness, do immediately
enter into glory. This ought to be the more attractive doctrine, and to
Bible believers it is such, but there is a feature about it which makes it
intensely unpopular and repellent to carnal men, and gives a powerful
advantage with them to the popish scheme. That feature is the sharpness and
strictness of the alternative which the Bible doctrine presses upon sinners:
turn or die.

The Bible offers the most blessed and glorious redemption conceivable by
man, gracious and free, and bestowing a consummate blessedness the moment
the body dies. But it is on these terms that the Gospel must be embraced by
a penitent faith, working an honest and thorough revolution in the life. If
the sinner refuses this until this life ends, he seals his fate; and that
fate is final, unchangeable, and dreadful. Now, it is no consolation to the
carnal heart that the Gospel assures him he need not run any risk of that
horrible fate; that he has only to turn and live; that very turning is the
thing which he abhors, if it is to be done in spirit and in truth. He
intensely desires to retain his sin and self-will. He craves earnestly to
put off the evil day of this sacrifice without incurring the irreparable
penalty.

Now, Rome comes to him and tells him that this Protestant doctrine is
unnecessarily harsh; that a sinner may continue in the indulgence of his
sins until this life ends, and yet not seal himself up thereby to a hopeless
Hell; that if he is in communion with the Holy Mother Church through her
sacraments, he may indulge himself in this darling procrastination without
ruining himself forever. Thus the hateful necessity of present repentance is
postponed awhile; sweet, precious privilege to the sinner! True, he must
expect to pay due penance for that self-indulgence in purgatory, but he need
not perish for it. The Mother Church advises him not to make so bad a
bargain and pay so dear for his whistle. But she assures him that, if he
does, it need not ruin him, for she will pull him through after a little by
her merits and sacraments. How consoling this is to the heart at once in
love with sin and remorseful for its guilt!

The seductiveness of this theory of redemption to the natural heart is
proved by this grand fact, that in principle and in its essence this scheme
of purgatorial cleansing has had a prominent place in every religion in the
world that is of human invention. The Bible, the one divine religion, is
peculiar in rejecting the whole concept. Those hoary religions, Brahmanism
and Buddhism, give their followers the virtual advantage of this conception
in the transmigration of the souls. The guilt of the sinner's human life may
be expiated by the sorrows of the soul's existence in a series of animal or
reptile bodies, and then through another human existence, the penitent and
purified soul may at last reach Heaven. Classic paganism promised the same
escape for sinners, as all familiar with Virgil know. His hero, Aeneas, when
visiting the under world, saw many sinners there preparing for their release
into the Elysian fields. Ergo exercentur paenis, et veterum malorum
supplicia expendunt. Mohammed extends the same hope to all his sinful
followers. For those who entirely reject Islam there is nothing but Hell;
but for all who profess There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his
prophet, there is a purgatory after death, and its pains are shortened by
his intercession. The Roman and Greek Churches flatter the sinful world with
the same human invention. So strong is this craving of carnal men to
postpone the issue of turning to God or perishing, we now see its effect
upon the most cultured minds of this advanced nineteenth century in the New
England doctrine of a 'second probation.' Rome has understood human nature
skillfully, and has adapted her bait for it with consummate cunning. Her
scheme is much more acute than that of the absolute universalist of the
school of Hosea Ballou, for this outrages man's moral intuitions too grossly
by rejecting all distinction between guilt and righteousness. This bait for
sin-loving men is too bald.

It must be added that the doctrine of a purgatory and of an application of
redemption after death is intensely attractive to other principles of the
human heart, much more excusable; to some affections, indeed, which are
amiable. I allude to the solicitude and the affection of believers for the
souls of those whom they loved in this life, "who died and made no sign."
The Bible doctrine is, indeed, a solemn, an awful one to Christians bereaved
by the impenitent deaths of children and relatives. It is our duty to
foresee this solemn result, and to provide against it by doing everything
which intercessory prayer, holy example and loving instruction and entreaty
can do to prevent such a catastrophe in the case of all those near to our
hearts. But human self-indulgence is prone to be slack in employing this
safeguard against this sorrow. Let us picture to ourselves such a bereaved
Christian, sincere, yet partially self-condemned, and doubtful or fearful or
hopeless concerning the thorough conversion of a child who has been cut down
by death. Of all the elements of bereavement none is so bitter, so
immedicable, as the fear that he whom he loved must suffer the wrath of God
forever, and that now he is beyond reach of his prayers and help. To such a
one comes the Romish priest with this species of discourse. See now how
harsh and cruel is this heretical Protestant dogma! Instead of offering
consolation to your Christian sorrow it embitters it as with a drop of Hell
fire. But Holy Mother Church is a mild and loving comforter; she assures you
that your loved one is not necessarily lost; he may have to endure keen
penances in purgatory for a time, but there is a glorious hope to sustain
him and you under them. Every minute of pain is bringing the final Heaven
nearer, and the most blessed part of our teaching is that your love can
still follow him and help him and bless, as it was wont to do under those
earthly chastisements of his sins. It is your privilege still to pray for
him, and your prayers avail to lighten his sufferings and to shorten them.
Your love can still find that generous solace which was always so sweet to
you midst your former sorrows for his sins and his earthly sufferings the
solace of helping him and sharing his pains. Your aims also may avail for
him; masses can be multiplied by your means, which will make merit to atone
for his penitential guilt and hasten his blessed release. Who can doubt that
a loving heart will be powerfully seduced by this promise, provided it can
persuade itself of its certainty, or even of its probable truth? Here is the
stronghold of Romanism on sincere, amiable, and affectionate souls.

Of course, the real question is, whether any pastor or priest is authorized
by God to hold out these hopes to the bereaved. If they are unwarrantable,
then this presentation is an artifice of unspeakable cruelty and profanity.
Under the pretence of softening the pain of bereavement to God's children,
it is adding to wicked deception the most mischievous influences upon the
living by contradicting those solemn incentives to immediate repentance
which God has set up in his Word, and by tempting deluded souls with a false
hope to neglect their real opportunity. If the hope is not grounded in the
Word of God, then its cruelty is equal to its deceitfulness. But the
suffering heart is often weak, and it is easier to yield to the temptation
of accepting a deceitful consolation than to brace itself up to the plain
but stern duty of ascertaining Gods truth.

I have thus set in array the influences which Rome is now wielding
throughout our country for the seduction of human souls. Some of these
weapons Protestants put into her hands by their own unfaithfulness and
folly. God has a right to blame Rome for using this species of weapon in
favor of the wrong cause, but these Protestants have not.

There is another class of weapons which Rome finds in the blindness and
sinfulness of human nature. Her guilt may be justly summed up in this
statement: That these are precisely the errors and crimes of humanity which
the church of Christ should have labored to suppress and extirpate; whereas
Rome caters to them and fosters them in order to use them for her
aggrandizement. But none the less are these weapons potent. They are exactly
adapted to the nature of fallen man. As they always have been successful,
they will continue to succeed in this country. Our republican civil
constitutions will prove no adequate shield against them. Our rationalistic
culture, by weakening the authority of God's Word, is only opening the way
for their ulterior victory. Our scriptural ecclesiastical order will be no
sufficient bulwark. The primitive churches had that bulwark in its strongest
Presbyterian form, but popery steadily undermined it. What it did once it
can do again. There will be no effectual check upon another spread of this
error except the work of the Holy Ghost. True and powerful revivals will
save American Protestantism; nothing else will.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "Sermons and Articles Collection" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
Box 119
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
Our websites: www.biblebb.com <http://www.biblebb.com/>  and
www.gospelgems.com
Email: tony at biblebb.com
Online since 1986

 

 

Charis,

 

Mike Abendroth

 

If some Christians that have been complaining of their ministers had said
and acted less before men and had applied themselves with all their might to
cry to God for their ministers -- had, as it were, risen and stormed heaven
with their humble, fervent and incessant prayers for them -- they would have
been much more in the way of success.  Jonathan Edwards 

 

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