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The state of things here described would certainly justify, in the view of most Americans, the rejoicings that in 1870 attended the transfer of Rome to the kingdom of Italy. Yet Roman Catholic periodicals and officials utterly condemn this transfer, and, with "The Catholic World" for November, 1870, "deny altogether that the subjects of the sovereign pontiff have had any grievances to be redressed, or any need of the interference of any power or of any guarantee for their civil or social rights." The controversy in the case respects both facts and principles, which come into full view in every part of the present volume.

CHAPTER II.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH OR SYSTEM.

THE phrase "Roman Catholic" is generally used in this volume as more definite and acceptable than most other terms which are employed to designate this church or system. "Roman" and "Catholic" are both accredited terms as used separately; though "Roman" is properly a local term, and "Catholic" (universal) as properly includes all Christians. On the other hand, there is no more intrinsic objection to the use of the terms "Romish," "Romanism," "Papacy," "Papist,' &c., than to the use of the terms "English," "Irish," "Methodism," "Calvinism," "Episcopacy," "Methodist," "Baptist," and the like. Terms of reproach, even, applied to good men or things, will become in time titles of honor; while titles originally honorable will, by long association with those who act dishonorably, lose all their good report. Thus the "Puritans," originally so designated in derision, are now widely honored; while an "aristocracy" (literally rule of the best) may be spoken of with uttter contempt. The term "Christians" (=Christ-men, or followers of Christ) was probably first used at Antioch (Acts 11: 26) to ridicule the believers in the Lord Jesus; but, from the character of those who were thus called, it has become a name in which multitudes rejoice. If the church or the system of which the pope is the acknowledged head, shows itself worthy of honor, then "popery" will be by and by a word of renown, and the cry of "no popery" will be a shame and a disgrace. We are concerned with persons and things rather than with names-with realities rather than with appearances.

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What then is the Roman Catholic system in reality? We will first present a Protestant view, based on an able analysis of the system by a distinguished Protestant, Rev. Richard S. Storrs, Jr., D.D., of Brooklyn, N. Y.

This system "regards Adam, as at first created, a mere recipient of impressions, but incapable of holiness until he had been supernaturally endowed with the capacity and the exercise of holiness. By his fall he lost all this, and became a merely natural being, in which condition all his posterity are 'born, until again supernaturally endowed with the capacity which Adam lost by the fall. And the sacraments are the established physical media through which this gift is bestowed." Such is the fundamental theory which underlies the whole system of Romanism. Let this theory once be admitted as true, and you have the system as a natural result. The theory is a gratuitous assumption, and such likewise are many of the main points in the system. Thus, it is held that the Savior endowed his apostles with the power, which they communicated to their rightful successors, and these again to others down to this time, of bestowing restorative grace through the efficacy of baptism, the eucharist, and the other sacraments of the church. The pope as the rightful successor of the chief apostle Peter, and, as connected with the pope and the church of which he is the visible head, the Roman Catholic bishops and priests, are the depositaries of that divine grace which saves the soul. Every form of the church, every garment, every ceremonial, has a symbolical meaning and a reason connected with the alleged nature of sin and holiness, and hence has its proper place in the church system as helping to infuse holiness into the sinful. All the rites and parts of the whole system combine to exalt the priest, the pope, the church, as the representative of God in the communication of his truth and grace, and the appointed channel through which alone God bestows pardon and eternal life. While the Roman Catholic church receives as divine and authoritative all the truths which are contained in the Bible, it makes the commandments and traditions of the church a

part of the word of God; it substitutes for the pure truth a debased and degrading mixture of truth and error; it subordinates the inward and spiritual to the outward and visible; it obscures and stifles the life of faith and love by its absorbing attention to the things of sight and show; instead of relying directly upon the Jesus who is the Christ and was offered once for all (Heb. 9: 12, 25, 26. 10: 10), it makes a new Jesus and a new atonement at every mass; instead of having only one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2: 5), it makes the mother of Jesus both a mediator and a God, and treats likewise its thousands of other canonized (real or unreal) saints as mediators to be prayed to and honored for their superhuman merit and power; by its connected doctrines of confession and penance and absolution and indulgence, it places the consciences, persons and property of men, women and children in the power of the priest; it speaks lies in hypocrisy, sears the conscience with a hot iron, forbids to marry, and commands to abstain from meats (1 Tim. 4: 2, 3); it changes the truth of God into a lie, and worships and serves the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever (Rom. 1: 25); it turns the consolations and comforts of religion, the means of grace and the hope of glory, into so much merchandise, to be disposed of according to the temper and skill of the vender and the ability or necessity of the purchaser; in fine, as it sets forth another gospel than the free gospel of Christ, another standard than the perfect law of God, other church ordinances and other conditions of salvation than those which the Lord Jesus has established, it has its fellowship with darkness rather than with light, and its affinity with Satan and his angels rather than with Jehovah and the holy ones of his glorious heaven.

A few historical memoranda may here be inserted.

The fourth century, which saw Christianity become the ruling religion of the Roman empire, saw also many corruptions introduced into the visible church. Rites and ceremonies were greatly multiplied through what Mosheim calls "the indiscreet piety of the bishops," who sought thus to make Christianity

more acceptable to the heathen. The Christians now used in their public worship, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, "splendid robes, mitres, tiaras, wax tapers, crosiers, processions, lustrations, images, gold and silver vases, and numberless other things." Each bishop prescribed to his own flock such a form of worship or liturgy as he thought best, that of the church of Rome afterwards supplanting the others. New honors were paid to dead martyrs, the festival of Polycarp, who was burned A.D. 167, being the earliest festival of a martyr; fasts were made obligatory, but, instead of observing them as previously with total abstinence from food and drink, many abstained only from flesh and wine, thus setting the example which afterwards was followed by the Roman Catholic church generally. Masses in honor of the saints and for the dead arose from the custom, which was prevalent in this century, of celebrating the Lord's Supper at the sepulchres of the martyrs and at funerals. Towards the close of this century the Collyridians disturbed Arabia and the neighboring countries by their worship of the Virgin Mary as a goddess; but festivals to her memory were not generally observed till the 6th century, when the festival of her purification, or Candlemas, was instituted.

Leo the Great, who was bishop of Rome A.D. 440-461, appears first to have developed the view that the bishop of Rome inherited from Peter the primacy or headship of the church; but the general council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451, decreed the equality of the bishops of Rome and of Constantinople. Cardinal Baronius, the Roman Catholic historian of the church, who wrote about 275 years ago, says that the emperor Phocas, A.D. 606, divested the bishop of Constantinople of the title of "ecumenical (= universal) bishop," and conferred this title on the bishop of Rome.

Gregory the Great, who was bishop of Rome A.d. 590–604, "was," says Mosheim, "wonderfully dexterous and ingenious in devising and recommending new ceremonies." "The canon of the mass," which was a new mode of celebrating the Lord's Supper in a magnificent style and with a splendid apparatus,

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