tal reservation, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in the ordinary sense of the Christian world; and I hold the Church to be the depositary of the sacred Traditions, and the medium through which the Divine Life of Jesus, or the Holy Ghost proceeding forth from the Father and the Son, is transmitted from generation to generation, and communicated to the world, for the redemption and sanctification of sinners. I hold, that the Church is a divine institution, an inspired body, founded on the Rock of Ages, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; that it is the ground and pillar of the truth; and the authoritative representative of the will of God on earth. Moreover, I hold, that the Gospel, deposited with the Church, contains the principles of all truth, and that the whole future of mankind, dating from its promulgation by Jesus and the Apostles, consists in developing these principles, and in reducing them to practice. Here, in the Gospel, is the foundation of the true Philosophy of Life, and the principle of the solution of every problem, theological, political, social, or ethical. In order to ascertain the truth, or to labor, freely and successfully, for its development and application, it can never, in my judgment, be necessary to go out of the Church, or to look beyond the Gospel. But this statement, distinct and explicit as it is, requires, in the present state of the religious world, some farther developments, in order to escape misapprehension. The true THEORY of the Church is, I believe, that, through all the successive stages of its existence, it is Apostolic, retaining, always, and everywhere, the same authority over faith and discipline, which the Apostles themselves had; and that its mission is not merely to preserve the memory of a work done, completed, but to continue, and carry on to perfection, a work commenced. It has, indeed, received the law, from which it can in no wise depart, but a law which it is to develope and apply, by virtue of its own continuous inspiration, received from the indwelling Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, to all new questions that come up, and to all old questions, coming up in new forms, or under new relations. ITS MISSION IS THE CONTINUED EVOLUTION, AND REALIZATION IN LIFE, OF THE TRUTH CONTAINED IN THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION, which continued evolution and realization constitute the continued progress of mankind. Now, I am far from pretending, that the Church, in point of fact, has altogether overlooked this theory; on the contrary, I believe that she has always asserted it, and, to some extent, acted on it, and it is by her authority that I dare undertake to maintain it; but she seems to me to have asserted it with too much feebleness and timidity, and with numerous and almost suicidal concessions to the spirit which finally broke out in the Protestant schism. Instead of boldly asserting her high prerogatives as the Body of our Lord, and maintaining it to be her right, and her duty, to develope and apply the truth, according to the exigencies of time and place, she has left it to be believed, that the Gospel, instead of being given her merely in germ, to be subsequently developed and applied, was given her as a perfect code drawn out in all the minuteness of detail, and that her sole mission is, to preserve the original deposite unaltered, unenlarged, undiminished. I look upon this as a fundamental error, and one which has had, and cannot but have, the most disastrous consequences. The Church has failed to assert, at least to maintain, her absolute independence, which is essential to the successful accomplishment of her mission in carrying on the progress of the race. She has, on the one hand, yielded too much to the doctors, who would confine her to ancient tradition, and to primitive usage; and, on the other, through weakness, timidity, or, perhaps, through the necessities of the times, too much to the civil authority, suffering the civil ruler to invade her province, and, by his edicts, to restrain her free action and independent development. I am well aware, that the reproach I here bring against the Church, is of an opposite character to that which is brought by Protestant sects. I say nothing here of the alleged assumptions and invasions of the Bishop of Rome, whom I undertake neither to accuse nor to defend; but, in speaking of the Church herself, I dare affirm, that her error, or the cause of her not having more completely succeeded, is not in the arrogance of her pretensions, but in the extreme modesty of her claims; not in asserting, but in not asserting, her independence in regard to tradition, written or unwritten, and in face of the civil authority. So far as she has asserted this two-fold independence, she has done well, been faithful to her Lord; so far as she has not asserted it successfully, or so far as she has temporized with, or succumbed to, either the temporal power, or antiquity, she has been wanting to her mission, and unfaithful to Him whose Spouse she is. The great evil in the Church has been, what I call, the Protestant spirit. Protestantism asserts the supremacy of the Written Word, not as the principle, but as a full and perfect code, needing, and admitting, no farther developments, and, therefore, tends to subject the Church to Antiquity; it also asserts, in practice, if not absolutely in theory, the supremacy of the temporal power, and thus tends to subject the Church to the State, or to convert it into a mere function of the State. So far as it comprehends itself, it is a direct protest against the progress of the race, an attempt to keep the Church stationary in her action and influence, and is, therefore, anti-christian. By taking away from the Church her legitimate control over faith and discipline, it denies to the Church all right to advance, and seeks to keep, or to carry, the Christian world back to the very point from which it started. Unquestionably, this was not the secret intention of the Protestant leaders, but it is what is implied in their principles, and is of itself, to all who believe in the glorious and kindling doctrine of progress, a full and utter condemnation of Protestantism. It shows also, that these leaders broke away from the Church unnecessarily, because they did not fully comprehend her theory, and its absolute necessity as the condition of human progress. But, if the Church herself neglected to assert, or but too feebly and timidly asserted, her independence, in face of the State, and especially of Antiquity, this was much more the case with the philosophers and free-inquirers in her bosom. These seem to have had no conception of her independence, of her right and ability, to accept all new views, or new applications, of truth; and so, whenever they attained to a new view, or discovered a new application, of truth, instead of seeking to bring it out, in harmony with the teachings of the Church, or showing how it was necessarily evolved from her admitted principles, and authorized by the analogies of faith, they brought it out independently, in opposition to her express dogmas, so that she must needs reject it, or prove suicidal. But in rejecting it she became, practically, the enemy of free thought and free speech, and, therefore, tyrannical and oppressive. Hence the war which has so long been waged between the Church on one side, and the philosophers and freeinquirers on the other, a war not necessary in the nature of things, but caused by the failure of the Church to assert her own independence, and of these philosophers and free-inquirers to perceive that the successful assertion of this independence, would be the successful assertion of religious and philosophical free dom. - The evil, resulting from this misapprehension shared in some degree by the Church herself — of the profound significance of the true Church theory, has been great and manifold; but it is not irremediable. Assert now, freely, fearlessly, and vigorously, the entire independence of the Church in face of Antiquity, so far as concerns the development and application of the principles of the Christian law, — which is all that any believer in Christianity can ask, assume the truth and sufficiency of these principles, which is what they, who believe in Christ at all, must assume, and do assume, and all ground of hostility on either side is effectually removed. There is ample provision for the largest liberty of thought and speech; and the authority of the Church remains standing, in all its plenitude and vigor. There is full scope for the boldest inquiries and the most unreserved utterance, provided only, that the inquirers take care, before giving utterance to their speculations, to examine them in their relation to the principles on which the Church is founded, and then to set them forth in their harmony with those principles, or as necessary evolutions from them, which they must be, if they are true, according to the assumptions we have already made. The only restraint there is or can be, in this case, is merely a restraint on hasty judgments and crude speculations, a restraint demanding no surrender or suppression of truth, but merely patience in forming, and modesty in uttering, one's own views; which would by no means be a mischievous restraint, but a salutary restraint, and one very much needed. With this view of the case, I find myself able to submit to the authority of the Church, without surrendering one iota of my freedom as a man, or my independence as a philosopher; for, with this view, I see that submission to the Church is the condition of mental liberty. "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." But I have never been able to say this of the practical Church theory of any of our Protestant sects. Formerly, I knew not, that, under this relation, the Protestant communions differed from the Catholic, and I then felt, that, in order to maintain freedom of thought and freedom of speech, which no consideration could induce me to surrender, for they are manifestly the indispensable conditions of human progress, I must go against all existing Church organizations, and strike boldly for a New Church; but now, after a more thorough investigation of the Catholic Church than I had previously made, having ascertained that her real theory is, at bottom, contrary to what my Protestant education had led me to expect, favorable to freedom and progress, I find in the old Church, theo - |
