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Full text of "The great controversy between Cardinal Manning and Col. R.G. Ingersoll"





c. 1 

R. C 






Great Controversy 








THE Vatican Council, in its Decree on Faith has these words: 
" The Church itself, by its marvelous propagation, its eminent 
sinctity, its inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good things, its catholic 
unity and invincible stability, is a vast and perpetual motive of 
credibility, and an irrefragable witness of its own Divine legation."* 
Its Divine Founder said : "lam the Light of the world;" and, to 
His Apostles, He said also, " Ye are the light of the world," and of 
His Church He added, " A city seated on a hill cannot be hid." The 
Vatican Council says : " The Church is its own witness." My pur 
pose is to draw out this assertion more fully. 

These words affirm that the Church is self-evident, is light as to 
the eye, and, through sense, to the intellect. Next to the sun at 
noon-day, there is nothing in the world more manifest than the one 
visible Universal Church. Both the faith and the infidelity of the 
world bear witness to it. It is loved and hated, trusted and feared, 
served and assaulted, honored and blasphemed : it is Christ or Anti 
christ, the Kingdom of God or the imposture of Satan. It pervades 
the civilized world. No man and no nation can ignore it, none can 
be indifferent to it. Why is all this ? How IB its existence to be 
accounted for ? 

Let me suppose that I am an unbeliever in Christianity, and that 
some frifttd should make me promise to examine the evidence to 
show that Christianity is a Divine revelation ; I should then sift and 
test the evidence as strictly as if it were in a court of law, and in a 
cause of life and death ; my will won ! be in suspense : it would in 
no way control the process of my intuJ : ct. If it had any inclina 
tion from the equilibrium, it would be towards mercy and hope ; 
but this would not add a feather s weight to the evidence, nor sway 
the intellect a hair s breadth. 

After the examination ha.s boon completed, and my intellect con- 

*" Coast. Dogai. de FUe Catholica, o. iii. 


pinced, the evidence being sufficient to prove that Christianity is a 
divine revelation, nevertheless I am not yet a Christian. All this 
sifting brings me to the conclusion of a chain of reasoning ; but I am 
not j 7 et a believer. The last act of reason has brought rne to the 
brink of the first act of faith. They are generically distinct and 
separable. The acts of reason are intellectual, and jealous of the 
interference of the will. The act of faith is an imperative act of 
the will, founded on and justified by the process and conviction of 
the intellect. Hitherto I have been a critic ; henceforward, if I will, 
I become a disciple. 

It may here be objected that no man can so far suspend the in 
clination of the will when the question is, has God indeed spoken to 
man or no ? is the revealed law of purity, generosity, perfection, 
divine, or only the poetry of imagination ? Can a man be indifferent 
between two such sides of the problem ? Will he not desire the 
higher and better side to be true ? and if he desire, will he not in 
cline to the side that he desires to find true ? Can a moral being 
be absolutely indifferent between two such issues ? and can two such 
issues be equally attractive to a moral agent ? Can it be indifferent 
and all the same to us whether God has made Himself and His will 
known to us or not ? Is there no attraction in light, no repulsion in 
darkness ? Does not the intrinsic and eternal distinction of good 
and evil make itself felt in spite of the will ? Are we not responsible 
to " receive the truth in the love of it ?" Nevertheless, evidence 
has its own limits and quantities, and cannot be made more or less 
by any act of the will. And yet, what is good or bad, high or mean, 
lovely or hateful, ennobling or degrading, must attract or repel men 
as they are better or worse in their moral sense ; for an equilibrium 
between good and evil, to God or to man, is impossible. 

The last act of my reason, then, is distinct from my first act of 
faith precisely in this : so long as I was uncertain I suspended the 
inclination of my will, as an act of fidelity to conscience and of 
loyalty to truth ; but the process once complete, and the conviction 
once attained, my will imperatively constrains me to believe, and I 
become a disciple of a Divine revelation. 

My friend next tells me that there are Christian Scriptures, and I 
go through precisely the same process of critical examination and 
final conviction, the last act of reasoning preceding, as before, the 
first act of faith. 

He then tells me that there is a Church claiming to be divinely 
founded, divinely guarded, and divinely guided in its custody of 
Christianity and of the Christian Scriptures. 

Once more I have the same twofold process of reasoning and of 
believing to go through. 

There is, however, this difference in the subject-matter : Chris 
tianity is an order of supernatural truth appealing intellectually to 
my reason ; the Christian Scriptures are voiceless, and need a wit 
ness. They cannot prove their own mission, much less their own 
authenticity or inspiration. Bnt the Church is visible to the eye, 




audible to the ear, self -manifesting and self asserting : I cannot 
escape from it. If I go to the east, it is there ; if I go to the west, 
it is there also. If I stay at home, it is before me, seated on the hill ; 
if I turn away from it, 1 am surrounded by its light. It pursues me 
and calls to me. I cannot deny its existence ; I cannot be indiffer 
ent to it ; I must either listen to it or wilfully stop my ears ; I must 
heed it or defy it, love it or hate it. But my lirst attitude towards 
it is to try it with forensic strictness, neither pronouncing it to be 
Christ nor Antichrist till I have tested its origin, claim, and char 
acter. Let us take down the case in shorthand. 

1. It says that it interpenetrates all the nations of the civilized 
world. In some it holds the whole nation in its unity, in others it 
holds fewer ; but in all it is present, visible, audible, naturalized, 
and known as the one Catholic Church, a name that none can ap 
propriate. Though often claimed and controversially assumed, 
none can retain it ; it falls off. The world knows only one Catholic 
Church, and always restores the name to the right owner. 

2. It is not a national body, but extra-national, accused of its 
foreign relations and foreign dependence. It is international, and 
independent in a supernettional unity. 

3. In faith, divine worship, sacred ceremonial, discipline, govern 
ment, from the highest to the lowest, it is the same in every place. 

4. It speaks a)l languages in the civilized world. 

5. It is obedient to one Head, outside of all nations, except one 
only; and in thafc nation, his headship Is not national but world 

( ; . The world- wide sympathy of the Church in all lands with its 
Head has been manifested in our days, and before our eyes, by a 
series of- public assemblages in Home, of which nothing like or 
second to it can be found. In 1854, 350 Bishops of all nations sur 
rounded their Head when he defined the Immaculate Conception. 
In 180V,, 400 Bishops assembled at the canonization of the Martyrs 
of Japan. In 1867, 500 Bishops came to keep the eighteenth cen 
tenary of St. Peter s martyrdom. In 1870, 700 Bishops assembled 
in the Vatican Council. On the Feast of the Epiphany, 1870, the 
Bishops of thirty nations during two whole hours made profession 
of faith in their own languages, kneeling before their head. Add to 
this, that in 1869, in the sacerdotal jubilee of Pius IX., Home was 
filled for months by pilgrims from all lauds in Europe and beyond 
the sea, from the Old World and from the New, bearing all manner 
of gifts and oblations to the Head of the Universal Church. To 
this, again, must be added the world-wide outcry and protest of all 
the Catholic unity against the seizure and sacrilege of September, 
1870, when Rome was taken by the Italian Revolution. 

7. All this came to pass not only by reason of the great love of 
the Catholic world for Pius IX., but because they revered him as 
the successor of St. Peter and the Vicar of Jesus Christ. For that 
undying reason thr same events have been reproduced in the time 
of Leo XIII, In the early months of this year Rome was once 


filled with pilgrims of all nations, coming in thousands as representa 
tives of millions in all nations, to celebrate the sacerdotal jubilee of 
the Sovereign Pontiff. The courts of the Vatican could not find 
room for the multitude of gifts and offeriugs of every kind which 
wre sent from all quarters of the world. 

8. Those things are here said, not because of any other import 
auce, bub because they set forth in the most visible and self-evident 
way the living unity and the luminous universality of the One 
Catholic and Roman Church. 

;). What has thus far been said is before our eyes at this hour. 
It is no appeal to history, but to a visible and palpable fact. Men 
may explain ifc as they will ; deny it, they cannot. They see the 
Head of the Church year by year speaking to the nations of the world ; 
treating with Empires Republics and Governments. There is no 
other man on earth that can so bear himself. Neither from Canter 
bury nor from Constantinople can such a voice go forth to which 
ruiers and people listen. 

This is the century of revolutions. Rome has in our time been be 
sieged three times ; three Popes have beeu driven out of it, two 
have been shut up in the Vatican. The city is now full of the Re 
volution. The whole Church has been tormented by Falck laws, 
Mancini laws, and Crispi laws. An unbeliever in Germany said 
some years ago, " The net is now drawn so tight about the Church, 
that if it escapes this time I will believe in it." Whether he be 
lieves in it, or is even alive now to believe, 1 cannot say. 

Nothing thus far has b en said as proof. The visible, palpable 
facts, which are at this moment before the eyes of all men, speak 
for themselves. There is one, and only one, world- wide unity of 
which these things can be said. It is a fact and a phenomenon for 
which an intelligible account must be rendere-1. If it be only a 
human system built up by the intellect, will and energy of men, let 
the adversaries prove it. The burden is upon them ; and they will 
have more to do as we go on. 

Thus far we have rested upon the evidence of sense and fact. We 
must now go ou to history and reason. 

Every religion and every religious body known to history has var 
ied from itself and broken up. Brahminism has given birth to Bud 
dhism ; Mahometanism is parted into the Arabian and European 
Khalifates ; the Greek schism into the Russian, Constantinopolitan, 
and Bulgarian autocephalus fragment ; Protestantism into its 
multitudious diversities. All have departed from their original 
type, and all are continually developing new and irreconcilable, intel 
lectual au l ritualistic, diversities and repulsions. How is it that, 
with all diversities of language, civilization, race, interest, and 
conditions, social and political, including persecution and warfare, 
the Catholic nations are at this day, even when in warfare, in un 
changed unity of faith, communion, worship and spiritual sympathy 
with each other and with their Head V This needs a rational ex 
pi a nation. 


It may be said in answer, endless divisions have come out of the 
Church, from Arius to Photius, and from Photius to Luther. Yes, 
but they all came out. There is the difference. They did not re 
main in the Church, corrupting the faith. They came out, and 
ceased to belong to the Catholic unity, as a branch broken from 
a tree ceases to belong to the tree. Bat the identity of the tree re 
mains the same. A branch is not a tree, nor a tree a branch. A 
tree may lose branches, but it rests upon its root, and renews its 
loss. Not so the religions, so to call them, that have broken away 
from unity. Not one has retained its members or its doctrines. 
Once separated from the sustaining unity of the Church, all separ 
ations lose their spiritual cohesion, and then their intellectual iden 
tity. Ramus prceeisus arescit. 

For the present it is enough to say that no human legislation, 
, authority or constraint can ever create internal unity of intellect 
and will ; and that diversities and contradictions generated by all 
human systems prove the absence of Divine authority. Varia 
tions or contradictions are proof of the absence of a Divine missiou to 
mankind. All natural causes run to disintegration. Therefore, 
they can render no account of the world- wide unity of the One Uni 
versal Church. 

Such, then, are the facts before our eyes at this day. We will 
seek out the origin of the body or system called the Catholic Church, 
and pass at once to its outset, eighteen hundred years ago. 

I affirm, then, three things : (1) First, that no adequate account 
can be given of this undeniable fact from natural causes : (2) that 
the history of the Catholic Church demands causes above nature ; 
and (3) that it has always claimed for itself a Divine origin and 
Divine authority. 

I. And, first, before we examine what it was and what it has 
done, we will recall to mind what was the world in the midst of 
which it arose. 

The most comprehensive and complete description of the old 
world, before Christianity came in upon it, is given in the first 
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Mankind had once the know 
ledge of God ; that knowledge was obscured by the passions of sense ; 
in the darkness of the human intellect, with the light of nature still 
before them, the nations worshipped the creature that is, by pan 
theism, polytheism, idolatry ; and, having lost the knowledge of God 
and of His perfections, they lost the knowledge of their own nature 
and of its laws, even of the natural and rational laws, which thence 
forward ceased to guide, restrain or govern them. They became 
perverted and inverted with every possible abuse, defeating the end 
and destroying the powers of creation. The lights of nature were 
put out, and the world rushed headlong into confusions, of which 
the beasts that perish were innocent. This is analytically the his 
tory of all nations but one. A line of light still shone from Adam 
to Enoch, from Enoch to Abraham, to whom the command was 
given, "Walk before Me and be perfect." And it ran on from 


Abraham to Caiaphas, who crucified the founder of Christianity. 
Through all anthropomorphism of thought and language this line 
of light still passed inviolate and inviolable. But in the world, on 
either side of that radiant stream, the whole earth was dark. The 
intellectual and moral stite of the Greek world may be measured 
in its highest excellence in Athens ; and of the Roman world in 
Rome. The state of Athens its private, domestic, and public 
morality may be seen in Aristophanes. 

The state of Rome is visible in Juvenal, and in the fourth book of 
St. Augustine s " City of God." There was only one evil wanting. 
The world was not Atheist. Its polytheism was the example and 
the warrant of all forms of moral abominations. Imitnri quod colts 
plunged the nations in crime. Their theology was their degradation ; 
their text- book of an elaborate corruption of intellect and will. 

Christianity came in " the fullness of time." What that fullness 
may mean is one of the mysteries of times and seasons which it is 
not for us to know. But one motive for the long delay of four 
thousand years is not far to seek. It gave time, full and ample, 
for the utmost development and consolidation of all the falsehood 
and evil of which the intellect and will of man are capable. The 
four great empires were each of them the concentration of a supreme 
effort of human power. The second inherited from the first, the 
third from both, the fourth from all three. It was, as it was fore 
told or described, as a beast, " exceeding terrible ; his teeth and 
claws were of iron ; he devoured and broke in pieces ; and the rest 
he stamped upon with his feet."* The empire of man over man 
was never so widespread, so absolute, so hardened into one organ 
ized mass, as in Imperial Rome. The world had never seen a mili 
tary power so disciplined, irresistible, invincible ; a legislation so 
just, so equitable, so strong in its execution ; a government so uni 
versal, so local, so minute. It seemed to be imperishable. Rome 
was called the eternal. The religions of all nations were enshrined 
in Dea Roma ; adopted, practiced openly, and taught. They were 
all rdiyiones licita, known to the law ; not tolerated only, but recog 
nized. The theologies of Egypt, Greece, and of the Latin world, 
met in an empyreum, consecrated and guarded by the Imperial law, 
and administered by the Pontifex Maximus. No fanaticism ever 
surpassed the relig ous cruelties of Rome. Add to all this thecolluvies 
of false philosophies of every laud, and of every date. They both 
blinded and hardened the intellect of public opinion and of private 
men against the invasion of anything except contempt, and hatred 
of both the philosophy of sophists and of the religion of the people. 
Add to all this the sensuality of the most refined and of the grossest 
luxury the world had ever seen, and a moral confusion and corrup 
tion which violated every law of nature. 

The god of this world had built his city. From foundation to 
parapet, everything that the skill and power of man could do had 

*Daniel, vii. 19. 


been done without stiot of means or limit of will. The Divine hand 
was stayed, or rather, as St. Augustine says, an unsurpassed natural 
greatness was the reward of certain natural virtues, degraded as 
they were in unnatural abominations. Rome was the climax of the 
power of man without God, the apotheosis of the human will, the 
direct and supreme antagonist of God in His own world. In this 
the fullness of the time was come. Man built all this for himself. 
Certainly, man could not also build the City of God. They are not 
the work of one and the same architect, who capriciously chose to 
build first the city of confusion, suspending for a time his skill and 

Eower to build some day the City of God. Such a hypothesis ia 
:&gt;lly. Of two things, one. Disputers must choose one or the other. 
Both cannot be asserted, and the assertion needs no answer it re 
futes itself. So much for the first point. 

II. In the reign of Augustus, and -in a remote and powerless 
Oriental race, a Child was born in a stable of a poor Mother. For 
thirty years He lived a hidden life ; for three years He preached 
the Kingdom of Go.l, and gave laws hitherto unknown to men. He 
died in ignominy upon the Cross ; on the third day He rose again ; 
and after forty days He was seen no more. This unknown Man 
created the world-wide unity of intellect and will which is visible to 
the eye, and audible, in all languages, to the ear. It is in harmony 
with the reason and moral nature of all nations, in all ages, to this 
day. What proportion is there between the cause and the effect? 
What power was there in this isolated Man ? What unseen virtues 
went out of Him to change the world ! For change the world He 
did ; and that not in the line or on the level of nature as men had 
corrupted it, but in direct contradiction to all that was then supreme 
in the world. He taught the dependence of the intellect against its 
self-trust, the submission of the will against its license, the subjuga 
tion of the passions by temperate control or by absolute subjection 
against their willful indulgence. This was to reverse what men be 
lieved to be the laws of nature : to make water climb upward and- 
fire point downward. He taught mortification of the lusts of the 
flesh, contempt of the lusts of the eyes, and hatred of the 
pride of life. What hope was there that such a teacher should 
convert imperial Rome ? that sach a doctrine should exorcise the 
fullness of human pride and lust ? Yet so it has come to pass ; and 
how ? Twelve men more obscure than Himself, absolutely without 
authority or influence of this world, preached throughout the empire 
and beyond it. They asserted two facts : the one, that God had 
had been made man ; the other, that lie died and rose again. What 
could be more incredible ? To the Jews the unity and spirituality 
of God were axioms of reason and faith ; to the Gentiles, however 
cultured, the resurrection of the flesh was impossible. The Divine 
Person Who had died and risen could not be called in evidence as the 
chief witness. He could not; be produced in court. Could anything 
be more suspicious if credible, or less credible even if He were there 
to say so ? A.11 that they could do was to say, " We knew Him for 


three years, both before His death and after He rose from the dead. 
If you will believe us, you will believe what we say. If yoa will not 
believe us, we cau say no more. He is not here, but in heaven. We 
cannot call Ilirn down." It is true, as we read, that Peter cured a 
lame man at the gate of the Temple. The Pharisees could not deny 
it, but they would not believe what Peter said ; they only told him 
to hold his tongue. And yet thousands in one day in Jerusalem be 
lieved in the Incarnation and the Resurrection ; and when the 
Apostles were scattered by persecution, wherever they went men 
believed their word. The most intense persecution was from the 
Jews, the people of faith and of Divine traditions. In the name of 
God and of religion they stoned Stephen, and sent Saul to persecute 
at Damascus More than this, they stirred up the Romans in every 
place. As they had forced Pilate to crucify Jesus of Nazareth, so 
they swore to slay Paul. And yet, in spite of all, the faith spread. 

It is true, indeed, that the Empire of Alexander, the spread of 
the Hellenistic &lt;!reek, the prevalent e of Greek in Rome itself, the 
Roman roads which made the Empire traversable, the Roman peace 
which sheltered the preachers of the faith in the outset of their 
work, gave them facilities to travel and to be understood. But 
these were only external facilities, which in no way rendered more 
credible or more acceptable the voice of penance and mortification, 
or the mysteries of the faith, which was immutably " to the Jews a 
stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness." It was in change 
less opposition to nature as man had marred it ; but was in absolute 
harmony with nature as God had made it to His own likeness. Its 
power was its persuasiveness ; and its persuasiveness was in its 
conformity to the highest and noblest aspirations and aims of the 
soul in man. The master-key so long lost was found at last; and 
its conformity to the wards of the lock was its irrefragable witness 
to its own mission and message. 

But if it is beyond belief that Christianity in its outset made good 
its foothold by merely human causes and powers, how much more 
does this become incredible in every age as we come down from the 
first century to the nineteenth, and from the Apostolic mission to 
the world-wide Church, Catholic and Roman, at this day. 

Not only did the world in the fullness of its power give to the 
Christian faith no help to root or to spread itself, but it wreaked all 
the fullness of its power upon it to uproot and to destroy it. Of the 
first thirty Pontiffs in Rome, twenty-nine were martyred. Ten 
successive persecutions, or rather one universal and continuous per 
secution of two hundred years, with ten more bitter excesses of 
enmity in every province of the Empire, did all that man can do to 
extinguish the Christian name. The Christian name may be blotted 
out here and there in blood, but the Christian faith can nowhere be 
slain. It is inscrutable, and beyond the reach of man. In nothing 
is the blood of the martyrs more surely the seed of the faith. Every 
martyrdom was a witness to the faith, and the ten persecutions 
were the sealing of the work of the twelve Apostles. The destroyer 


defeated himself. Christ crucified was visibly set forth before all 
the nations, the world was a Calvary, and the blood of the martyrs 
preached in every tongue the Passion of Jesus Christ. The world 
did its worst, and ceased only for weariness and conscious defeat. 

Then came the peace, and with peace the peril of the Church. 
The world outside had failed ; the world inside began to work. It 
no longer destroyed life; it perverted the intellect, and through in 
tellectual perversion, assailed the faith at its centre. The Angel of 
light preached heresy. The Baptismal Creed was assailed all along 
the line ; Gnosticism assailed the Father and Creator of rJl things ; 
Arianism, the God-head of the Son; Nestorianisiu, the upiuy of His 
person ; Monophysites, the two natures ; Mouothelitec, the divine 
and human wills ; Macedonians, the person of the Holy Ghost. So 
throughout the centuries, from Nicssa to the Vatican, every article 
has been in succession perverted by heresy and denned by the 
Church. But of this we shall speak hereafter. If the human in 
tellect could fasten its perversions on the Christian faith, it would 
have done so long ago ; and if the Christian faith had been guarded 
by no more than human intellect, it would, long ago have been dis 
integrated, as we see in every religion outside the unity of the one 
Catholic Church. There is no example in which fragmentary 
Christianities have not departed from their original type. No 
human system is immutable ; no tiling human is changeless. The 
human intellect, therefore, can give no sufficient account of the 
identity of the Catholic faith in all places and in all ages by any of 
its own natural processes or powers. The force of this argument is 
immensely increased when we trace the tradition of the faith 
through the nineteen (Ecumenical Councils which, with one con 
tinuous intelligence have guarded and unfolded the deposit of faith, 
defining every truth as it has been successively assailed, in absolute 
harmony and unity of progression. 

What the Senate is to your great Republic, or the Parliament to 
our English monarchy, such are the nineteen Councils of the Church, 
with this only difference : the secular Legislatures must meet year 
by year with short recesses ; Councils have met on the average once 
in a century. The reason of this is that the mutabilities ot nation 
al life, which are as the water-floods, need constant remedies ; the 
stability of the Church seldom needs new legislation. The faith 
needs no definition except in rare intervals of periodical intellectual 
disorder. The discipline of the Church reigns by an universal 
common law which seldom needs a change, and by local laws which 
are provided on the spot. Nevertheless, the legislation of the 
Ghoxch, tho Corpus Juris i OT f tcnm Lair, is a creation of wisdom 
and justice, to which no Statutes at large or Imperial pandects can 
bear comparison. Human intellect has reached its climax in juris 
prudence, but the world-wide and secular legislation of the Church 
has a higher character. How the Christian law corrected, elevated, 
and completed the Imperial law, may be seen in a learned and able 
work by an American author, far from the Catholic faith, but in the 


main just and accurate in his facts and arguments the Gesta Ckristi 
of Charles Loring Brace. Water cannot rise above its source, and 
if the Church by mere human wisdom corrected and perfected the 
Imperial law, its source must be higher than the sources of the 
world. This makes a heavy demand on our credulity. 

Starting from St. Peter to Leo XIII., there have been some 25- 
Pontiffs claiming to be, and recognized by the whole Catholic unity 
as, successors of St. Peter and Vicars of Jesus Christ. To them has 
been rendered in every age not only the external obedience of out 
ward submission, but the internal obedience of faith. They have 
borne the onset of the nations who destroyed Imperial Rome, and 
the tyranny of heretical Emperors of Byzantium ; and, worse than 
this, toe alternate despotism and patronage of Emperors of the 
West, and the subtraction of obedience in the great Western 
icLwrna, when the unity of the Church and the author 
ity of its Head were, as men thought, gone for ever. 
It was the last assault the forlorn hope of the gates of hell. 
Every art of destruction had been tried : martyrdom, hereny, 
secularity, schism ; at last, two, and three, and four claim 
ants, or, as the world says, rival Popes, were set up, that men might 
believe that St. Peter ha i no longer a successor, aud our Lord no 
Vicar, upon earth ; for, though all might be illegitimate, only one 
could be the lawful and true Plead of the Church. Was it only by 
the human power of man that the unity, external and internal, 
which for fourteen hundred years had bo^n supreme, was once more 
restored in the Council of Constance, never to be broken again / 
The succession of the English monarchy has been, indeed, often 
broken, and always restored, in these thousind years. But 
here is a monarchy of eighteen hundred years, powerless in worldly 
force or support, claiming and receiving not only outward allegiance, 
but inward unity of intellect and will. If any man tell us that 
these two phenomena are on the same level of merely human 
causes, it is too severe a tax upon our natural reason to believe it. 

But the inadequacy of human causes to account for the uni 
versality, unity, and immutability of the Catholic Church, will 
stand out more visibly if we look at the intellectual and moral 
revolution which Christianity has wrought in the world and upon 

The first effect of Christianity was to fill the world with the true 
knowledge of the One True God, and to destroy utterly all idols, 
not by tire but by light. Before the Light of the world no false 
god a^a no polytheism could stand. The unity and spirituality of 
God swept away all theogonies and theologies of the first four thou 
sand year- . The stream of light which descended fiom the beginning 
expanded into a radiance, and the radiance into a flood, which il 
luminated all nations, as it ha-1 been foretold. " The earth is filled 
with the knowledge of the Lord, as the covering waters of the sea ;" 
* A,nd idols shall be utterly destroyed."* In this true knowledge 

Isaias, xi. 911, 18. 


of the Divine Nature was revealed to men their own relation to a 
"Creator as of sons to a father. The Greeks called the chief of gods 
Zeus Pater, and the Latins Jupiter ; but neither realized the de 
pendence and love of sonship as revealed by the Founder of Chris 

The monotheism of the world comes down from a primeval and 
Divine source. Polytheism is the corruption of men and of nations. 
Yet in the multiplicity of all polytheisms, one supreme Deity was 
always recognized. The Divine unity was imperishable. Polythe 
ism is of human imagination : it is of men s manufacture. The 
deification of nature and passions and heroes had filled the world 
with an elaborate and tenacious superstition, surrounded by rev 
erence, fear, religion, and awe. Every perversion of what is good in 
man surrounded it with authority ; everything that is evil in man 
guarded it with jealous care. Against this world-wide and imper 
ious demonology the science of one God, all holy and supreme, 
advanced with resistless force. Beelzebub is not divided against 
himself ; and if polytheism is not Divine, monotheism must be. 
The overthrow of idolatry and demonology was the mastery of 
of forces that are above nature. This conclusion is enough for our 
present purpose. 

A second visible effect of Christianity of which nature cannot 
offer any adequate cause is to be found in the domestic life of the 
Christian world. In -some nations the existence of marriage was 
not so much as recognized. In others, if recognized, it was dishon 
ored by profuse concubinage. Even in Israel, the most advanced 
nation," the law of divorce was permitted for the hardness of their 
hearts. Christianity republished the primitive law by which mar 
riage unites only one man and one woman indissolubly in a perpet 
ual contract. It raised their mutual and perpetual contract to a 
sacrament. This at one blow condemned all other relations between 
man and woman, all the legal gradations of the Imperial law, and 
all forms of pleas and divorce. Beyond this the spiritual legislation 
of the Church framed most elaborate tables of consanguinity and 
affinity, prohibiting all marriages between persons in certain de 
grees of kinship or relation. This law has created the purity and 
peace of domestic life. Neither the Greek nor the Roman world 
had any true conception of a home. The E&lt;m a or Vesta was a sac 
red tradition guarded by vestals like a temple worship. It was not 
a law and power in the homes of the people. Christianity, by en 
larging the circles of prohibition within which men and women were 
as brothers and sisters, has created the home with all its purities 
and safeguards. 

Such a law of unity and indissolubility, encompassed by & 
multitude of prohibitions, no mere human legislation could im 
pose on the passions and will of mankind. And yet the Imperial 
laws gradually yielded to its resistless pressure, and incorporated 
it in its world-wide legislation. The passions and practices of 
four thousand years were against the change ; yet it was accom- 


plished, and it reigns inviolate to this day, though the relaxations 
of schism in the East and the laxities of the West have revived the 
abuse of divorces, and have partially abolished the wise and salu 
tary prohibitions which guard the homes of the faithful. These 
relaxations prove that all natural forces have been, and are, hostile 
to the indissoluble law of Christian marriage. Certainly, then, it 
was not by natural forces that the Sacrament of Matrimony and the 
legislation springing from it were enacted. If these are restraints 
of human liberty and license, either they do not spring from nature, 
or they have had a supernatural cause whereby they exist. It wa? 
this that redeemed woman from the traditional degradation iD 
which the world had held her. The condition of women in Athens 
and in Rome which may be taken as the highest points of civiliza 
tion is too well known to need recital. Women had no rights, no 
property, no independence. Plato looked upon them as State 
property ; Aristotle as chattels ; the Greeks wrote of them as KMW?, 
ywaiK.es, " r aA/.d K.-JJ fiara. They were the prey, the sport, the 
slaves of man. Even in Israel, though they were raised incompar 
ably higher than in the Gentile world, they were far below the 
dignity and authority of Christian women. Libanius, the friend of 
Julian, tbe Apostate, said, " O ye gods of Greece, how great are the 
women of the Christians !" Whence came the elevation of woman 
hood ? Not from the ancient civilization, for it degraded them ; 
not from Israel, for among the Jews the highest state of * omauhood 
was the marriage state. The daughter of Jepthe went into the 
mountains to mourn not her death but her virginity. The marriage 
state in the Christian world, though holy and good, is not the high 
est state. The state of virginity unto death is the highest condition 
of man and woman. But this is above the law of natiue. It be 
longs to a higher order. And this life of virginity, in repression of 
natural passion and lawful instinct, is both above aud against the, 
tendencies of human nature. It begins in a mortification, and ends 
in a mastery, over th 3 movements and ordinary laws of human 
nature. Who will ascribe this to natural causes ? and, if so, why 
did it not appear in the first four thousand years ? And when has 
it ever appeared except in a handful of vestal virgins, or in Oriental 
recluses, with what reality history shows ? An exception proves a 
rule. No one will imagine that a life of chastity is impossible to 
nature ; but the restriction is a repression of nature which individ 
uals may acquire, but the multitude have never attain t.-d. A re 
ligion which imposes chastity on the unmarried, and upon its priest 
hood, and upon the multitudes of women in every age who devote 
themselves to the service of One Whom they have never seen, is a 
mortification of nature in so high a degree as to stand out as a fact 
and a phenomenon, of which mere natural causes afford no adequate 
solution. Its existence, not in a handful out of the millions of the 
world, but its prevalence aud continuity in multitudes scattered 
throughout the Christian world, proves the presence of a cause high 
er than the laws of nature. So true is this, that jurists teach that 


the three vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience are contrary to 
" the policy of the law," that is, to the interests of the common 
wealth, which desires the multiplication, enrichment, and liberty of 
its members 

To what has been said may be added the change wrought by 
Christianity upon the social, political, and international relations of 
the world. The root of this ethical change, private and public, is 
the Christian home. The authority of parents, the obedience of 
children, the love of brotherhood, are the three active powers whicL 
have raised the society of man above the level of the old world. 
Israel was head and shoulders above the world around it ; but 
Christendom is high above Israel. The New Commandment of 
brotherly love, and the Sermon on the Mount, have wrought a 
revolution, both in private and public life. From this comes the 
laws of justice and sympathy which bind together the nations of the 
Christian world. In the old world, even the most refined races, 
worshipped by our modern philosophers, held and taught that man 
could hold property in man ? It was no philosopher : even Aristotle 
taught that a slave was bpyavov Qov. It was no lawgiver, for all 
taught the lawfulness of nature till Christianity denied it. The 
Christian law has taught that man can lawfully sell his labor, but 
that he cannot lawfully be sold, or sell himself. 

The necessity of being brief, the impossibility of drawing out 
the picture of the old world, its profound immoralities, its unim 
aginable cruelties, compels me to argue with my right hand tied be 
hind me. I can do no more than point again to Mr. Brace s " Gesta 
Christi," or to Dr. Dollinger s " Gentile and Jew," as witnesses to 
the facts which I have stated or implied. No one who has not read 
such books, or mastered their contents by original study, can judge 
of the force of the assertion that Christianity has reformed the 
world by direct antagonism to the human will, and by a searching 
and firm repression of human passion. It has ascended the stream 
of human license, contra ictum Jtuminis, by a power mightier than 
nature, and by laws of a higher order than the relaxations of this 

Before Christianity came on earth, the civilization of man by 
merely natural force had culminated. It could not rise above its 
source ; all that it could do was done ; and the civilization in every 
race and empire had ended in decline and corruption. The old 
civilization was not regenerated. It passed away to give place to a 
new. But the new had a higher source, nobler laws and super 
natural powers. The highest excellence of men and of nations is the 
civilization of Christianity. The human race has ascended into what 
we call Christendom, that is, into the new creation of charity and 
justice among men. Christendom was created by the world-wide 
Church as we see it before our eyes at this day. Philosophers and 
statesmen believe it to be the work of their own hands : they did 
not make it ; but they have for three hundred years been unmaking 
it by reformations and revolutions. These are destructive forces. 


They build up nothing. It has been well said by Donoso Cortez 
that " the history of civilization is the history of Christianity, the 
history of Christianity is the history of the Church, the history of 
the Church is the history of the Pontiffs, the greatest statesmen and 
rulers that the world has ever seen." 

Some years ago, a Professor of great literary reputation in Eng 
land, who was supposed even then to be, as his subsequent writings 
have proved, a skeptic or non-Christian, published a well-known 
and very candid book, under the title of " Ecce Homo." The writer 
placed himself, as it were, outside of Christianity. He took, not the 
Church in the world as in this article, but the Christian Scriptures 
as a historical record, to be judged with forensic severity and abso 
lute impartiality of mind. To the credit of the author, he fulfilled 
this pledge ; and his conclusion shall here be given. After an 
examination of the life and character of the Author of Christianity, 
he proceeded to estimate His teaching and its effects under the fol 
lowing heads : 

1. The Christian Legislation. 

2. The Christian Rupublic. 

3. Its Universality. 

4. The Enthusiasm of Humanity. 

5. The Lord s Supper. 
* 6. Positive Morality. 

7. Philanthropy. 

8. Edification. 

9. Mercy. 

10. Eesentment. 

11. Forgiveness. 

He then draws his conclusion as follows : 

" The achievement of Christ iu 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 coarse 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 hell shall not prevail cannot be analyzed. No architect s 
designs were furnished for the Nefo 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 diffi 
culties, of precaution, of ingenuity, then in Christ s work it may be 
that the same indications occur. Rut these inferior and secondary 
powers were not consciously exercised ; they were implicitly pre- 


sent in the manifold yet single creative act. The inconceivable 
work was done in calmness ; before the eyes of men it was noise 
lessly 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 ex 
haustively 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 be 
lieved. No man saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the work 
men crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets ; 
no man heard the clink of trowel and pickaxe : it descended out of 
heaven from God. "* 

And yet the writer is, as he was then, still outside of Christianity. 
III. We come now to our third point, that Christianity has al 
ways claimed a Divine origin and a Divine presence as the stfcirce 
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 Testa 
ment were put in, not only might some men deny its weight as 
evidence, but we should place our whole argument on a false foun 
dation. 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 quant 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 in 
tervals : St. Matthew in Hebrew in the year 31), 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 Apostolio Epistles prove the 
antecedent existence of the Churches to which they were addressed. 
Rome and Corinth, and GalatiaandEphesus, 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 iu Ptome. We must, therefore, 
seek to know what was and is Christianity before aud outside of the 
the written books ; and we have the same evidence for the oral tra 
dition 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 

*" Eeoe Homo," Conclusion, p. 329, Fifth Kdition. Macmillau. 1886. 


by faith. The millions of men in all ages have believed by inherit 
ance of truth divinely guarded and delivered to them. They have 
no need of logical analysis. They have believed from their child 
hood. Neither children nor those who infantibus aqniparantur 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, 

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 Sfc. John and 
the minds 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. Irenseus 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. Ireuaeus 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 God, delivered to us 
in Scriptures, the future foundation and pillar of our faith. It ia 
not lawful to say that they preached before they had perfect know 
ledge, as some dare to affirm, boasting themselves to be correcters 
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 tra 
dition of the postles, 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 pass 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 instituted in the Church by the Apostles, and 
their successors to our day. They never taught nor knew such 
things as these men madly assert. " " 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 constituted 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 confound 
ing all those who, in any way, by self-pleasing, or vainglory, or 
blindness, or an evil mind, toach as they ought not. For with this 
Church, by reason of its greater principality, it is necessary that all 
churches should agree ; that is, the faithful, wheresoever they be, 
for in tiiat Church the tradition of the Apostles has been preserved." 
No comment need be made on the words the " greater principality," 
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. IB), de 
scribing the primacy of the Head of the Church in heaven, it will 
appear almost certain that the original Greek of St. Irenaus, which 
is unfortunately lost, contained either ra irpu-ela, or some inflection 
of -/HJTEV U which signifies primacy. However this may be, St. 
Irenreus goes on : " I lie blessed Apostles, having founded and in 
structed the Church, gave in charge the Episcopate, for the admin 
istration 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 
lininitisxhiit is 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 Lightfoot. In these fragments there is a tone of authority fully 
explaining the words of St. Irenoeus. He then traces the succession 
of the Bishops of Rome to his own day, and adds : " This demon 
stration 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 
s&lt;:eu our Lord, but he also was constituted 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 nobly 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 re 
ceive from it the water of life." " But whatif 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 entrusted the Churches ? 
To which order (of tradition) many barbarous nations yield assent, 
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 

I have quoted these passages at length, not so much as proofs of 
the Catholic Faith as to show the identity of the Church at its out 
set with the Church before our eyes at this hour, proving that the 
acorn has grown up into its oak, or, if you will, the identity of 
the Church at this hour with the Church of the Apostolic mission. 
These passages show the Episcopate, its central principality, its 
succession, its custody of the faith, its subsequent reception and 
guardianship of the Scriptures, its Divine tradition, and the charisma 
or Divine assistance by which its perpetuity is secured in the succes 
sion of the Apostles. This is almost verbally, after eighteen hundred 
years, the decree of the Vatican Council : Veritatis etfidei nunquam 
deficientis charisma.* 

But St. Irenaeus draws out in full the Church of this day. H 
shows the parallel of the first creation and of the second ; of the 
first Adam and the Second ; and of the analogy between the Incar 
nation 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 noble vessel, always full of youth, and making 
youthful the vessel itself in which it is. For this gift of God is in 
trusted to the Church, as the breath of life (was imparted] to the 
first man, to 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 God. For in the 
Church (St. Paul says) God 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 God ; and where the Spirit of God 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 
onto life at the breast of the mother (the Church), do not receive ot 
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 

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



from the faith of the Church lest they should be convicted, and re- 
ject the Spirit lest they should be taught"* 

Again he says : 

" The Church, scattered throughout all the world, even unto the 
ends of the earth, received from the Apostles and their disciples the 
faith in one God the Father Almighty, that made the heaven and 
the earth, and the seas, and all things that are in them," &c.f 

He then recites the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the Incarna 
tion, the Passion, 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 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 de 
liver (the faith), nor those in Iberia, nor among the Celt e, nor in 
the East, nor in Egypt, nor in Libya, nor they that are planted in 
the mainland. But as the sun, which is God s creature, in all the 
world is one and the same, so also the preaching of the truth shineth 
everywhere, and lighteneth 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 bath nothing over, 
and he that is able to say least hath no lack."J 

To St. Ireuaeus, 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 Tertulliau 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 assist 
ance 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 passages which are now before me ; or one such book as 
the Loci Theoloyid of Melchior Canus will suffice to show the con 
tinuity and identity of the tradition of St. Irenaeus and the tradition 

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

t Lib. i. cup. x. 

J St. Irenseus, lib. i. o. x. 


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 man 
kind, 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 Diviue 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 Sauctiner 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. t " The 
Him not, nor kuoweth Him ; but you shall know Him, because He 
shall abide with you and shall be in you."| St. Paul in the Epistle 
to thd Ephesians describes the Church as a body of which the Head 
is in heaven, an t 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 Diviue guidance of the truth. But the presence and guidance of 
the Spirit of Truth is as full at this day as when St. Irengeus wrote. 
As the Churches then were witnesses, judges, and teachers, so is 
the i hurch at this hour a world-wide witness, an unerring judge 
and teacher, divinely guided and guarded in the truth. It is there 
fore 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 any infallible teacher among men ; and therefore 
they return to the types and shadows of the Law before the Incar 
nation, when the Head was nofcyet 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. Irenseus ; but 
the eighteen hundred years of which you have said nothing were 
ages of declension, disorder, superstition, demoralization." I will 
answer by a question : was not this foretold ? Was not the Church 

St. John, xvi.7. 

tlbid. xiv. 16. 

tSt. John, xiv. 16,17. 


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 God 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, sanctity, 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 sanctity. 
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 institution, of voluntary aggre 
gation 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 be 
lieve 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 ad 
vent and office of the Holy Ghost, or in the nature and sacra 
mental action of the Church. It is the visible means and pledge 
of light and of sanctilication to all who do not bar their intel 
lect and their will against its inward and spiritual grace. J 1 e 
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 firma 
ment. As the source of sautitication, it is inexhaustible as the 
River 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 sanc 
tity of the Church is no more affected by human sins than was 
Baptism by the hypocrisy of Simon Magus. The Divine founda 
tion, and office, and mission of the Church is a part of Christian 
ity. 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 hell shall not prevail against it ;" " As the Father has 


sent Me, I also send you f "* " I dispose to you, as My Father hath 
disposed to Me, a kingdom ;"f " 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 ;"|| " When the days of Pentecost were accom 
plished 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 ;"** " It seemed good to the 
Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no other burdens, "ft But 
who denys that the Apostles claimed a Divine mission ? and who 
can deny that the Catholic and Roman Church from St. Irenseus 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 per 
petual 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 S tncti. 

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 truth 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 possibiiitatem 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 possibil 
ity of nature. 

3. That the Church has always claimed a Divine origin and a 
Divine office and authority in virtue of a perpetual Divine assist 
ance. 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 ini allible. 

* St. John, xx. 21. 

t St. Luke, xxii, 29. 

t St. Matthew, xxviii. 18, 19. 

St. Luke, x 10. 

II ISt. Matthew, xxviii. 20. 

** Acts, ii. 1-5. 

ft Acts, xv. 28. 


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 reason 
able, creditable 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 assistance 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 assistance, 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 de 
fined adds to its treasure. It narrows the field of error and enlarges 
the inheritance of truth. The world and the Church are ever mov 
ing 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 
assistance 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. 

Card. Archbishop of Westminster. 



Superstition ** has ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision." 


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 iavolved 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. 
All have the same interest, whether they know it or not, in the 
establishment of facts. All have the same to gain, the same to 
lose. He loads the dice against himself who scores a point against 
the righfc. 

Absolute honesty is to the intellectual perception what light is to 
the eyes. Prejudice and passion cloud the mind. In each disputant 
should be blended the advocate and judge. 

In this spirit, having in view only the ascertainment of the truth, 
let us examine the arguments, or rather the statements and con 
clusions, of Cardinal Manning. 

The proposition is that " The Church itself, by its marvelous 
propagation, it* eminent sanctity, its inexhaustible fruitf ulness in 
all good things, its catholic unity and invincible stability, is a vaafc 


and perpetual motive of credibility, and an irrefragable witness of 
its own divine legation." 

The reasons given as supporting this proposition, are : 

That the Catholic Church interpenetrates all the nations of the 
civilized world; that it is extranational and independent in a super- 
national unity ; that it is the same in every place ; that it speaks all 
languages in the civilized world; that it is obedient to one head; 
that as many as seven hundred bishops have knelt before the pope ; 
that pilgrims from all nations have brought gifts to Rome, and that 
all these things set forth in the most self evident way the unity and 
universality of the Roman Church. 

It is also asserted that " men see the Head of the Church year 
by year speaking to the nations of the world, treating with Empires 
Republics and Governments;" that " there is no other man on earth 
that can so bear himself," and that " neither from Canterbury nor 
from Constantinople can such a voice go forth to which rulers and 
people listen." 

It is also claimed that the Catholic Church has enlightened and 
purified the world ; that it has given us the peace and purity of 
domestic life ; that it has destroyed idolatry and demonology ; that 
it gave us a body of law from a higher source than man; that it has 
p oduced the civilization of Christendom ; that the popes were the 
greatest of statesmen and rulers ; that celibacy is better than mar 
riage, aud that the revolutions and reformations of the last three 
hundred years have been destructive and calamitous. 

We will examine these assertions as well as some others. 

No one will dispute that the Catholic Church is the best witness 
of its own existence. The same is true of every thing that exists 
of every church, great and small, of every man, and of every 

But it is contended that the marvelous growth or propagation of 
the Church is evidence of its divine origin. Can it be said that 
success is supernatural? All success in this world is relative. 
Majorities are n r t necessarily right. If anything is known if 
anything can be known we are sure that very large bodies of men 
have frequently been wrong. We believe in what is called the 
progress of mankind. Progress, for the most part, consists in find 
ing new truths and getting rid of old errors that is to say, getting 
nearer and nearer in harmony with the facts of nature, seeing with 
greater clearness the conditions of well-being 

There is no nation in which a majority leads the way. In the 
have been centuries in which the light seemed to emanate only from 
a handful of men, while the rest of the world was enveloped in dark 
ness. Some great man leads the way he becomes the morning 
star, the prophet of a coming day. Afterwards, many millions 
either divine origin or supernatural aid. 


We know, if we know anything, that wisdom has often been 
trampled beneath the feet of the multitude, We know that the 
torch of science has been blown out by the breath of the hydra- 
headed. We know that the whole intellectual heaven has been 
darkened again and again. The truth or falsity of a proposition 
cannot be determined by ascertaining the number of those who 
assert, or of those who deny. 

If the marvelous propagation of the Catholic Church proves its 
divine origin, what shall we say of the marvelous propagation of 
Mohammedanism ? 

Nothing can be clearer than that Christianity arose out of the 
ruins of the Roman Empire that is to say, the ruins of Paganism. 
And it is equally clear that Mohammedanism arose out of the wreck 
and ruin of Catholicism. 

After Mohammed came upon the stage, " Christianity was forever 
expelled from its most glorious sea f s from Palestine, the scene of 
its most sacred recollections ; from Asia Minor, that of its first 
churches ; from Egypt, whence issued the great doctrine of Trini 
tarian Orthodoxy, and from Carthage, who imposed her belief on 
Europe." Before that time " the ecclesiastical chiefs of Rome, of 
Constantinople, and of Alexandria were engaged in a desperate 
struggle for supremacy, carrying out their purposes by weapons 
and in ways revolting to the conscience of man. Bishops were con 
cerned in assassinations, poisonings, adulteries, Windings, riots, 
treasons, civil war. Patriarchs and primates were excommunicating 
and anathematizing one another in their rivalries for earthly power 
bribing eunuchs with gold and courtesans and royal females with 
concessions of episcopal love. Among legions of monks who carried 
terror into the imperial armies and riot into the great cities arose 
hideous clamors for theological dogmas, but never a voice for 
intellectual liberty or the outraged rights of man. 

" Under these circumstances, amid these atrecities and crimes, 
Mohammed arose, and raised his own nation from Fetichism, the 
adoration of the meteoric stone, and from the basest idol worship, 
and irrevocably wrenched from Christianity more than half and 
that by far the best half of her possessions, since it included the 
Holy Land, the birth-place of the Christian faith, and Africa, which 
had imparted to it its Latin form ; and now, after a lapse of more 
than a thousand years that continent, and a very large part of Asia, 
remain permanently attached to the Arabian doctrine." 

It may be interesting in this connection to say that the Moham 
medan now proves the divine mission of his Apostle by appealing to 
the marvelous propagation of the faith. If the argument is good in 
the mouth of a Catholic, is it not good in the mouth of a Moslem ? 
Let us see if it is not better. 

According to Cardinal Manning, the Catholic Church triumphed 
only over the institutions of men triumphed only over religions 
that had been established by men, by wicked and ignorant men. 
But Mohammed triumphed not only over the religions of men, but 


over the religion of God. This ignorant driver of camels, this poor, 
unknown, unlettered boy, unassisted by God, unenlightened by 
supernatural means, drove the armies of the true cross before him 
as the winter s storm drives withered leaves. At his name, priests, 
bishops and cardinals fled with white faces popes trembled, and 
the armies of God, fighting for the true faith, were conquered on a 
thousand fields. 

If the success of a church proves its divinity, and after that an 
other church arises and defeats the first, what does that prove ? 

Let us put this question in a milder form : Suppose the second 
church lives and flourishes in spite of the first, what does that 
prove ? 

succeeds and grows, it is absolutely certain that the conditions are 
favorable. If it spreads rapidly, it simply shows that the condi 
tions are exceediugly favorable, and that the forces in opposition are 
weak and easily overcome. 

Here, in my own country, within a few years, has arisen a new 
religion. Its foundations were laid in an intelligent community, 
having had the advantages of what is known as modern civilization. 
Yet this now faith founded on the grossest absurdities, as gross as 
we find in the Scriptures in spite of all opposition began to grow, 
and kept growing. It was subjected to persecution, and the per 
secution increased its strength. It was driven from State to State 
by the believers of universal love, until it left what was called 
civilization, crossed the wide plains and took up its abode on the 
shores of tho Great Salt Lake. It continued to grow. Its founder, 
as he declared, had frequent conversations with God, and received 
directions from that source. Hundreds of miracles were performed 
multitudes upon the desert were miraculously fed the sick were 
cured the dead were raised, and the Mormon Church continued to 
grow, until now, less than half a century after the death of its 
founder, there are several hundred thousand believers in the new 

Do you think that men enough could join this church to prove the 
truth of its creed ? 

Joseph Smith said that he found certain golden plates that had 
been buried for many generations, and upon these plates, in some un 
known language, had been engraved this new revelation, and I think 
he insisted that by the use of miraculous mirrors this language was 
translated. If there should be Mormon bishops in all the countries 
of the world, eighteen hundred years from now, do you think a 
cardinal of that faith could prove the truth of the golden plates 
simply by the fact that the faith had spread and that seven hundred 
bishops had knelt before the head of that church ? 

It seems to me that a " supernatural" religion that is to say, a 
religion that is claimed to have been divinely founded and to be 
authenticated by miracle, is much easier to establish among an ignor- 


ant people than any other and the more ignorant the poople, the 
easier such a religion could be established. The reason for this is 
plain. All ignorant tribes, all savage men, believe in the miracu 
lous, in the supernatural. The conception of uniformity, of what 
may be called the eternal consistency of nature, is an idea far above 
their comprehension. They are forced to think in accordance with 
their minds, and as a consequence they account for all phenomena 
by the acts of superior beings that is to say, by the supernatural. 
In other words, that religion having most in common with the 
savage, having most that was satisfactory to his mind, or to his 
lack of mind, would stand the best chance of success. 

the mind slowly developing, certain phenomena, always happening 
under like conditions, were called "natural," and none suspected 
any special interference. The domain of the miraculous grew less 
and less the domain of the natural larger ; that is to say, the com 
mon became the natural, but the uncommon was still regarded as 
the wonder of mankind there was no miracle about that ; but an 
eclipses are periodical, that they happen with the same certainty 
that the sun rises. It took many observations through many gen 
erations to arrive at this conclusion. Ordinary rains became "na 
tural," floods remained " miraculous." 

But it can all be summed in this : The average man regards 
the common as natural, the uncommon as supernatural. The edu 
cated man and by that I mean the developed man is satisfied that 
tdl phenomena are natural, and that the supernatural does not and 
can not exist. 

barbarian is egotistic enough to suppose that an Infinite Being is 
constantly doing something, or failing to do something, on his ac 
count. But as man rises in the scale of civilization, as he becomes 
really great, he comes to the conclusion that nothing in Nature 
happens on his account that he is hardly great enough to dis 
turb the motions of the planets. 

Let us make an application of this : To me, the success of Mor- 
monism is no evidence of its truth, because it has succeeded only with 
the superstitious. It has been recruited from communities brutal 
ized by other forms of superstition. To me, the success of 
Mohammed does not tend to show that he was right for the reason 
that he triumphed only over the ignorant, over the superstitious. 
The same is true of the Catholic Church. Its seeds were planted 
in darkness. It was accepted by the credulous, by men incapable 
of reasoning upon such questions. It did not, it has not, it can not 
triumph over the intellectual world. To count its many millions 
does not tend to prove the truth of its creed. On the contrary, a 
creed that delights the credulous gives evidence against itself. 


Questions of fact or philosophy cannot be settled simply by num 
bers. There was a time when the Copernican system of astrompny 
had but few supporters the multitude being on the other side. 
There was a time when the rotation of the earth was not believed 
by the majority. 

Let us press this idea further. There was a time when Chris- 
tianity was not in the majority, anywhere. Let us suppose that 
the first Christian missionary had met a prelate of the Pagan faith, 
and suppose this prelate had used against the Christian missionary 
the Cardinal s argument how could the missionary have answered 
if the Cardinal s argument is good. 

But, after all, is the success of the Catholic Church a marvel ? 
If this Church is of Divine origin, if it has been under the especial 
far more wonderful than its success ? For eighteen centuries it has 
persecuted and preached, and the salvation of the world is still re 
mote. This is the result, and it may be asked whether it is worth 
while to try to convert the world to Catholicism. 

Are Catholics better than Protestants ? Are they nearer honest, 
nearer just, more charitable ? Are Catholic nations better than 
Protestant ? Do the Catholic nations move in the van of progress ? 
Within their jurisdiction are life, liberty and property safer than 
anywhere else ? Is Spain the first nation of the world ? 

Let me ask another question : Are Catholics or Protestants better 
than Freethinkers ? Has the Catholic Church produced a greater 
man than Humboldt ? Has the Protestant produced a greater than 
Darwin ? Was not Emerson, so far as purity of life is concerned, 
the equal of any true believer? Was Pius IX., or any other Vicar 
of Christ, superior to Abraham Lincoln ? 

But it is claimed that the Catholic Church is universal, and that 
that its universality demonstrates its divine origin. 

According to the bible, the Apostles were ordered to go into all 
the world and preach the gospel yet not one of them, nor one of 
their converts at any time, nor one of the Vicars of God, for fifteen 
hundred years afterward, knew of the existence of the Western 
Hemisphere. During all that time, can it be said that the Catholic 
Church was universal ? At the close of the fifteenth century, there 
was one half of the world in which the Catholic faith had never been 
preached, and in the other half not one person in ten had ever 
heard of it, and of those who had hear.l of it, not one in ten believed 
it. Certainly the Catholic Church was not then universal. 

Is it universal now ? What impression has Catholicism made 
upon the many millions of China, of Japan, of India, of Africa? 
Can it truthfully be said that the Catholic Church is now universal ? 
When any church becomes universal, it will be the only church. 
There cannot be two universal church ss, neither can there be one 
universal church and any other. 

The Cardinal next tries to prove that the Catholic Church is 
divine, " by its eminent sanctity and its inexhaustible fruitfulness in 
all good things." 


And here let me admit that there are many millions of good 
Catholics that is, of good men and women who are Catholics It 
is unnecessary to charge universal dishonesty or hypocrisy, for the 
reason that this would he only a kind of personality. Many thou 
sands of heroes have died in defence of the faith, and millions of 
Catholics have killed and been killed for the sake of their religion. 
And here it may be well enough to say that martyrdom does not. 
even tend to prove the truth of a religion. The man who dies in 
flames, standing by what he believes to be true, establishes, not the 
truth of what he believes, but his sin arity. 

Without calling in question the intentions of the Catbolic Church, 
we can ascertain whether it has been inexhaustibly fruitful in all 
good things," and whether it has been " eminent for its sanctity." 

In the first place, nothing can be better than goodness. Nothing 
is more sacred, or can be more sacred, than the well-being of man. 
All things that tend to increase o r preserve the happiness of the 
human race are good that is to say, they are sacred. All things 
that tend to the destruction of man s well-being, that tend to his 
unhappiness, are bad, no matter by whom they are taught or done. 
It is perfectly certain that the Catholic Church has taught, and 
still teaches, that intellectual liberty is dangerous that it should 
not be allowed. It was driven to taken this position because it had 
taken another. It taught, and still teaches, that a certain belief is 
necessary to salvation. It has always known that investigation and 
inquiry led, or might lead, to doubt ; that doubt leads, or may lead, 
to heresy, and that heresy leads to hell. In other words, the 
Catholic Church has something more important than this world, 
more important than the well-being of man here. It regards this 
life as an opportunity for joining that Church, for accepting that 
creed, and for the saving of your soul. 

If the Catholic Church is right in its premises, it is right in its 
conclusion. If it is necessary to believe the Catholic creed in order 
to obtain eternal joy, then, of course, nothing else in this world is, 
comparatively speaking, of the slightest importance. Consequently, 
the Catholic Church has been, and still is, the enemy of intellectual 
freedom, of investigation, of inquiry in other words, the enemy of 
progress in secular things. 

The result of this was an effort to compel all men to accept the 
belief necessary to salvation. This effort naturally divided itself 
into persuasion and persecution. 

It will be admitted that the good man is kind, merciful, chari 
table, forgiving and just. A church must be judged by the same 
standard. Has the Church been merciful? Has it been " fruitful 
in the good things " of justice, charity and forgiveness ? Can a good 
man, believing a good doctrine, persecute for opinion s sake ? If 
the Church imprisons a man for the expression of an honest opinion, 
is it not certain, either that the doctrine of the Church is wrong, or 
that the Church is bad ? Both cannot be good. " Sanctity " with 
out goodness is impossible. Thousands of " saints" have been the 


proves anything, it proves that the Catholic Church was for many 
centuries the most merciless institution that ever existed among 
men. I cannot believe that the instruments of persecution were 
made and used by the eminently good ; neither can I believe that 
honest people were imprisoned, tortured, and burned at the stake 
by a Church that was " inexhaustibly fruitful in all good things." 

And let me say here that I have no Protestant prejudices against 
Catholicism, and have no Catholic prejudices against Protestantism. 
I regard all religions either without prejudice or with the same pre 
judice. They were all, according to my belief, devised by men, and 
powerful and equally useless. I like some of them better than I do 
others, for the same reason that I admire some characters in fiction 
more than I do others. I .prefer Miranda to Caliban, but have not 
the slightest idea that either of them existed. So I prefer Jupiter 
to Jehovah, although perfectly satisfied that both are myths. I 
believe myself to be in a frame of mind to justly and fairly consider 
the claims of different religions, believing as I do that all are wrong, 
and admitting as I do that there is some good in all. 

When one speaks of the " inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good 
things" of the Catholic Church, we remember the horrors and atro 
cities of the Inquisition the rewards offered by theEoman Church 
for the capture and murder of honest men. We remember the 
Dominican Order, the members of which, upheld by the Vicar of 
Christ, pursued the heretics like sleuth hounds, through many 

The Church, "inexhaustible in fruitfulness in all good things," 
not only imprisoned and branded and burned the living, but viola 
ted the dead. It robbed graves, to the end that it might convict 
corpses of heresy to the end that it might take from widows their 
portions and from orphans their patrimony. 

We remember the millions in the darkness of dungeons the 
millions who perished by the sword the vast multitudes destroyed 
in flames those who were flayed alive those who were blinded 
those whose tongues were cut out those into whose ears were 
poured moulten lead those whose eyes were deprived of their lids 
those who were tortured and tormented in every way by which 
pain could be inflicted and human nature overcome. 

And we remember, too, the exultant cry of the Church over the 
bodies of her victims : " Their bodies were burned here, but their 
souls are now tortured in hell." 

We remember that the Church, by treachery, bribery, perjury, 
and the commission of every possible crime, got possession and con 
trol of Christendom, and we know the use that was made of this 
power that it was used to brutalize, degrade, stupefy, and "sanc 
tify" the children of men. We know also that the Vicars of Christ 
were persecutors for opinion s sake that they sought to destroy 


the liberty of thought through fear that they endeavored to make 
every brain a Bastile in which the mind should be a convict that 
they endeavored to make every tongue a prisoner, watched by a 
familiar of the Inquisition and that they threatened punishment 
here, imprisonment here, burnings here, and, in the name of their 
God, eternal imprisonment and eternal burnings hereafter. 

We know, too, that the Catholic Church was, during all the years 
of its power, the enemy of every science. It preferred magic to 
medicine, relics to remedies, priests to physicians. It thought more 
of astrologers than of astronomers. It hated geologists it persecu 
ted the chemist, and imprisoned the naturalist, and opposed every 
discovery calculated to improve the condition of mankind. 

It is impossible to forget the persecutions of the Cathari, the 
Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Hussites, the Huguenots, and of 
every sect that had the courage to think just a little for itself. 
Think of a woman the mother of a family taken from her child 
ren and burned, on account of her view as to the three natures of 
Jesus Christ. Think of the Catholic Church an institution with 
a Divine Founder, presided over by the agent of God punishing a 
woman for giving a cup of cold water to a fellow-being who had 
been anathematized. Think of this Church, " fruitful in all good 
things," launching its curse at an honest man not only cursing him 
from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet with a fiendish 
particularity, but having at the same time the impudence to call on 
God, and the Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary, to 
join in the curse ; and to curse him not only here, but forever here 
after calling upon all the saints and upon all the redeemed to join 
in a hallelujah of curses, so that earth and heaven should reverber 
ate with countless curses launched at a human being simply for 
having expressed an honest thought. 

This Church, so "fruitful in all good things," invented crimes that 
it might punish. This Church tried men for a "suspicion of heresy" 
imprisoned them for the vice of being suspected stripped them 
of all they had on earth and allowed them to rot in dungeons, be 
cause they were guilty of the crime of having been suspected. 
This was a part of the Canon Law. 

It is too late to talk about the "invincible stability" of the Catho 
lic Church. 

It was not invincible in the Seventh, in the Eighth, or in the 
Ninth centuries. It was not invincible in Germany in Luther s 
day. It was not invincible in the Low Countries. It was not 
invincible in Scotland, or in England. It was not invincible in 
France. It is not invincible in Italy. It is not supreme in any 
intellectual centre of the world. It does not triumph in Paris, or 
Berlin ; it is not dominant in London, in England ; neither is it 
triumphant in the United States. It has not within its fold the 
philosophers, the statesmen, and the thinkers, who are the leaders 
of the human race. 

It is claimed that Catholicism " interpenetrates all the nations 


of the civilized world," and that " in some it holds the whole nation 
in its unity." 

I suppose the Catholic Church is more powerful in Spain than in 
any other nation. The history of this nation demonstrates the 
result of Catholic supremacy, the result of an acknowledgment by a 
people that a certain religion is too sacred to be examined. 

Without attempting in an article of this character to point out 
the many causes that contributed to the adoption of Catholicism by 
the Spanish people, it is enough to say that Spain, of all nations, 
has been and is the most thoroughly Catholic, and the most 
thoroughly interpenetrated and dominated by the spirit of the 
Church of Rome. 

Spain used the sword of the Church. In the name of religion it 
endeavored to conquer the Infidel world. It drove from its territory 
the Moors, not because they were bad, not because they were idle 
and dishonest, but because they were Infidels. It expelled the Jews, 
not because they were ignorant or vicious, but because they were 
unbelievers. It drove out the Moriscoes, and deliberately made 
outcasts of the intelligent, the industrious, the honest and the useful, 
because they were not Catholics. It leaped like a wild beast upon 
the Low Countries, for the destruction of Protestantism. It covered 
the seas with its fleets, to destroy the intellectual liberty of man. 
And not only so it established the Inquisition within its borders. 
It imprisoned the honest, it burned the noble, and succeeded after 
many years of devotion to the true faith, in destroying the industry, 
the intelligence, the usefulness, the genius, the nobility and the 
wealth of a nation. It became a wreck, a jest of the conquered, and 
excited the pity of its former victims. 

In this period of degradation, the Catholic Church held "the 
whole nation in its unity." 

At last Spain began to deviate from the path of the Church. It 
made a treaty with an Infidel power. In 1782 it became humble 
enough, and wise enough, to be friends with Turkey. It made 
treaties with Tripoli and Algiers and the Barbary States. It had 
become too poor to ranson the prisoners taken by these powers. It 
began to appreciate the fact that it could neither conquer nor con 
vert the world by the sword. 

Spain has progressed in the arts and sciences, in all that tends to 
enrich and ennoble a nation, in the precise proportion that she has 
lost faith in the Catholic Church This may be said of every other 
nation in Christendom. Torquemada is dead ; Castelar is alive. 
The dungeons of the Inquisition are empty, and a little light has 
penetrated the clouds and mists not much, but a little. Spain is 
not yet clothed and in her right mind. A few years ago the cholera 
visited Madrid and other cities. Physicians were mobbed. Pro 
cessions of saints carried the host through the streets for the pur 
pose of staying the plague. The streets were not cleaned ; the 
sewers were filled. Filth and faith, old partners, reigned supreme. 
The Church, "eminent for its sanctity," stood in the light and cast 


its shadow on the ignorant and the prostrate. The Church, in its 
" inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good things," allowed its children 
to perish through ignorance, and used the diseases it had produced 
as an instrumentality to futher enslave its votaries and its victims. 

No one will deny that many of its priests exhibited heroism of 
the highest order in visiting the sick and administering what are 
called the consolations of religion to the dying, and in burying 
the dead. It is necessary neither to deny nor disparage the self- 
denial and goodness of these men. But their religion did more than 
ail other causes to produce the very evils that called for the exhi 
bition of self-denial and heroism. One scientist in control of Madrid 
could have prevented the plague. In such cases, cleanliness is far 
better than "godliness;" science is superior to superstition ; drainage 
much better than divinity ; therapeutics more excellent than theo 
logy. Goodness is not enough intelligence is necessary. Faith is 
not sufficient, creeds are helpless, and prayers fruitless. 

It is admitted that the Catholic Church exists in many nations ; 
that it is dominated, at least in a great degree, by the Bishop of 
Rome that it is international in that sense, and that in that sense 
it has what may be called a "supernational unity." The same, 
however, is true of the Masonic fraternity. It exists in many 
nations, but it is not a national body. It is in the same sense extra- 
national, in the same sense international, and has in the same sense 
a supernational unity. So the same may be said of other societies. 
This, however, does not tend to prove that anything supernational 
is supernatural. 

It is also admitted that in faith, worship, ceremonial, discipline 
and government, the Catholic Church is substantially the same 
wherever it exists. This establishes the unity, but not the divinity, 
of the institution. 

The church that does not allow investigation, that teaches that 
all doubts are wicked, attains unity through tyranny, that is, mono 
tony by repression. Wherever man has had something like freedom, 
differences have appeared, heresies have taken root, and the divisions 
have become permanent new sects have been born and the Catho 
lic Church has been weakened. The boast of unity is the confession 
of tyranny, 

It is insisted that the unity of the Church substantiates its claim 
to divine origin. This is asserted over and over again, in many 
ways ; and yet in the Cardinal s article is found this strange mingling 
of boast and confession : " Was it only by the human power of man 
that the unity, external and internal, which for fourteen hundred 
years had been supreme, was once more restored in the Council of 
Constance, never to be broken again ?" 

By this it is admitted that the internal and external unity of 
the Catholic Church has been broken, and that it required more 
than human power to restore it. Then the boast is made that it will 
never be broken again. Yet it is asserted that the internal and ex 
ternal unity of the Catholic Church is the great fact that demon 
strates its divine origin. 


Now if this internal and external unity was broken, and remained 
broken for years, there was an interval during which the Church had 
no internal or external unity, and during which the evidence of 
divine origin failed. The unity was broken in spite of the Divine 
Founder. This is admitted by the use of the word " again. " The 
unbroken unity of the Church is asserted, and upon this assertion 
is based the claim of divine origin ; it is then admitted that the 
unity was broken. The argument is then shifted, and tbe claim is 
made that it required more than human power to restore the inter 
nal and external unity of the Church, and that the restoration, not 
the unity, is proof of the divine origin. Is there any contradiction 
beyond this ? 

Let us state the case in another way. Let us suppose that a 
man has a sword which he claims was made by God, stating that 
the reason he knows that God made the sword is that it never had 
been and never could be broken. Now if it was afterwards ascer 
tained that it had been broken, and the owner admitted that it had 
been, what would be thought of him if he then took the ground that 
it had been welded, and that the welding was the evidence that it 
was of divine origin ? 

A prophecy is then indulged in, to the effect that the internal and 
external unity of the Church can never be broken again. It is ad 
mitted that it was broken it is asserted that it was divinely restored 
and then it is declared that it is never to be broken again. No 
reason is given for this prophecy : it must be born of the facts 
already stated. Put in a form to be easily understood, it is this : 

We know thai, the unity of the Church can never be broken, be 
cause the Church is of divine origin. 

We know that it was broken ; but this does not weaken the 
argument, because it was restored by God, and it has not been 
broken since. 

Therefore, it never can be broken again. 

It is stated that the Catholic Church is immutable, and that its 
immutability establishes its claim to divine origin. Was it immu 
table when its unity, internal and external, was broken ? Was it 
precisely the same after its unity was broken that it was before ? 
Was it precisely the same after its unity was divinely restored that 
it was while broken ? Was it universal while it was without unity ? 
Which of the fragments was universal which was immutable ? 

The fact that the Catholic Church is obedient to the pope, estab 
lishes, not the supernatural origin of the Church, but the mental 
slavery of its members. It establishes the fact that it is a success 
ful organization ; that it is cunningly devised ; that it destroys the 
mental independence, and that whoever absolutely submits to its 
authority loses the jewel of his soul. 

The fact that Catholics are to a great extent obedient to the 
pope, establishes nothing except the thoroughness of the organiza 
How was the Kouian empire formed ? By what means did that 


Great Power hold in bondage the then known world ? How is it 
that a despotism is established ? How is it that the few enslave 
the many ? How is it that the nobility live on the labor of peasants ? 
The answer is in one word, Organization. The organized few 
triumph over the unorganized many. The few hold the sword and 
the purse. The unorganized are overcome in detail terrorized, 
brutalized, robbed, conquered. 

We must remember that when Christianity was established the 
world was ignorant, credulous and cruel. The gospel with its idea 
of forgiveness -with its heaven and hell was suited to the bar 
barians among whom it was preached. Let it be understood, once 
for all, that Christ had but little to do with Christianity. The 
people became convinced being ignorant, stupid and credulous 
that the Church held the keys of heaven and hell. The foundation 
for the most terrible mental tyranny that has existed among men 
of its power. It resorted to every possible form of fraud ; it per 
verted every good instinct of the human heart ; it rewarded every 
them confess ; it tortured witnesses to compel the commission of 
perjury ; it tortured children for the purpose of making them con 
vict their parents ; it compelled men to establish their own in 
nocence ; it imprisoned without limit ; it had the malicious patience 
did not commit, no cruelty that it did not practice, no form of 
treachery that it did not re ward, and no virtue that it did not perse- 
cute. It was the greatest and most powerful enemy of human rights. 
the destroyer of progress. It loaded the noble with chains and 
the infamous with honors. In one hand it carried the alms dish, in 
the other a dagger. It argued with the sword, persuaded with 
poison, and convinced with the fagot. 

It is impossible to see how the divine origin of a Church can be 
established by showing that hundreds of bishops have visited the 

Does the fact that millions of the faithful visit Mecca establish 
the truth of the Koran ? Is it a scene for congratulation when the 
bishops of thirty nations kneel before a man ? Is it not humiliating 
to know that man is willing to kneel at the feet of man ? Could 
a noble man demand, or joyfully receive, the humiliation of his 
fellows ? 

As a rule, arrogance and humility go together. He who in power 
compels his fellow man to kneel, will himself kneel when weak. 
The tyrant is a cringer in power ; a oringer is a tyrant out of power. 
Great men stand face to face. They meet on equal terms. The 


cardinal who kneels in the presence of the pope, wants the bishop 
to kneel in his presence ; and the bishop who kneels demands that 
the priest shall kneel to him ; and the priest who kneels demands 
that they in lower orders shall kneel ; and all, from pope to the 
lowest, that is to say, from pope to exorcist, from pope to the one in 
charge of the bones of saints all demand that the people, the lay 
men, those upon whom they live, shall kneel to them. 

The man of free and noble spirit will not kneel. Courage has no 
knees. Fear kneels, or falls upon its ashen face. 

The Cardinal insists that the pope is the Vicar of Christ, and 
that all popes have been. What is a Vicar of Jesus Christ ? He is 
a substitute in office. He stands in the place, or occupies the posi 
tion in relation to the Church, in relation to the world, that Jesus 
Christ would occupy were he the pope at Rome. Tn other words, he 
takes Christ s place; so that, according to the doctrine of the 
Catholic Church, Jesus Christ himself is present in the person of the 

We all know that a good man may employ a bad agent. A good 
king might leave his realm and put in his place a tyrant and a 
wretch. The good man, and the good king, cannot certainly know 
what manner of man the agent is what kind of person the vicar is 
consequently the bad may be chosen. But if the king appointed 
a bad vicar, knowing him to be bad, knowing that he would oppress 
the people, knowing that he would imprison and burn the noble and 
generous, what excuse can be imagined for such a king ? 

Now if the Church is of divine origin, and if each pope is the 
Vicar of Jesus Christ, he must have been chosen by Jesus Christ ; 
and when he was chosen, Christ must have known exactly what 
his vicar would do. Can we believe that an infinitely wise and good 
Being would choose immoral, dishonest, ignorant, malicious, heart 
less, fiendish, and inhuman vicars ? 

The Cardinal admits that " the history of Christianity is the 
history of the Church, and that the history of the Church is the 
history of the Pontiffs," and he then declares that " the greatest 
statesmen and rulers that the world has ever seen are the Popes of 

Let me call attention to a few passages in Draper s " History of 
the Intellectual Development of Europe." 

" Constantino was one of the Vicars of Christ. Afterwards, Stephen 
IV. was chosen. The eyes of Constantino were then put out by 
Stephen, acting in Christ s place. The tongue of the Bishop Theo 
doras was amputated by the man who had been substituted for 
God. This bishop was left in a dungeon to perish of thirst. Pope 
Leo III. was seized in the street and forced into a church, where 
the nephews of Pope Adrian attempted to put out his eyes and cut 
off his tongue. His successor, Stephen V., was driven ignomin- 
iously from Rome. His successor, Paschal I., was accused of blind 
ing and murdering two ecclesiastics in the Lateran Palace. John 
VIII., unable to resist the Mohammedans, was compelled to pay 
them tribute. 


" At this time, the Bishop of Naples was in secret alliance with 
the Mohammedans, and they divided with this Catholic bishop the 
plunder they collected from other Catholics. This bishop was ex 
communicated by the pope ; afterwards he gave him absolution be 
cause he betrayed the chief Mohammedans, and assassinated others. 
There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to murder the pope, and 
some of the treasurers of the Church were seized, and the gate of 
St. Pancrazia was opened with false keys to admit the Saracens. 
Formosus, who had been engaged in these transactions, who had 
been excommunicated as a conspirator for the murder of Pope John, 
was himself elected pope in 891. Boniface VI. was his successor. 
He had been deposed from the diaconate and from the priesthood 
for his immoral and lewd life. Stephen VII. was the next pope, 
and he had the dead body of Formosus taken from the grave, cloth 
ed in papal habiliments, propped up in a chair and tried before a 
Council. The corpse was found guilty, three fingers were cut off and 
the body cast into the Tiber. Afterwards Stephen VII., this Vicar of 
Christ, was thrown into prison and strangled. 

" From 896 to 900, five popes were consecrated. Leo V., in less 
than two months after he became pope was cast into prison by 
Christopher, one of his chaplains. This Christopher usurped his 
place, and in a little while was expelled from Rome by Sergius 
III., who became pope in 905. This pope lived in criminal inter 
course with the celebrated Theodora, who with her daughters 
Marozia and Theodora, both prostitutes, exercised an extraordinary 
control over him. The love of Theodora was also shared by John 
X. She gave him the Archbishopric of Ravenna and made him 
pope in 915. The daughter of Theodora overthrew this pope. She 
surprised him in the Lateran Palace. His brother, Peter, was 
killed ; the pope was thrown into prison, where he was afterward 
murdered. Afterward this Marozia, daughter of Theodora, made 
her own son pope, John XI. Many affirmed that Pope Sergius was 
his father, but the mother inclined to attribute him to her husband 
Alberic, whose brother Guido she afterward married. Another of 
her sons, Alberic, jealous of his brother John, the pope, cast him and 
their mother into prison. Alberic s son was then elected pope as 
John XII. 

"John was nineteen years old when he became the Vicar of 
Christ. His reign was characterized by the most shocking immor 
alities, so that the Emperor Otho I. was compelled by the German 
clergy to interfere. He was tried. It appeared that John had re 
ceived bribes for the consesecration of bishops ; that he had ordained 
one who was only only ten years old ; that he was charged with incest, 
and so many adulteries that the Lateran Palace had become a 
brothel. He put out the eyes of one ecclesiastic ; he maimed 
another both dying in consequence of their injuries. He was 
given to drunkenness and to gambling. He was deposed at last, and 
Leo VII. elected in his stead. Subsequently he got the upper hand. 
He seized his antagonists ; he cut off the hand of one, the noso s the 


finger, and the tongue of others. His life was eventually brought to 
an end by the vengeance of a man whose wife he had seduced." 

And yet, I admit that the most infamous popes, the most heart 
less and fiendish bishops, friars and priests were models of mercy, 
charity, and justice when compared with the orthodox God with 
the God they worshipped. These popes, these bishops, these priests 
could persecute only for a few years they could burn only for a 
few moments but their God threatened to imprison and burn for 
ever ; and their God is as much worse than they were, as hell is 
worse than the Inquisition. 

11 John XIII. was strangled in prison. Boniface VII. imprisoned 
Benedict VII., and starved him to death. John XIV. was secretly 
put to death in the dungeons of the castle of St. Angelo. The 
corpse of Boniface was dragged by the populace through the 

It must be remembered that the popes were assassinated by 
Catholics murdered by the faithful that one Vicar of Christ 
strangled another Vicar of Christ, and that these men were " the 
greatest rulers and the greatest statesmen of the earth." 

" Pope John XVI. was seized, his eyes put out. his nose cut off, 
his tongue torn from his mouth, and he was sent through the streets 
mounted on an ass, with his face to the tail. Benedict IX., a boy 
of less than twelve years of age, was raised to the apostolic throne. 
One of his successors, Victor III., declared that the life of Benedict 
was so shameful, so foul, so execrable, that he shuddered to describe 
it. He ruled like a captain of banditti. The people, unable to bear 
longer his adulteries, his homicides and his abominations, rose against 
him, and in despair of maintaining his position, he put up the 
papacy to auction, and it was bought by a Presbyter named John, 
who became Gregory VI., in the year of grace 1045. Well may we 
ask, Were these the Vicegerents of God upon earth these, who had 
truly reached that goal beyond which the last effort of human wick 
edness cannot pass." 

It may be sufficient to say that there is no crime that man can 
commit that has not been committed by the Vicars of Christ. They 
have inflicted every possible torture, violated every natural right. 
Greater monsters the human race has not produced. 

Among the " some twohundred and fifty-eight" Vicars of Christ 
there were probably some good men. This would have happened 
were selected by Christ himself, if they were selected by a Church 
vrith a divine origin and under divine guidance, then there is no way 
elected pope one murderer, one strangler, one starver this demon 
strates that all the popes were selected by men, and by men 
uttered without knowledge. 

But who were the Vicars of Christ ? How many have there 


been ? Cardinal Manning himself does not know. He is not sure. 
He says : " Starting from St. Peter to Leo XIII., there have been 
some two hundred and fifty -eight Pontiffs claiming to be recognized 
by the whole Catholic unity as successors of St. Peter and Vicars 
of Jesus Christ." Why did he use the word "some?" Why 
" claiming ?" Does he not positively know ? Is it possiblethat the 
present Vicar of Christ is not certain as to the number of his pre 
decessors ? Is he infallible in faith and fallible in fact. 


" If we live thus tamely, 
To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet, 
Farewell nobility." 

No ONE will deny that " the pope speaks to many people in many 
nations ; that he treats with empires and governments," and that 
" neither from Canterbury nor from Constantinople such a voice goes 

How does the pope speak ? What does he say ? 

He speaks against the liberty of man against the progress of the 
human race. He speaks to calurninate thinkers, and to warn the 
faithful against the discoveries of science. He speaks for the de 
struction of civilization. 

Who listens ? Do astronomers, geologists and scientists put the 
hand to the ear fearing that an accent may be lost ? Does France 
listen ? Does Italy hear ? Is not the Church weakest at its centre ? 
Do those who have raised Italy from the dead, and placed her again 
among the great nations, pay attention ? Does Great Britain care 
for this voice this moan, this groan of the Middle Ages ? Do the 
words of Leo XIII. impress the intelligence of the Great Republic ? 
Can anything be more absurd than for the vicar of Christ to attack 
a demonstration of science with a passage of Scripture, or a quota 
tion from one of the " Fathers "? 

Compare the popes with the kings and queens of England. In 
finite wisdom had but little to do with the selection of these mon- 
archs, and yet they were far better than any equal number of con 
secutive popes. This is faint praise, even for kings and queens, 
but it shows that chance succeeded in getting better rulers for Eng 
land than " Infinite Wisdom " did for the Church of Rome. Com 
pare the popes with the presidents of the Republics elected by the 
people ! If Adams ha 1 murdered Washington, and Jefferson had 
imprisoned Adams, and if Madison had cut out Jefferson s tongue, 
and Monroe had assassinated Madison, and John Quincy Adams had 
poisoned Monroe, and General Jackson had hung Adams and his 
Cabinet, we might say that presidents had been as virtuous as 
popes. But if this had happened, tho verdict of the world would be 
that the people are not capable of selecting their presidents. 


But this voice from Rome is growing feebler day by day ; so feeble 
that the Cardinal admits that the vicar of God, and the Super 
natural Church, " are being tormented by Falck laws, by Mancini 
laws and by Crispi laws." In other words, this representative of 
God. this substitute of Christ, this Church of divine origin, this 
supernatural institution pervaded by the Holy Ghost is being 
tormented " by three politicians. Is it possible that this patriotic 
trinity is more powerful than the other ? 

It is claimed that if the Catholic Church " be only a human 
system, built up by the intellect, will and energy of men, the adver 
saries must prove it that the burden is upon them." 

As a general thing, institutions are natural. If this Church is 
supernatural, it is the one exception. The affirmative is with those 
who claim that it is of divine origin. So far as we know, all govern 
ments and all creeds are the work of man. No one believes that 
Rome was a supernatural production, and yet its beginnings were as 
small as those of the Catholic Church. Commencing in weakness, 
Rome grew, and fought, and conquered, until it was believed that 
the sky bent above a subjugated world. And yet all was natural. 
For every effect there was an efficient cause. 

The Catholic asserts that all other religions have been produced 
by man that Brahminism and Buddhism, the religion of Isis and 
Osiris, the marvelous mythologies of Greece and Rome, were the work 
of the human mind. From these religions Catholicism has borrow 
ed. Long before Catholicism was born, it was believed that women 
had borne children whose fathers were gods. The Trinity was promul 
gated in Egypt centuries before the birth of Moses. Celibacy was 
taught by the ancient Nazarenes and Essenes, by the priests of Egypt 
and India, by mendicant monks, and by the piously insane of many 
countries long before the Apostles lived. The Chinese tell us that 
"when there were but one man and one woman upon the earth, the 
woman refused to sacrifice her virginity even to people the globe; 
and the gods, honoring her purity, granted that she should conceive 
beneath the gaze of her lover s eyes, and a virgin mother became 
the parent of humanity." 

The founders of many religions have insisted that it was the duty 
of man to renounce the pleasures of sense, and millions before our 
era took the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and most 
cheerfully lived upon the labor of others. 

The sacraments of baptism and confirmation are far older than 
the Church of Romt?. The Eucha ist is pagan. Long before popes 
began to murder each other, pagans ate cakes the iiesh of Ceres, 
and drank wine the blood of Bacchus. Holy water flowed in the 
Ganges and Nile, priests interceded for the people, and anointed 
the dying. 

It will not do to say that every successful religion that has taught 
unnatural doctrines, unnatural practices, must of necessity have 
been of divine origin. In most religions there has been a strange 
mingling of the good and bad, of the merciful and cruel, of the lov- 


ing and malicious. Buddhism taught the universal brotherhood of 
man, insisted on the development of the mind, and this religion was 
propagated not by the sword, but by preaching, by persuasion, and 
by kindnessyet it many things it was contrary to the human will, 
contrary to the human passions, and contrary to good sense. Bud 
dhism succeeded. Can we, for this reason, say that it is a super 
natural religion ? Is the unnatural the supernatural ? 

It is insisted that, while other churches have changed, the Catho 
lic Church aloue has remained the same, and that this fact demon 
strates its divine origin. 

Has the creed of Buddhism changed in three thousand years V Is 
intellectual stagnation a demonstration of divine origin? "When 
anything refuses to grow, are we certain that the seed was planted 
by God ? If the Catholic Church is the same to-day that it has 
been for many centuries, this proves that there has been no intel 
lectual development. If men do not differ upon religious subjects, 
it is because they do not think. 

Differentiation is the law of growth, of progress. Every church 
must gain or lose; it cannot remain the same; it must decay or 
grow. The fact that the Catholic Church has not grown that it 
has been petrified from the first does not establish divine origin ; 
it simply establishes the fact that it retards the progress of man. 
Everything in nature changes every atom is in motion every star 
moves. Nations, institutions and individuals have youth, manhood, 
old age, death. This is and will be true of the Catholic Church. It 
was once weak it grew stronger it reached its climax of power it 
began to decay it never can rise again. It is confronted by the 
dawn of Science. In the presence of the nineteenth century it 

It is not true that "All natural causes run to disintegration." 

Natural causes run to integration as well as to disintegration. All 
growth is integration, and all growth is natural. AH decay is dis 
integration, and all decay is natural. Nature builds and nature 
destroys. When the acorn grows when the sunlight and rain fall 
upon it and the oak rises so far as the oak is concerned "all 
natural causes" do not "run to disintegration." But there comes a 
times when the oak has reached its limit, and then the forces of na 
ture run towards disintegration, and finally the old oak falls. But if 
the Cardinal is right if "all natural causes run to disintegration," 
then every success must have been of divine origin, and nothing is 
natural but destruction. This is Catholic science : "All natural 
causes run to disintegration." What do these causes find to disin 
tegrate ? Nothing that is natural. The fact that the thing is not 
disintegrated shows that it was and is of supernatural origin. Ac 
cording to the Cardinal, the only business of nature is to disinte 
grate the supernatural. To prevent this, the supernatural needs 
the protection of the infinite. According to this doctrine, if any 
thing lives ana grows, it does so iu spite of nature Growth, then, 
is not in accordance with, but in opposition to nature. Every plant 


is supernatural it defeats the disintegrating influences of rain and 
light. The generalization of the Cardinal is half the truth. It 
would be equally true to say : All natural causes run to integration. 
But the whole truth is that growth and decay are equal. 

The Cardinal asserts that "Christendom was created by the 
world-wide Church as we see it before our eyes at this day. Phi 
losophers and statesmen believe it to be the work of their own 
hands ; they did not make it, but they have for three hundred years 
been unmaking it by reformations and revolutions. 

The meaning of this is that Christendom was far better three 
hundred years ago than now; that during these three centuries 
Christendom has been going towards barbarism. It means that 
the supernatural Church of God has been a failure for three hun 
dred years ; that it has been unable to withstand the attacks of 
philosophers and statesmen, and that it has been helpless in the 
midst of " reformations and revolutions." 

What was the condition of the world three hundred years ago, 
the period, according to the Cardinal, in which the Church reached 
the height of its influence, and since which it has been unable to 
withstand the rising tide of reformation and the whirlwind of revo 

In that blessed time, Philip II. was king of Spain he with the 
cramped head and the monstrous jaw. Heretics were hunted like 
wild and poisonous beasts ; the inquisition was firmly established, 
and priests were busy with rack and fire. With a zeal born of the 
hatred of man and the love of God, the Church, with every instru 
ment of torture, touched every nerve in the human body. 

In those happy days the Duke of Alva was devastating the homes 
of Holland ; heretics were buried alive their tongues were torn 
from their mouths, their lids from their eyes ; the Armada was on 
the sea for the destruction of the heretics of England, and the Mor- 
iscoes a million and a half of industrious people were being driven 
by sword and flame from their homes. The Jews had been expell 
ed from Spain. This Catholic Country had succeeded in driving 
intelligence and industry from its territory ; and this had been done 
with a cruelty, with a ferocity, unequaled in the annals of crime. 
Nothing was left but ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, credulity, the 
Inquisition, the seven sacraments and the seven deadly sins. And 
yet a Cardinal of the nineteenth century, living in the land of 
Shakespeare, regrets the change that has been wrought by the in 
tellectual efforts, by the discoveries, by the inventions and heroism 
of three hundred years. 

Three hundred years ago, Charles IX., in France, son of Catherine 
de Medici, in the year of grace 1572 after nearly sixteen centuries 
of Catholic Christianity after hundreds of vicars of Christ had sat 
in St. Peter s chair after the natural passions of man had been 
" softened " by the creed of Rome came the Massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, the result of a conspiracy between the Vicar of Christ, 
Philip II., Charles IX., and his fiendish mother. Let the Cardinal 


read the account of this massacre once more, and after reading it, 
imagine that he sees the gashed and mutilated bodies of thousands of 
men and women, and then let him say that he regrets the revolutions 
and reformations of three hundred years. 

About three hundred years ago Clement VIII. , Vicar of Christ, 
acting in God s place, substitute of the Infinite, persecuted Giordano 
Bruno, even unto death. This great, this sublime man, was tried for 
heresy. He had ventured to assert the rotary motion of the earth ; 
he had hazarded the conjecture that there were in the fields of in- 
fite space worlds more larger and glorious than ours. For these low 
and grovelling thoughts, for this contradiction of the word and vicar 
of God, this man was imprisoned for many years. But his noble 
spirit was not broken, and finally in the year 160J, by the order of 
the infamous Vicar, he was chained to the stake. Priests believing 
in the doctrine of universal forgiveness priests who when smitten 
upon one cheek turned the other carried with a kind of ferocious 
joy fagots to the feet of this incomparable ruan. These disciples of 
" Our Lord " were made joyous as the flames, like serpents, climbed 
around the body of Bruno. In a few moments the brave thinker 
was dead, and the priests who had burned him fell upon their 
knees and asked the infinite God to continue the blessed work for 
ever in hell. 

There are two things that cannot exist in the same universe an 
infinite God and, a martyr. 

Does the Cardinal regret that kings and emperors are not now 
engaged in the extermination of Protestants ? Does he regret that 
dungeons of the Inquisition are no longer crowded with the best and 
bravest ? Does he long for the fires of the auto da f6 ? 

In coming to a conclusion as to the origin of the Catholic Church 
in determining the truth of the claim of infallibility we are not 
restricted to the physical achievements of that Church, or to the 
history of its propagation, or to the rapidity of its growth. 

This Church has a creed; and if this Church is of divine 
origin if its head is the vicar of Christ, and, as such, infal 
lible in matters of faith and morals, this creed must be true. 
Let us start with the supposition that God exists, and that he is 
infinitely wise, powerful and good and this is only a supposition. 
Now, if the creed is foolish, absurd and cruel, it cannot be of divine 
origin. We find in this creed the following : 

he hold the Catholic faith." 

merciful, charitable and just. Creed is more important than con 
duct. The most important of all things is, that he hold the Catholic 
faith. There were thousands of years during which it was not 


and beat have beard of it, examined, and rejected it. Millions of 
the most infamous bave believed it, and because of their belief, or 
notwithstanding their belief, have murdered millions of their fellows. 
it as without it. We know that it is not necessary to believe it to 
be good, loving, tender, noble and self-denying. We admit that 
millions who have believed it have also been self-denying and heroic, 
and that millions, by such belief, were not prevented from torturing 
and destroying the helpless. 

Now if all who believed it were good, and all who rejected it were 
bad, then there might be some propriety in saying that " whoever 
Catholic faith." But as the experience of mankind is otherwise, 
the declaration becomes absurd, ignorant and cruel. 

There is still another clause : 

" Which faith, except everyone do keep entire and inviolate, 
without doubt, he si all everlastingly perish." 

We now have both sides of this wonderful truth : The believer 
will be saved, the unbeliever will be lost. We know that faith is 
not the child or servant of the will. We know that belief is a con 
clusion based upon what the mind supposes to be true. We know 
that it is not an act of the will. Nothing can be more absurd than 
to save a man because he is not inelligent enough to accept the 
truth, and nothing can be more infamous than to damn a man 
because he is intelligent enough to reject the false. It resolves 
itself into a question of intelligence. If the creed is true, then a 
man rejects it because he lacks intelligence. Is this a crime for 
which a man should everlastingly perish ? If the creed is false, 
then a man accepts it because he lacks intelligence. In both cases 
the crime is exactly the same. If a man is to be damned for reject 
ing the truth, certainly he should not be saved for accepting the 
false. This one clause demonstrates that a being of infinite wis 
dom and goodness did not write it. It also demonstrates that it 
was the work of men who had neither wisdom nor a sense of 

What it this Catholic faith that must be held? It is this : 

" That we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, 
neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance." 

Why should an Infinite Being demand worship? Why should 
one God wish to be worshiped as three ? Why should three Gods 
wish to be worshiped as one ? Why should we pray to one God 
and think of three, or pray to three Gods and think of one? Can 
this increase the happiness of the one or of the three ? Is it 
possible to think of one as three, or of three as one ? If you think 
of three as one, can you think of one as none, or of none as one ? 
When you think of three as one, what do you do with the other 
two? You must not "confound the persons" they must be kept 
separate. When you think of one as three, how do you get the 
other two ? You must not " divide the substance." Is it possible 
bo write greater contradictios than these ? 


This creed demonstrates the human origin of the Catholic Church. 
Nothing could be more unjust than to punish man for unbelief for 
the expression of honest thought for having been guided by his 
reason for having acted in accordance with his best judgment. 

Another claim is made, to the effect " that the Catholic Church 
has filled the world with the true knowledge of the one true God, 
and that it has destroyed all idols by light instead of by fire." 

The Catholic Church described the true God as a being who 
would inflict eternal pain on his weak and erring children ; de 
scribed him as a fickle, quick-tempered, unreasonable deity, 
whom honesty enraged, and whom flattery governed; one who 
loved to see fear upon its knees, ignorance with closed eyes and 
open mouth ; one who delighted in useless self denial, who loved 
to hear the sighs and sobs of suffering nuns, as they Jay prostrate 
on dungeon floors ; one who was delighted when the husband de 
serted his family and lived alone in some cave in the far wilder 
ness, tormented by dreams and driven to insanity by prayer and 
penance, by fasting and faith. 

According to the Catholic Church, the true God enjoyed the 
agonies of heretics. He loved the smell of their burning flesh ; he 
applauded with wide palms when philosophers were flayed alive, 
and to him the auto da i& was a divine comedy. The shrieks of 
wives, the cries of babes when fathers were being burned, gave con 
trast, heightened the effect and filled his cup with joy. This true 
God did not know the shape of the earth he had made, and had 
forgotten the orbits of the stars. " The stream of light which de 
scended from the beginning " was propagated by fagot to fagot, 
until Christendom was filled with the devouring fires of faith. 

It may also be said that the Catholic Church filled the world with 
the true knowledge of the one true Devil. It filled the air with 
malicious phantoms, crowded innocent sleep with leering fiends, 
and gave the world to the domination of witches and wizards, 
spirits and spooks, goblins and ghosts, and butchered and burned 
thousands for the commission of impossible crimes. 

It is contended that : " In this true knowledge of the Divine 
Nature was revealed to man their own relation to a Creator as sons 
to a Father." 

This tender relation was revealed by the Catholics to the Pagans, 
the Arians, the Cathari, the WaMenses, the Albigenses, the heretics, 
the Jews, the Moriscoes, the Protestants to the natives of the 
West Indies, of Mexico, of Peru to philosophers, patriots and 
thinkers. All these victims were taught to regard the true God as 
a loving Father, and this lesson was taught with every instrument 
of torture with brandings and burnings, with flayings and flames. 
The world was filled with cruelty and credulity, ignorance and 
intolerance, and the soil in which all these horrors grew was the 
true knowledge of the one true God, and the true knowledge of the 
one true Devil. And yet, we are compelled to say, that the one 
true Devil described by the Catholic Church was not as malevolent 
as the one true God. 


Is it true that the Catholic Church overthrew idolatry ? What 
is idolatry ? What shall we say of the worship of popes of the 
doctrine of the Real Presence, of divine honors paid to saints, of 
sacred vestments, of holy water, of consecrated cups and plates, of 
images and relics, of amulets and charms ? 

The Catholic Church filled the world with the spirit of idolatry. 
It abandoned the idea of continuity in nature, it denied the integ 
rity of cause and effect. The government of the world was the 
composite result of the caprice of God, the malice of Satin, the 
prayers of the faithful softened, it may be, by the charity of 
Chance. Yet the Cardinal asserts, without the preface of a smile, 
that " Demonology was overthrown by the Church, with the assist 
ance of forces that were above nature ;" and in the same breath 
gives birth to this enlightened statement : " Beelzebub is not 
divided against himself." Is a belief in Beelzebub a belief in demon- 
ology ? Has the Cardinal forgotten the Council of Nice, held in 
the year of grace 787, that declared the worship of images to be 
lawful ? Did that infallible Council, under the guidance of the 
Holy Ghost, destroy idolatry ? 

The Cardinal takes the ground that marriage is a sacrament, and 
therefore indissoluble, and he also insists that celibacy is far better 
than marriage, holier than a sacrament, that marriage is not the 
highest state, but that "the state of virginity unto death is the 
highest condition of man and woman." 

The highest ideal of a family is where all are equal where love 
has superseded authority where each seeks the good of all, and 
where none obey where no religion can sunder hearts, and with 
which no church can interfere. 

The real marriage is based on mutual affection the ceremony 
is but the outward evidence of the inward flame. To this con 
tract there are but two parties. The Church is an impudent in 
truder. Marriage is made public to the end that the real contract 
may be known, so that the world can see that the parties have 
been actuated by the highest and holiest motives that find expres 
sion in the acts of human beings. The man and women are not 
joined together by God, or by the Church, or by the State. The 
Church and State may prescribe certain ceremonies, certain for 
malities but all these are only evidence of the existence of a 
sacred fact in the hearts of the wedded. The indissolubility of 
marriage is a dogma that has filled the lives of millions with 
agony and tears It has given a perpetual excuse for vice and 
immorality. Fear has borne children begotten by brutality. 
Countless women have endured the insults, indignities and cruel 
ties of fiendish husbands, because they thought that it was the will 
of God. The contract of marriage is the most important that 
human beings can make ; but no contract can be so important as to 
release one of the parties from the obligation of performance; and 
no contract, whether made between man and woman, or between 
them and God, alter a failure of consideration caused by the wil- 


ful act of the man or woman, can hold and bind the innocent and 

Do the believers in indissoluble marriage treat their wiver better 
than others ? A little while ago, a woman said to a man who had 
raised his hand to strike her: " Do not touch me ; you have DO 
right to beat me ; I am not your wife." 

About a year ago a husband, whom God in his infinite wisdom had 
joined to a loving and patient woman in the indissoluble sacranieut 
of marriage, becoming enraged, seized the helpless wife and tore out 
one of her eyes. She forgave him. A few weeks ago he deliber 
ately repeated this frightful crime, leaving his victim totally blind. 
Would it not have been better if man, before the poor woman was 
blinded, had put asunder whom God had joined together ? Thou 
sands of husbands, who insist that marriage is indissoluble, are the 
beaters of wives. 

The law of the Church has created neither the purity nor the 
peace of domestic life. Back of all the churches is human affection. 
Back of all theologies is tbe love of the human heart. Back of all 
your priests and creeds is the adoration of the one woman by the 
one man, and of the one man by the one womau. Back of your 
faith is the fireside, back of your folly is the family ; and back of 
all your holy mistakes and your sacred absurdities is the love of hus 
band and wife, of parent and child. 

It is not true that neither the Greek nor the Roman world had 
any true conception of a home. The splendid story of Ulysses and 
Penelope, the parting of Hector and Andromache, demonstrate that 
a true conception of home existed among the Greeks. Before the 
establishment of Christianity, the Roman matron commanded the 
admiration of the then known world. She was free and noble. The 
Church degraded woman made her the property of the husband, 
and trampled her beneath its brutal feet. The "fathers " denounced 
woman as a perpetual temptation, as the cause of all evil. The 
Church worshipped a God who had upheld polygamy, and had pro 
nounced his curse on woman, and had declared that she should be 
the serf of the husband. This Church followed the teachings of St. 
Paul. It taught the uncleanness of marriage, and insisted that all 
children were conceived in sin. This church pretended to have 
been founded by one who offered a reward in this world, and eternal 
joy in the next, to husbands who would forsake their wives and 
children and follow him. Did this tend to the elevation of woman ? 
Did this detestable doctrine " create the purity and peace of domestic 
life "? Is it true that a monk is purer than a good and noble 
father ? that a nun is holier than a loving mother ? 

Is there anything deeper and stronger than a mother s love ? Is 
there anything purer, holier than a mother holding her dimpled 
babe against her billowed breast ? 

The good man is useful, the best man is the most useful. Those 
who fill the nights with barren prayers and holy hunger, torture 
themselves for their own good and not for the*- benefit of others. 


They are earning eternal glory for themselves they do not fast for 
their fellow men their selfishness is only equalled by their foolish 
ness. Compare the monk in his selfish cell, counting beads and say 
ing prayers for the purpose of saving his barren soul, with a husband 
and father sitting by his fireside with wife and children. Compare 
the nun with the mother and her babe. 

Celibacy is the essence of vulgarity. It tries to put a stain upon 
motherhood, upon marriage, upon love that is to say, upon all that 
is holiest in the human heart. Take love from the world, and there 
is nothing left worth living for. The Church has treated this great, 
this sublime, this unspeakably holy passion, as though it polluted 
the heart. They have placed the love of God above the love of 
woman, above the love of man. Human love is generous and noble. 
The love of God is selfish, because man does not love God for God s 
sake, but for his own. 

Yet the Cardinal asserts " that the change wrought by Christianity 
in the social, political and international relations of the world " 
" that the root of this ethical change, private and public, is 
the Christian home." A moment afterwards, this prelate in 
sists that celibacy is far better than marriage. If the world could 
be induced to live in accordance with the "highest state," this 
generation would be the last. Why were men and women cre 
ated ? Why did not the Catholic God commence with the sin 
less and sexless ? The Cardinal ought to take the ground that 
to talk well is good, but that to be dumb is the highest condition ; 
that hearing is a pleasure, but that deafness is ecstasy ; and that 
to think, to reason, is very well, but that to be a Catholic is far 

Why should we desire the destruction of human passions ? Take 
passions from human beings and what is left ? The great object 
the intellect. To indulge passion to the utmost is one form of in 
temperance to destroy passion is another. The reasonable gratifi 
cation of passion under the domination of the intellect is true wis 
dom and perfect virtue. 

The goodness, the sympathy, the self-denial of the nun, of the 
monk, all come from mother -instinct, the father-instinct all were 
produced by human affection, by the love of man for woman, of 
woman for man. Love is a transfiguration. It ennobles, purifies 
and glorifies. In true marriage two hearts burst into flower. Two 
lives unite. They melt in music. Every moment is a melody. 
Love is a revelation, a creation. From love the world borrows its 
beauty and the heavens their glory. Justice, self-denial, charity 
and pity are the children of love. Lover, wife, mother, husband, 
father, child, home these words shed light they are the gems 
of human speech. Without love all glory fades, the noble falls 
from life, art dies, music loses meaning and becomes mere motions 
of the air, and virtue ceases to exist. 

It is asserted that this life of celibacy is above and against the 


tendencies of human nature ; and the Cardinal then asks : " Who 
will ascribe this to natural causes, and, if so, why did it not appear 
in the first four thousand years ?" 

If there is in a system of religion a doctrine, a dogma, or a practice 
against the tendencies of human nature if this religion succeeds, 
then it is claimed by the Cardinal that such religion must be of 
divine origin. Is it " against the tendencies of human nature " for 
a mother to throw her child into the Ganges to please a supposed 
God ? Yet a religion that insisted on that sacrifice succeeded, and 
has, to-day, more believers than the Catholic Church can boast. 

Religions, like nations and individuals, have always gone along 
the line of least resistance. Nothing has " ascended the stream of 
human license by a power mightier than nature." There is no 
such power. There never was, there never can be, a miracle. We 
know that man is a conditional being. We know that he is affected 
by a change of conditions. If he is ignorant he is superstitious : 
this is natural. If his brain is developed if he perceives clearly 
that all things are naturally produced, he ceases to be superstitious, 
and becomes scientific. He is not a saint, but a savant not a 
priest, but a philosopher. He does not worship he works ; he 
investigates ; he thinks ; he takes advantage, through intelligence, 
of the forces of nature. He is no longer the victim of appearances, 
the dupe of his own ignorance, and the persecutor of his fellow 

He then knows that it is far better to love his wife and children 
than to love God. He then knows that the love of man for woman, 
of woman for man, of parent for child, of child for parent, is far 
better, far holier, than the love of man for any phantom born of 
ignorance and fear. 

It is illogical to take the ground that the world was cruel and 
ignorant and idolatrous when the Catholic Church was established, 
and that because the world is better now than then, the Church is 
of divine origin. 

What was the world when science came ? What was it in the 
days of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler ? What was it when print 
ing was invented? What was it when the Western World was 
found ? Would it not be much easier to prove that science is of 
divine origin ? 

Science does not persecute. It does not shed blood it fills the 
wo Id with light. It cares nothing for heresy; it develops the 
mind, and enables man to answer his own prayers. 

Cardinal Manning takes the ground that Jehovah practically 
abandoned the children of men for four thousand years, and gave 
them over to every abomination. He claims that Christianity came 
" in the fullness of time," and it is then admitted that " what the 
fullness of time may mean is one of the mysteries of times and sea 
sons, that it is not for us to know." Having declared that it is a 
mystery, and one that we are not to know, the Cardinal explains 
it : " One motive for the long delay of four thousand years is not 


far to seek it gave time, full and ample, for the utmost develop 
ment and consolidation of all the falsehood and evil of which the 
intellect and will of man are capable. 

Is it possible to imagine why an infinitely good and wise being 
4 gave time full and ample for the utmost development and con 
solidation of falsehood and evil ?" Why should an infinitely wise 
God desire this development and consolidation ? What would be 
thought of a father who should refuse to teach his son and deliber 
ately allow him to go into every possible excess, to the end that he 
might develop all the falsehood and evil of which his intellect 
and will were capable ?" If a supernatural religion is a necessity, 
and if without it all men simply develop and consolidate falsehood 
and evil, why was not a supernatural religion given to the first 
man ? The Catholic Church, if this be true, should have been 
founded in the garden of Eden. Was it not cruel to drown a world 
just for the want of a supernatural religion a religion that man, 
by no possibility, could furnish ? Was there " husbandry in 

But the Cardinal contradicts himself by not only admitting, but 
declaring, that the world had never seen a legislation so just, so 
equitable, as that of Rome. Is it possible that a nation in which 
falsehood and evil had reached their highest development was, after 
all, so wise, so just, and so equitable? Was not the civil law far 
better than the Mosaic more philosophical, nearer just ? The 
civil law was produced without the assistance of God. According 
to the Cardinal, it was produced by men in whom all the falsehood 
and evil of which they were capable had been developed and con 
solidated, while the cruel and ignorant Mosaic code came from the 
lips of infinite wisdom and compassion. 

It is declared that the history of Rome shows what man can do 
without God, and I assert that the history of the Inquisition shows 
what man can do when assisted by a church of divine origin, pre 
sided over by the infallible vicars of God. 

The fact that the early Christians not only believed incredible 
things, but persuaded others of their truth, is regarded by the 
Cardinal as a miracle. This is only another phase of the old argu 
ment that success is a test of divine origin. All supernatural re 
ligions have been founded in precisely the same way. The credulity 
of eighteen hundred years ago believed everything except the 

A religion is a growth, and is of necessity adapted in some degree 
to the people among whom it grows. It is shaped and molded by 
the general ignorance, the superstition and credulity of the age in 
which it lives. The key is fashioned by the lock. Every religion 
that has succeeded has in some way supplied the wants of its 
votaries, and has to a certain extent harmonized with their hopes, 
their fears, their vices, and their virtues. 

If, as the Cardinal says, the religion of Christ is in absolute 
harmony with nature, how can it In; supernatural ? The Cardinal 


also declares that " the religion of Christ is in harmony with the 
reason and moral nature in all nations and all ages to this day." 
What becomes of the argument that Catholicism must be of divine 
origin because " it has ascended the stream of human license, 
contra ictumjluminis, by a power mightier than nature ? If " it is 
in harmony with the reason and moral nature of all nations and all 
ages to this day," it has gone with the stream, and not against it. 
If " the religion of Christ is in harmony with the reason and moral 
nature of all nations," then the men who have rejected it are un 
natural, and these men have gone against the stream. How then 
can it be said that Christianity has been in changeless opposition to 
nature as man has marred it ? To what extent has man marred it ? 
In spite of the marring by man, we are told that the reason and 
moral nature of all nations in all ages to this day is in harmony 
with the religion of Jesus Christ. 

Are we justified in saying that the Catholic Church is of divine 
origin because the Pagans failed to destroy it by persecution ? 

We will put the Cardinal s statement in form : 

Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by persecution, therefore 
Catholicism is of divine origin. 

Let us make an application of this logic : 

Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by persecution ; there 
fore, Catholicism is of divine origin. 

Catholicism failed to destroy Protestantism by persecution ; 
therefore, Protestantism is of divine origin. 

Catholicism and Protestantism combined failed to destroy Infi 
delity ; therefore, Infidelity is of divine origin. 

Let us make another application : 

Paganism did not succeed in destroying Catholicism ; therefore, 
Paganism was a false religion. 

Catholicism did not succeed in destroying Protestantism ; there 
fore, Catholicism is a false religion . 

Catholicism and Protestantism combined failed to destroy Infi 
delity ; therefore, both Catholicism and Protestantism are false 

The Cardinal has another reason for believing the Catholic Church 
of divine origin. He declares that the " Canon Law is a creation 
of wisdom and justice to which no statutes at large or imperial 
pandects can bear comparison ;" " that the world-wide and secular 
legislation of the Church was of a higher character, and that as 
water cannot rise above its source, the Church could not, by mere 
human wisdom, have corrected and perfected the imperial law, and 
therefore its source must have been higher than the sources of the 

When Europe was the most ignorant, the Canon Law was su 
preme. As a matter of fact, the good in the Canon Law was bor 
rowed the bad was, for the most part, original. In my judgment, 
the legislation of the republic of the United States is in many re 
spects superior to that of Rome, and yet we are greatly indebted tc 


the Civil Law. Our legislation is superior in many particulars to 
that of England, and yet we are greatly indebted to the Common 
Law ; but it never occurred to me that our Statutes at Large are 
divinely inspired. 

If the Canon Law is, in fact, the legislation of infinite wisdom, 
then it should be a perfect code. Yet, the Canon Law made it a 
crime next to robbery and theft to take interest for money. With 
out the right to take interest the business of the world would, to a 
large extent, cease and the prosperity of mankind end. There are 
railways enough in the United States to make six tracks around 
the globe, and every mile was built with borrowed money on which 
interest was paid or promised. In no other way could the savings 
of many thousands have been brought together and a capital great 
enough formed to construct works of such vast and continental 

It was provided in this same wonderful Canon Law that a heretic 
could not be witness against a Catholic. The Catholic was at lib 
erty to rob and wrong his fellow man, provided the fellow man was 
not a fellow Catholic, and in a court established by the vicar of 
Christ, the man who had been robbed was not allowed to open 
his mouth. A Catholic could enter the house of an unbeliever, of a 
Jew, of a heretic, of a Moor, aud before the eyes of the husband 
and father murder his wife and children, and the father could not 
pronounce in the hearing of a judge the name of the murderer. 
The world is wiser now, and the Canon Law, given to us by infinite 
wisdom, has been repealed by the common sense of man. 

In this divine code it was provided that to convict a cardinal 
bishop, seventy-two witnesses were required ; a cardinal presbyter, 
forty-four ; a cardinal deacon, twenty-four ; a sub-deacon, acolyth, 
exorcist, reader, ostiarius, seven ; and in the purgation of a bishop, 
twelve witnesses were invariably required ; of a presbyter, seven ; 
of a deacon, three. These laws, in my judgment, were made, not 
by God, but by the clergy. 

So too in this cruel code it was provided that those who gave aid, 
favor or counsel, to excommunicated persons, should be anathema, 
and that those who talked with, consulted, or sat at the same table 
with or gave anything in charity to the excommunicated should be 

It is possible that a being of infinte wisdom made hospit lity a 
crime ? Did he say : " Whoso giveth a cup of cold water to the 
excommunicated shall w ar forever a garment of fire ?" Were not 
the laws of the Ilomans much better ? Besides all this, under the 
Canon Law the dead could be tried for heresy, and their estates 
confiscated that is to say, their widows and orphans robbed. The 
most brutal part of the common law of England is that in relation 
to the rights of women all of which was taken from the Corpus 
Juris Canonici, "the law that came from a higher source than man." 

The only cause of absolute divorce as laid down by the pious 
canonists was propter infidelitatem, which was when one of the par- 


ties became Catholic, and would nob live with the other who con 
tinued still an unbeliever. Under this divine statute, a pagan 
wishing to be rid of his wife had only to join the Catholic Church, 
provided she remained faithful to the religion of her fathers. Under 
this divine law, a man marrying a widow was declared to be a 

It would require volumes to point out the cruelties, absurdities 
and inconsistencies of the Canon Law. It has been thrown away 
by the world. Every civilized nation has a code of its own, and the 
Canon Law is of interest only to the historian, the antiquarian, and 
the enemy ot theological government. 

Under the Canon Law, people were convicted of being witches 
and wizards, of holding intercourse with devils. Thousands perish 
ed at the stake, having been convicted of these impossible crimes. 
Under the Canon Law, there was such a crime as the suspicion of 
heresy. A mail or woman could be arrested, charged with being 
suspected, and under this Canon Law, flowing from the intellect of 
infinite wisdom, the presumption was in favor of guilt. The suspect 
ed had to prove themselves innocent. In all civilized courts, the 
presumption of innocence is the shield of the indicted, but the Canon 
Law took away this shield, and put in the hand of the priest the 
sword of presumptive guilt. 

If the real pope is the vicar of Christ, the true shepherd of the 
sheep, this fact should be known not only to the vicar, but to the 
sheep. A divinely founded and guarded church ought to know its 
own shepherd, and yet the Catholic sheep have not always been 
certain who the shepherd was. 

The Council of Pisa, held in 1409, deposed two popes rivals 
Gregory and Benedict that is to say, deposed the actual vicar of 
Christ and the pretended. This action was taken because a council, 
enlightened by the Holy Ghost, could not tell the genuine from the 
counterfeit. The council then elected another vicar, whose author 
ity was afterwards denied. Alexander V. died, and John XX.III. 
took his place ; Gregory XII. insisted that he was the lawful pope ; 
John resigned, then he was deposed, and afterwards imprisoned ; 
then Gregory XII. resigned, and Martin V. was elected. The whole 
thing reads like the annals of a South American revolution. 

The Council of Constance restored, as the Cardinal declares, the 
unity of the Church, and brought back the consolation of the Holy 
Ghost. Before this great council John Huss appeared and main 
tained his own tenets. The council declared that the Church was 
not bound to keep its promise with a heretic. Huss was condemn 
ed and^xecnted on the Cth of July, 1415. His disciple, Jerome of 
Prague, recanted, but having relapsed, was put to death, May 80th, 
1410. This cursed council shed the blood of Huss and Jerome. 

The Cardinal appeals to the author of " Ecce Homo" for the pur 
pose of showing that Christianity is above nature, and the following 
passages, among others, are quoted : 

" 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." 

These passages should not have been quoted by the Cardinal. The 
author of these passages simply says that the origin of the Christian 
Church is no harder to find and describe than that which unites 
men than that which has entered into the formation of speech, the 
symbol of their union no harder to describe than the origin of civil 
society because he says that one who can describe these can des 
cribe the other. 

Certainly none of these things are above nature. We do not 
need the assistance of the Holy Ghost in these matters. We know 
that men are united by common interests, common purposes, com 
mon dangers by race, climate, and education. It is no more won 
derful that people live in families, tribes, communities and nations, 
than that birds, ants and bees live in flocks and swarms. 

If we know anything, we know that language is natural that it 
is a physical science. But if we take the ground occupied by the 
Cardinal, then we insist that everything that cannot be accounted 
for by man, is supernatural. Let me ask, by what man ? What 
man must we take as the standard? Cosmas or Humboldt, St. 
Irenaeus or Darwin ? If everything that we cannot account for is 
above nature, then ignorance is the test of the supernatural. The 
man who is mentally honest, stops where his knowledge stops. At 
that point lie says that he does not know. Such a man is a phi 
losopher. Then the theologian steps forward, denounces the modesty 
of the philosopher as blasphemy, and proceeds to tell what is beyond 
the horizon of the human intellect. 

Could a savage account for the telegraph, or the telephone, by 
natural causes ? How would he account for these wonders ? He 
would account for them precisely as the Cardinal accounts for the 
Catholic Church. 

Belonging to no rival church, I have not the slightest interest in 
the primacy of Leo XII f., and yet it is to be regretted that this 
primacy rests upon such a narrow and insecure foundation. 

The Cardinal says that " it will appear almost certain that the 
original Greek of St. Irenaeus, which is unfortunately lost, contained 
either ra Trpurela, or some inflection of irpuTev u, which signifies 

From this it appears that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome rests 
on some "inflection" of a Greek word and that this supposed 
inflection was in a letter supposed to have been written by St. 
Irenaeus, which has certainly been lost. Is it possible that the 
vast fabric of papal power has this, and only this, for its founda 
tion ? To this "inflection" has it come at last ? 

The Cardinal s case depends upon the intelligence and veracity 
of his witnesses. The Fathers of the Church were utterly incapable 
of examining a question of fact. They were all believers in the 
miraculous. The same is true of the Apostles. If St. John was 


the author of the Apocalypse, he was undoubtedly insane. If 
Polycarp said the things attributed to him by Catholic writers, he 
was certainly in the condition of his master. What is the testimony 
of St. John worth in the light of the following ? " Cerinthus, the 
heretic, was in a bath-house. St. John and another Christian were 
about to enter. St. John cried out : * Let us run away, lest the 
house fall upon us while the enemy of truth is in it." " Is it pos 
sible that St. John thought that God would kill two eminent Chris 
tians for the purpose of getting even with one heretic ? 

Let us see who Polycarp was. He seems to have been a proto 
type of the Catholic Church, as will be seen from the following 
statement concerning this Father : " When any heretical doctrine 
was spoken in his presence he would stop his ears. " After this, 
there can be no question of his orthodoxy. It is claimed that Poly 
carp was a martyr that a spear was run through his body, and 
that from the wound his soul, in the shape of a bird, flew away. 
The history of his death is just as true as the history of his life. 

Irenaeus, another witness, took the ground that there was to be a 
millennium a thousand years of enjoyment in which celibacy 
would not be the highest form of virtue. If he is called as a wit 
ness for the purpose of establishing the divine origin of the Church, 
and if one of his "inflections " is the basis of papal supremacy, is 
the Cardinal also willing to take his testimony as to the nature of 
the millennium ? 

All the Fathers were infinitely credulous. Every one of them 
believed, not only in the miracles said to have been wrought by 
Christ, by the Apostles, and by other Christians, but every one of 
them believed in the Pagan miracles. All of these Fathers were 
familiar with wonders and impossibilities. Nothing was so com 
mon with them as to work miracles, and on many occasions they 
not only cured diseases, not only reversed the order of nature, but 
succeeded in raising the dead. 

It is very hard, indeed to prove what the Apostles said, or what 
the Fathers of the Church wrote. There were many centuries filled 
with forgeries many generations in which the cunning hands of 
ecclesiastics erased, obliterated and interpolated the records of the 
past during which they invented books, invented authors, and 
quoted from works that never existed. 

The testimony of the " Fathers " is without the slightest value. 
They believed everything they examined nothing. They receiv 
ed as a waste-basket receives. Whoever accepts their testimony 
will exclaim with the Cardinal : " Happily, men are not saved by 







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