Romanism

THE SUBSTANCE OF A LECTURE

BY THE REV. JOHN R. MACKAY, M.A., INVERNESS.

THE subject of this evening’s lecture is a sufficiently large one, but it is one of extreme interest. Whether we be theologians or patriots, we cannot afford to neglect it. If our purpose now were to discuss Romanism from a purely theological standpoint, we should have to take up such matters as (1) the Rule of Faith; (2) the Supremacy of the Pope; (3) Transubstantiation and the Mass; (4) the nature and number of the Sacraments; (5) Purgatory; (6) the worship of the Virgin Mary, and of Saints. These several divisions open up wide fields, but, in view both of our opportunities and of our circumstances, we content ourselves, meantime, with the mere mention of them. The present crisis, as I may call it, through which our Protestantism is passing suggests that the treatment of Romanism as a politico-ecclesiastical system may not be inopportune. For Romanism is as truly a political as it is an ecclesiastical system. In order, then, that we may have an intelligible arrangement of our statements, we shall take up the matter under the following considerations:—

I.—Explain the nature of those two conflicting theories concerning the constitution of the Church of Rome, which were long the subject of debate within that Church itself, giving at the same time a summary of their respective histories.

II.—Show how the past legislation of Great Britain has been affected by the predominance of one or other of those theories.

III.—Make an application to present times.

I.—For a period of about one thousand years, say from 870 to 1870, two theories as to what was the true constitution of the Church of Rome sought to assert themselves within that body. First, there was the Papal theory, otherwise known as Ultramontanism. This view asserts that the Pope is infallible; that all the other bishops of the Church of Rome derive their authority from the Pope; that the Pope, as Christ’s vicar, is King of kings and Lord of lords, that consequently it is his prerogative, if he sees cause and occasion, to dissolve the allegiance of subjects to their princes. With this view is associated indissolubly the right and duty of punishing obstinate non-Romanists with death.

The other view is the Episcopal or Gallican view. This latter view denies that Roman bishops derive their authority from the Pope; claims that a Council of the bishops of the Church is a higher authority than a single Pope, and opposes the view that the Pope has any right to dissolve the allegiance of subjects to their earthly princes. This Episcopal or Cisalpine view, which, however, has now no legal sanction within the Church of Rome at all, may be regarded as a low-Church view of Roman Catholicism, is altogether the more reasonable view, and if it had prevailed in that Church the Church’s existence would not have been such a menace, as it now actually is, to the peace of the world. Ultramontanes, who have it now all their own way at Rome, would wish us to believe that the Episcopal or Gallican view of the constitution of the Church of Rome had never any right to exist in that body. But whether it had any right to exist or not, it was certainly a view which found telling expression on various critical occasions in the affairs of that Church.

About a century before the commencement of the Reformation the Church of Rome found itself, for example, in the predicament of having at once three men each claiming to be the true Pope. The Council of Constance thereupon met, and, having taken up this matter, deposed all three, and set up a Pope of its own, Martin V., as the only legal Pope for the time being. It is hard to see how the Council could be justified in their action, or how the legality of Martin V.’s Popedom could be maintained, apart from the theory that a Council is the highest of all tribunals in the Church of Rome. This was the view which found such able expression at the hands of the Roman Catholic Bossuet, and the French Church generally, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. It was a view of the constitution of the Church of Rome which became very prevalent in Christendom towards the end of the eighteenth century. At that time it seemed as if practically all the bishops of Ireland and England had renounced the Papal or Ultramontane view. The Petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland which was read to the House of Lords, 25th March, 1805, emphatically announced “That it is not an article of the Christian Faith, neither are they thereby required to believe or profess that the Pope is infallible.” The hierarchy of the Roman Communion in Great Britain in 1826 declared on oath their belief, that it is not an article of the Catholic Faith that the Pope is infallible. In fact, about the time that the Emancipation Bill of 1829 was passed, the impression had become general that the claims to infallibility, to lordship over earthly kings, and the other conclusions of the Papal view, were things of the unenlightened past and that they would no more trouble mankind. Hallam gave expression to the common view, when, in his “History of the Middle Ages,” he gave it as his opinion, that, at the time of his writing (1818), almost all laymen, and most ecclesiastics took the Gallican view on the question of Papal infallibility. How strange is the irony of Roman history? The Church, whose motto is “ever the same,” at the present hour antagonizes Gallicanism as a view which a Roman Catholic can hold only at the peril of his immortal soul!

For the Papal construction of the Church’s constitution has also had its history, and, we may add, its triumph. Into that history, as it is occupied with the pre-Reformation period, we shall not now enter. It suffices for our purpose to remark that shortly after so large a proportion of the people of Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, and not a few in France and Italy, quitted the Church of Rome, under the leadership of such men as Luther, Calvin, Tindal, and Knox, there came into existence in the (to the extent described) evacuated Church of Rome the Order of the Jesuits. The Jesuits took up, as their own, the Papal or ultramontane view of the constitution of the Church of Rome in its most extreme form, and since the Reformation the fortunes of Ultramontanism and of Jesuitism may be said to coincide. Ultramontanism, with the appearance of Loyola, possessed and long maintained a dominant ascendancy in the Roman Catholic body, and it was through its principles being put in practice that the counter-Reformation in favour of Rome took place in Western Europe. It was Ultramontanism in the ascendancy which led to the religious wars of Holland, when it is reckoned more Protestants were slain than pagan Rome slew of Christians during the first ten persecutions which Church historians record. It was Ultramontanism in the ascendancy which accounts for the slaughter of St. Bartholomew’s Day in France. It was Ultramontanism in practice which led to the Thirty Years’ War in Germany. It was through this process of devastating wars that, in the mysterious providence of God, the Church of Rome could yet, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, reckon so large a proportion of Western Europe as its own.

This predominance of Jesuitism, and therefore of Ultramontanism, continued up to the time of Cromwell. From his time up to 1814 Jesuitism, and therefore Ultramontanism, was on the wane. The Jesuits had indeed become so troublesome in countries so Papal as France, Spain, and Sicily, that at the request of the kings of the kingdoms named, Pope Clement XIV. in 1773 suppressed the Order. In 1814, however, Pope Pius VII. revoked the action of Clement XIV., and formally restored the society to corporate legal existence. “When the unclean spirit,” said Christ, “is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” That expresses, we take it, perfectly how it has fared with the Roman Catholic Church and the Jesuit Order. For ever since the recall of the Jesuit Order in 1814, that Order has, in the just providence of God, been permitted to take, with all its diabolical teaching, larger and still larger possession of that Church and its government, until it may now be fairly maintained that Jesuitism has quite swallowed up Roman Catholicism. The triumph of Jesuitism—that is, of Ultramontanism—was the Papal Infallibility Bull of 1870. By that decree the Episcopalian theory of the constitution of the Church of Rome was simply crushed out of existence. Every Roman Catholic must from that time, on the peril of his soul, believe in the infallibility of the Pope. That means, of course, that now and henceforth the Pope is above Councils in authority; that he blasphemously claims to himself the title of King of kings; that he may dissolve a people’s allegiance to their king, if he sees fit; and besides, that he may visit repudiation of Romish doctrine, as being in this usurper’s view the worst form of rebellion, with death.

It may be asked how the party holding, before 1870, to Episcopal views of the Roman constitution acted when the Papal construction became once and for all the one legitimate view within that body. All the bishops of the Church of Rome who formerly stood up for the Episcopal view, ignominiously accepted the new interpretation. Practically all the Roman Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland—unmindful of their oath some forty years before—became the most devoted supporters of the new Papal claims. A small body of Roman Catholics, headed by Dr. Doellinger of Munich, rather than submit, seceded from the great Roman body and formed the Old Catholic Church. This last has not been a body of great consequence at any time, and notwithstanding the fact that a goodly number of Roman Catholics joined it at the Los Von Rom movement, its influence appears to be on the wane.

II.—I have dwelt long on the fortunes of those two views of the constitution of the Church of Rome because it is matter of history that the legislation of Great Britain anent Roman Catholics has been profoundly affected by the felt predominance of the one or the other of these views in that body. It colours even the terminology of our statutes, the system being generally in those statutes alluded to as “Roman Catholicism,” when those holding it were regarded as dominated by the milder view, as “Popery,” when regarded as dominated by the more extreme view. But to come to facts and things. Laws penalising Roman Catholics were, we know, passed in this country in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., most of all in the reigns of William and Mary, and of Anne, and to some extent in the time of George II. These penal laws had, doubtless, a very severe aspect. Not only were Roman Catholics by these laws excluded from the Throne and from our Houses of Parliament, but they were excluded practically from all places of trust, such as civil or military offices, practicing the law, or physics. It was not legal then for Papists to carry fire-arms; no Papist might teach a school or any child but his own. But these severe penal laws were passed by this country from a perfect understanding of the thorough Ultramontanism of the post-Reformation Church of Rome. Great Britain not only had object lessons of what the Papacy, if it had the power, would do, in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in the Thirty Years’ War, in the Religious Wars of Holland, and in the Spanish Armada; we had also a taste of it at home in the persecutions of the reign of Queen Mary, in the Gunpowder Plot, in the double part Charles II. sought to play, in the desperate efforts of James II. and the Pretender to win this country back to Rome. On this account, for about one hundred years—say from 1688 to 1788—were these penal laws affecting Roman Catholics in force. And this nation justified its action on the ground that the Roman Catholic Church was too evidently Papal and Ultramontane, that it interfered with the allegiance of subjects to their kings, and that, in order to bring back the reformed nations to its own fold, it shrank from no measure of blood-shedding. They had the facts of history, already alluded to, to bear them out in this view. Nay, more; when the Roman Catholic party in this country in 1789 pleaded for the removal of those penal laws, they acknowledged that the laws in question had been passed under the conviction that the Church of Rome was ultramontane and persecuting, and those Roman Catholics virtually admitted that if the constitution of the Church of Rome were what British legislation in the time of William, Prince of Orange, took it as being, the country would be justified in maintaining these penal laws in force. But then they went on to say that they now quite repudiated such a view of their Church as that wherewith they were being charged; and, as we have shown already, there was a good deal to be said for the opinion that Gallicanism or Cisalpinism had by this time (1789) come, in the Church of Rome, to take the place of Ultramontanism.

During the years 1788-1829 the British Legislature proceeded, step by step, to do away not only with the penal laws in the strict sense, but with the disabilities affecting Roman Catholics as candidates for membership in Parliament. The men who were responsible for admitting Roman Catholics into our Houses of Parliament in 1829 gave it as the ground of their action that Rome had changed, that it was not now the persecuting and overbearing ultramontane body it once was; and thus, in keeping with the ostensible grounds of their action, they not only continued to exclude Roman Catholics from the Crown, from the Lord Chancellorship of England and the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, but expressly pronounced the Jesuit Order as illegal in this country, and put the carrying in public procession of the Mass under the like ban.

A very considerable party in Parliament fought strenuously against the Emancipation Bill. The manner in which they stated their case bears out the truth of our thesis. In resisting the removal of Papal disabilities, they consistently did so on the ground that Rome had not changed, that it had not become the innocent thing which Papists now upon oath declared it to have become. In proof of their contention they pointed to the fact that so recently as 1814 the Jesuit Order, which was supposed to have been for ever suppressed, was resuscitated and reorganised, and that voices were heard from within the Roman Catholic body itself asserting still the old claims. Their position in opposing the Emancipation Bill found expression in the words of the then Earl of Buckinghamshire: “As long as the Roman Catholics acknowledge a foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the United Kingdom, it was impossible to intrust them with any large share of political power.”

Events have proved that those who opposed Roman Catholic claims, on the ground that Rome had not changed, understood matters better than the favourers of the Emancipation Bill. The Jesuit Order, which was recalled in 1814, have, as we have seen, since then been simply carrying all before them. Bernard Ward, President of the College of St. Edmund’s, in his “Dawn of the Catholic Revival in England,” shows, with a fulness which came almost with a surprise upon students of history a few weeks ago, that during those years quite a fierce struggle went on within the Church of Rome as to the legality or tolerableness of the position taken up by the British and Irish bishops of the period on the question of Papal Infallibility, and shows, further, that it was an attitude which was utterly repudiated at headquarters—I mean, at Rome.

The ultramontane party felt that it was a matter of life or death to them, and thus they took no rest until 1870 brought to realisation their cherished aims and wishes. And the Roman Catholics of this country, to their unending shame, so far from standing true to their word, simply bowed to Rome, and the very people who, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, had declared upon oath that they did not believe the Pope infallible, less than half-a-century afterwards accepted Papal infallibility as an article which no one could reject save on the peril of his soul. And when Gladstone, in his “Vatican Decrees,” pointed out to English Roman Catholics that they were, by their change of attitude on the question of Papal infallibility, making virtual perjurers before the country of their hierarchy, all that Cardinal Newman could say in reply was that we ought to have immediately conferred with Rome itself on the matter, for “that no pledge from Catholics was of any value to which Rome was not a party.”

III.—How stands the matter now? Politicians of the present time seem to us, from their public utterances, to have studied Romanism less thoroughly than did either those who favoured or those who opposed Roman claims in 1829. For example, the Royal Protestant Declaration—in which the doctrine of transubstantiation is rejected as untrue, the worship of the Virgin Mary is labelled as idolatrous, and the Pope’s power of dispensing with oaths is repudiated as not to be thought of—is held to be needlessly insulting to our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens, and the Prime Minister has promised some day to try his hand at making the Declaration more palatable to Roman Catholics; as if, forsooth, we could, with terms palatable to Roman Catholics, make ourselves assured of the Protestantism of our Sovereign. And again, Mr. W. Redmond has brought in a Bill into our House of Commons, whereby it is meant that the king shall no longer call transubstantiation an untruth, nor the worship of the Virgin Mary a piece of idolatry; whereby also the offices of the English Lord Chancellorship and the Irish Lord Lieutenancy shall be open to Roman Catholics, and whereby the Jesuit Order shall have a legalised existence in this country; and some assuming the name of statesmen regard the passing of this Bill into law as making for peace with our neighbours, although one would think that nothing could be plainer than that it is held at Rome that nothing can satisfy the Papacy short of absolute supremacy in this country, and that any agreement we make with the Roman Catholics of this country which comes short of conceding that supremacy is not worth the paper it is recorded on.

Of course it will be said that restrictions on any religion are inconsistent with liberal principles, and with the spirit of the times. That might be all very well if we had to deal with an organization that had in any noble sense imbibed liberal principles. Let us ask at headquarters what are the principles professed at the present day by the great Roman Communion? We have already referred to the nature of the Papal infallibility decree of 1870. Romish doctors, we may add, have ever since that year been endeavouring to carry out this postulate into its consequences with a consistency that is truly appalling. As Mr. William Arthur, in his “The Pope, the Kings, and the People,” puts it, “The whole world must have one head. No matter what may be the number of kings to whom he may be lord paramount, they must hold the sword under his sword, the sceptre under his crozier.” The Roman Church comes thus to be regarded as the one perfect Society, and whoever tries, by what they call “heretical” teaching, to disturb the order of that Society, is deserving of death. As Phillips, a standard authority with Papists, puts it: “The Church may tolerate the heathen, because they err through ignorance; she may tolerate the Jews as witnesses for the truth; but she cannot tolerate heresy, because this shakes the foundations of the entire faith.” And what punishment would the Roman Church, if she had the power, subject heretics, that is, Protestants, to? Let Marianus de Luca, whose work, “Institutions of Public Ecclesiastical Law,” had the warm approval of Pope Leo XIII., give the answer: “The Church is a perfect Society. Then the right of the sword is a necessary and effective means to the attainment of its end. The Church at first dealt more leniently with heretics, excommunicating them, confiscating their property, till at last she was compelled to inflict the extreme penalty. There is no other remedy: for the Church gradually advanced, and tried every means, first excommunication alone, then a pecuniary fine was added, then exile, FINALLY SHE WAS COMPELLED TO FALL BACK ON DEATH.* Heretics despise excommunication and say the bolt is powerless; if you threaten them with a pecuniary fine, they neither fear God nor respect men. . . . If you imprison them or send them into exile they corrupt with their words those near them. . . . So THE ONLY REMEDY IS TO SEND THEM SOON TO THEIR OWN PLACE.”*

* Capitals are the Author’s.

. Marianus de Luca then goes on to give quotations from Popish doctors and pre-Reformation Councils to shew that the consentient teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is that capital punishment should be inflicted on obstinate heretics. Space forbids us giving these quotations, which are sufficiently frank and alarming, like the foregoing. We have given what is ample to shew what the Church of Rome at its very core reveals to be its wish in regard to Protestants, if it only had the power.

Of course it will be said that it is ridiculous to think that the Church of Rome should exercise that power in Britain again, be its wish what it may. I am not assuming to say what may be. But we have to consider facts, and one of the most alarming facts in regard to opinion in Britain to-day is that almost the whole of the Episcopal Bench of the Church of England have been won over to sacerdotal views and sympathies. Ritualism, which just means an aiming at union with Rome, has since 1834 grown from a paltry handful to nearly ten thousand clergy, together with many of their people, at the present hour. Why should it seem impossible that that large and ever-growing body should fall a prey to the glamour of Rome’s visible unity and visible head, and so join the ranks of Rome? If that day comes, nothing would be more in keeping with Rome’s tenets than that true Protestants should be faced with the alternative of Rome or death.

One thing it is hoped this lecture has made plain is that our legislators in yielding to Rome’s claims at the present hour are abandoning principles which in 1829 appeared good not only to both parties in this State, but even to the Roman Catholics of that period. For it was conceded on every hand then that the alone ground on which concession could be granted was that Rome was not ultramontane. Ultramontanism more extreme than the world ever knew before is now professed by the entire Romish Church, and yet the Roman Catholic section after having swallowed their own words uttered on oath, have the audacity to ask us to make new concessions to our country’s natural enemy, and our legislators are blinded so as not to perceive the infatuation that has overtaken themselves.

Of course Mr. Redmond will say that he is not attacking the Protestant religion established by law in this country. But in Rome they teach that no religion except the Roman Catholic has the right of establishment, and the party that could without apology go back on its own oath, will find it an easy thing to forget Mr. Redmond’s promises now, when the opportunity to advance another step presents itself. And, in conclusion, how unutterable is the folly of that system which, if it had the power, would give us the alternative of accepting it or the sword!

I have been struck with that fact, as it unconsciously brought out by the Hon. Alex. N. Hood in the April number of the “Nineteenth Century,” in an article giving from personal observations, impressions of last Christmas’s earthquake as it affected a small town in Sicily, situated a few miles from Messina; and I think it worth while transcribing it here and now, for Rome is better seen in its native colours in Sicily than in Protestant Britain: “Shouts, wailings, imprecations, desperate cries of terror and of appeal to the saints, accompanied by the barking of dogs, came from below, and resounded from all quarters of the town. The still night suddenly became one of indescribable uproar; as if by magic windows were illuminated as the electric lights were turned on by the awakened sleepers. The clamour continued as shock succeeded shock. People precipitated themselves from the houses in costumes hastily improvised. A cry of ‘San Pancrazio’ was raised, and a crowd of awe-stricken people hurried, lanterns in hand, to the church of their patron saint on the side of the hill outside the town. There filling the church to overflowing, they prostrated themselves before the image whose help they had come to evoke. Outside in the arched court the people also knelt calling aloud for protection, muttering audible prayers, accompanied by sobs.

“The east reddened with the dawn. The earth shook at intervals. Later, more of the population, headed by the town band, hurried to the church. By common consent it was agreed that the saint should be taken to the town to assure greater protection by his presence. It was then daylight. Amid the clanging of bells, shouts of the people, and solemn music, the large figure of San Pancrazio was carried shoulder high by many willing bearers from the sanctuary into the ante-court, and thence up the steep path to the arched gateway of the town. The populace filled the streets. The slight balconies were perilously packed. The band played lustily, and the huge procession, gathering in numbers as it went, passed from one end of the town to the other.

“In the small space between two castellated gateways the image was lifted from the shoulders of its supporters, and placed on the ground. The many who helped to carry the heavy shrine wiped their foreheads, hot with exertion.” [What a source to expect help from!] “Then the procession was re-formed. As the saint was raised once more on the shoulders of his half a hundred bearers, and wended his way to his temporary abode in the mother church, patereroes roared, bells clanged, men cheered, and the throng pushed forward eagerly to serve as an escort and guard of honour. . . .

“The sacred burden was deposited before the high altar, ablaze with the light of many tapers. A gentle and intellectual young priest addressed the multitude from the pulpit. How had it affected him? . . . True to his calling and training, he sought to impress upon the people the teaching of the Church, and a proper observance of its precepts. Pointing to the sacred figure of the saint, he told them in eloquent words that the disaster was a direct visitation of heaven for their neglect. There could be no doubt of it. The following day was marked in the calendar as the name-day of the saint. No preparation had been made to honour him. Though the town was rich and prosperous they had neglected him for some years. The preacher blamed them for their laxity. . . . He ended by proclaiming a solemn feast-day to be held later in less troublous times, as a sure means of securing the saint’s favour, and propitiating his wrath.”

I don’t know if the Hon. A. N. Hood is a Roman Catholic, but he seems to be such. But our point is this: Isaiah in a memorable passage ridicules the folly of the heathen who could burn, to make cakes, a part of a tree, and take another part of the same tree and fall down before it to worship it. Was the folly of the heathen more conspicuous than the folly of Roman Catholicism as it is seen in its stark nakedness in its true home?

What is our duty in view of these threatened calamities? We ought, doubtless, to make our members of Parliament feel that apathy on this question, and least of all, friendliness towards Roman claims, cannot be tolerated. But before and after all such efforts, should there ascend a constant cry unto Him upon whose shoulders is the government, that it might please Him to save our dear native land from again giving its strength to “the Beast.”