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ginal word. Why then is a translation of it adopted, which excludes both repentance and amendment. If the original includes them, yet their translation does not. A man may do penance, and yet neither repent nor amend-neither be sorry nor better. These translators must have thought that repentance and amendment, though included in the original word, were of little importance, otherwise they would not have suppressed them in their translation. They must have judged them too insignificant to be taken notice of in their standard version! As for us Protestants, we think that to be sorry and to reform are very important parts of repentance.

But, besides repentance and amendment, they say the original word signifies "punishing past sins, by fasting," &c. This is their assertion. Where are their proofs? I would like to see some of them, for the dictionaries tell us another story. Well, they appeal to the Scriptures and the fathers, "according to the use of the Scriptures and the holy fathers." Here are two authorities, though of very unequal weight in my estimation. I wish these translators had said where the Scriptures use this word in their sense. I suppose they would, if they had been able. The truth is, the word is never so used. It does not include this idea of theirs. Punishing! Repentance don't mean punishing. Punishing past sins! This is no very eligible phrase. It is quite too figurative for an explanatory note. And punishing them, how? By fasting. How does fasting punish sin? I cannot see how any fasting punishes sin; but I am sure the Catholic fasting does not. Do you know what Catholics mean by fasting? Not abstaining from food. No, to

be sure. But changing their kind of food. Only abstain from meats, according to the prediction, 1 Tim. 4: 3, and you may eat what else you please. Fasting, according to the opinions held by Catholics in the region of country where I live, and I suppose it is so elsewhere, consists in reducing one's self down to the low diet of fish, (after all their kinds,) eggs, oysters, terrapins, with all manner of vegetables, and every variety of desert! That is fasting, because there is no butchers' meat eaten. You may eat what is sold anywhere else but in the shambles. Now I cannot see any thing very punitive in such fasting. A man's sin must be exceedingly sensitive to feel the infliction of such abstinence. I do not believe that sin is to be starved out of the soul in this way.

It is well enough sometimes to try the value of an explanation upon a passage in which the thing explained occurs, as for example, "God now commandeth all men every where to punish their past sins by fasting and such like penitential exercises." How does that sound? Do you really think that it is what the Lord meant.

33. A Fast-Day Dinner.

Some plain, honest people may be surprised at the heading of this article, because it implies a dinner of some sort on a day of fasting, whereas, according to their old-fashioned notions there should be no dinner

at all on a fast day. And truly fasting did formerly imply partial, at least, if not total abstinence from food during the period of the fast. It was thought that eating to the full was incompatible with genuine fasting. Indeed it was considered that eating at all broke a fast. I suppose no one doubts that Daniel, Nehemiah, Ezra, and the pious Jews in general, abstained entirely from food on their days of fasting. Who has an idea that they ate any dinner on those days? But mind has marched a great way since those men flourished. Whether its march has always been forward, I leave others to determine. Now, according to the views which prevail in that church which cannot go wrong, and which don't make mistakes even when she contradicts herself, abstinence is not essential to a fast; and a fast-day dinner, so far from being no dinner at all, as some puritanical christians still contend it should be, is a rare repast— one of the very best dinners in the whole week. I ought to say here that some Protestants have imbibed this doctrine of the infallible church, and very complacently practice according to it. We have a great many Protestants among us who do not protest as thoroughly or as strenuously as we think they should.

What put me in mind of this subject was the following incident. As I was sitting at table the other day, the topic of conversation was a very delicate preparation of eggs. I took no particular interest in it, until one of the company remarked that when she resided in the family of Mr..A., a distinguished Catholic, that dish was always a part of their fast-day dinner. This arrested my attention. Fast-day dinner! exclaimed I. Who ever heard of a dinner on a fast-day?

It is not possible they have a dinner at Mr. A.'s on fast-days! Dinner! replied the person, I never desire to eat a better. This made me curious to enquire what constituted the fast-day dinner at Mr. A.'s table. Well, said she, to begin, a rock fish dressed with eggs and butter, (no mean affair this where there is an appetite,) eggs prepared in two ways, and oysters. They dispense with vegetables I presume, said I. O no, she rejoined; and to this I readily assented, for I had forgotten myself in supposing that they dispensed with vegetables. Timothy does not prophecy of the antichrist that he shall command to abstain from vegetables, but only from "meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving." Well, surely, said I, they have no desert on their fast-days? How you talk, said she; they have the very best, and every variety. And do they call that a fast-day dinner? and do they suppose that they fast when they eat it? Certainly, said she. Well, I suppose it is because they eat very sparingly of what is set before them. You are mistaken, replied my informant, quantity has nothing to do in the matter. It is not the quantity eaten that constitutes a fast, but the kind. There the conversation ended, but my thoughts proceeded on. And this, thought I, is fasting. So the church teaches, and millions on their way to the judgment believe it. What dupes! how deceived to suppose that this is fasting. If not deceived themselves, what insulters of God, to endeavor to palm it off on him as fasting! A change of food is fasting! To eat differently on one day from what we do on other days, is to keep a fast! Admirable doctrine!

34. The Mass.
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There is a great deal of the phraseology of the Romish church which is not a little peculiar, not to sav outlandish. The Christian reader who is not very familiar with other authors than those who by inspiration wrote the Bible, does not know what to make of these terms when he comes across them in books professing to treat of Christianity. "The mass, the mass," he repeats to himself, "what is that?" He has read his Bible through and through, but he has found nothing about the mass there. He thinks it ought to be there, if it is any part of Christianity. Why should apostolical Christians have been silent on a subject on which those who claim to be their direct descendants are so loquacious? He does not even meet in his Bible with any doctrine or rite to which the word mass seems at all appropriate. He would not object to the word, if he could find the thing there. It never occurs to him that by the mass Catholics can mean the transaction recorded by Matthew in his 26th chapter, and by three other sacred writers, and which we commonly speak of as the institution of the Lord's Supper. But that is what they mean by it. Then, they tell us, the first mass was said. In the Douay Catechism we find these questions and answers: Q. Who said the first mass? A. Jesus Christ. Q. When did he say it? A. At his last supper. Here it is, question and answer for it, if not chapter and verse. The Biblical reader will please to bear in mind, whenever hereafter he reads the narrative of

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