BY SAMUEL JOHNSON. "SO SPEAK YE AND SO DO, AS THEY THAT SHALL BE JUDGED BY THE LAW OF LIBERTY." HE great religious question of the ages is that between Outward TH of our natural faculties to give us the knowledge of Duty and of God, or does such freedom come to nothing but delusion, and must we have supernatural teachers; creeds sent down from above ready made for our acceptance, not our investigation; sects, churches and books clothed with an authority that makes our liberty needless as well as wrong? What is Religion? Is it blind belief in a Power that comes in between our human life and God's divine, to unite what have no natural connection with each other, or is it the intimacy of the soul with its Maker and its own inmost Life? These are opposite principles which I indicate. They exclude each other. If one is true, the other is false. If our souls may be trusted in the search for truth, then we do not need and cannot have authoritative teachers, creeds, churches, books. If they may not be trusted, then we do need these. It is a question as to the structure of human nature itself. Are we so made that we must take religious truth from infallible teachers, or are we so made that, whatever we may think, no such infallible teachers are possible for us, and we must and do depend upon individual reason and conscience, and attain positive certainty just in proportion as we make these mature and free? The two principles exclude one another. If we are made for the one, then the other must disprove itself, and perish utterly. If that of Outward Authority prevail, all moral and intellectual growth is at an end, and the faculties will stiffen in death: for a final authoritative creed must at last be established, not to be changed by human reason, nor improved by human sympathies. If the principle of Inward Freedom prevail, the Religious Nature will affirm the access of every seeking soul to God, set aside the very idea of a supernatural Lord and Master, and refuse all pledges which compromise progress, and all associated action which cramps individual freedom. History is the field on which these principles contend. Human Nature is to decide which is in accordance with its laws. Before the answer could be given, it was necessary that society should learn its inmost needs, that man should gradually grow to self-comprehension. In past ages the principle of Outward Authority has been dominant. It has been represented in many forms, through many religions, each having its own creeds, churches, Christs. But the advancing experience of mankind has brought fresh sense of liberty and inspiration. The maturity of the spirit will not be fed and A Discourse preached May 14th, 1865, at the Free Church in Lynn, Mass. clothed like its childhood, nor dwell in its early illusions. It is the work of this age to test utterly the principle of Inward Freedom. Eighteen Christian centuries have settled conclusively, that the earlier principle is a failure. It has run through all its necessary stages. It has revealed its inevitable tendencies and stands convicted by its results. It began under the best auspices possible for such a principle. It began its decisive expression in the Proem to the Gospel of John, elevating to supernatural and even divine sovereignty over the human Mind, as the Onlybegotten Son and Incarnate Word of God, the purest Saint in history, the Man who best of all men that ever lived deserved to hold such authority, were it right that any should hold it. The Catholic Church is its history. It ends in the papal Encyclic Letter of December 1864, denouncing every form of liberty and every aspiration of civilized beings, in the name of Christ: -the Papal Encyclic, the laughing stock of Christendom. And Christendom may well laugh. But the Papacy is perfectly consistent with the principle of Outward Authority. It is Protestant Christendom only that is inconsistent with its own premises. This principle requires the organization of the whole race under one official Head, one authoritative Organ of Truth and Life. This necessity was at once recognized. Jesus of Nazareth, before his name had penetrated beyond a few cities of the Roman Empire, before he was regarded by Roman society as more than the leader of a Jewish faction, was declared by his followers the sole appointed Redeemer of Mankind, the official Representative and express Image of God on Earth. Through Him, as the Christ, prayers must be offered, from him doctrine descend, by him truth be certified, on him all religious union be based.* The Nicene creed, in perfect consistency with this, declared him consubstantial with the Father, and denounced the Arians, who believed him to be a created being. It took only three hundred years for the principle of Outward Authority to reach its doctrinal perfection. The practical organization of the Church on the same basis was a slower work, but proceeded steadily forward. Here too, the whole World must be consolidated under One Head, representative of the God-Man. This is perfectly consistent and necessary, as growing out of the very idea of an official Christ. The overseers of the earliest Christian Churches, called bishops, were appointed by the apostles, as representatives of their Head. Though this leaven of authority left them for a while equal, and allowed the voice of the people to be heard in the selection of their successors, it soon availed itself of the power of organization, and bound all the churches of a single city or a single province together, under the control of a single Bishop. Of these two classes of Bishops, in due time, the provincial became subordinate to the metropolitan. These last were originally of equal authority, each being entitled pontifex and pope. But they gradually yielded to that necessity of * In the 1st Epistle to Timothy, ii: 6; it is expressly defined, "There is One God, and one Mediator between God and Man, the Man Christ Jesus." a single Head from which they originated, and did homage to the Pontiff of Rome. The principle of Outward Authority required that he also, from being the chosen leader of the people, the creature of the combined will of the people, the clergy and the Emperor, should overbear all these divided Powers and become that absolute Ecclesiastical Sovereign who alone could represent the monarchical right of the Christ. Although the territorial possessions of the Pope were limited, he consistently claimed supreme direction of the consciences of princes in all temporal affairs. He became what the theory justified, the vicar of the official Head of Mankind, of the sole Mediator between God and Man. Yet to effect this required the steady consolidating work of more than a thousand years. "It was seven hundred years before the Papacy reached temporal power: seven hundred more before it secured the guarantees of this." See how persistent was the effort of this principle of Outward Authority; how it put forth all its resources in human nature; yet how hard for it to win the mastery of mankind! Four hundred years it has stood in its complete form. And every successive year it has grown weaker in substance. The day that saw the Churches organized thoroughly on this basis, saw it begin to dissolve. Catholic Supremacy and Protestant Schism entered the world at one and the same time. See what violence the Papacy found it necessary to do to Human Nature. Long before, had it broken down the liberties of the Roman people. In the twelfth century, it burned Arnold of Brescia, to abolish in him the idea of a republic of universal brotherhood. In Galileo it rejected Science; in Giordano Bruno, Philosophy; in Savonarola, Morality. In Italy it trampled out Nationality, and made Patriotism everywhere its foe. In Jesuitism and the Inquisition it allied itself with Hate and Falsehood, whose sole function is to disorganize society. It denied every revelation as it came. It set itself against every movement of the Spirit, despised every prophecy of Science and of Love. How should it, as Outward Authority, do otherwise? Its business was to crystallize, not to vitalize. Its savor was of death. Its march was to suicide. And so at last comes Pio Nono, the final reductio ad absurdum of the whole principle. As if to make its fatuity the more startling by a downfall from unimagined heights, he begins with the effort to reconcile it with progress, granting liberty of speech, allowing political newspapers and a National Guard, diffusing education, favoring scientific societies, subscribing a comparatively liberal Constitution : - then recoils from the overthrow which these concessions threaten to the authority by which he stands — and ends with the Encyclic anathema against every form of free thought and free institution which ever was or ever can be devised by man. This poor turncoat is the latest form of an Infallible Guide to Human Reason. This ruler, fleeing from his throne at the rising of liberty in his own dominions, returning with French bayonets to murder a republic, and opening his new sway with inquisitorial courts and tyrannical penalties, is the representative of that absolute authority, claimed to have been vested in Jesus, the Martyr of Liberty and Love! However vested, to this it must come. In this Encyclic Letter the principle of Outward Authority reaches its perfection and its close. -- To all patriarchs and bishops it announces that the modern principle of 'Naturalism,' which separates Church from State, freeing the latter from control by the former, - is "impious and absurd, and makes no distinction between heresy and religion:" that "to call liberty of conscience and worship the right of every man is hurtful to the safety of the Catholic Church: " that our excellent predecessor, Gregory XVI, termed it delirium," — and that "it is to preach the liberty of perdition, since if there is freedom of discussion, there will not be wanting men who will struggle against the Truth." It complains that the doctrines of the Roman pontiffs are not allowed to bind the conscience, unless promulgated by the civil power, and that the Church is forbidden to punish violations of sacred laws with civil penalties. It proceeds to proscribe eighty errors of our time, comprehending in the common curse every phase which freedom of thought has assumed; Atheism, Pantheism, Materialism, Rationalism, Protestantism alike, Indifferentism, liberalism, toleration are equally bad. It is a grievous error to hold that men should be "free to embrace the religion they may believe true," that "men of every religion may be saved"— and that "the salvation of non-catholics may be hoped for." It is criminal to believe that Catholic countries should grant freedom of worship to immigrants, or that the Pope ought to reconcile himself with progress and civilization." And the Holy Father, by virtue of plenary power derived to him from Jesus Christ, commands all Catholics "to hold such opinions as proscribed and condemned." This is not to break with civilization. It is of course to bury the principle of Outward Authority under civilization in eternal death. This is properly the end of it. This is its suicide. Every European nation except Austria, receives the edict with contempt. Even Spain repudiates it. Archbishop McCloskey calls American Catholics to admire it - being permitted to do so only through the very toleration it condemns! The spectacle of two monstrous Falsehoods perishing by their own act, and in their very lairs, is before us. Social Slavery is slain at Richmond. Ecclesiastical Slavery at Rome. The destruction of both is absolute, for it is logical. It is foreordained death. They perish through the consistent evolution of their principle to its perfect form. The Encyclic is not a whit more absurd and impracticable than it is faithful to the principle of Outward Authority. It was contained, predicted, necessitated, in the assumption of the Gospel of John that there is or can be one absolute Incarnate Word, in whose person is concentrated all Truth, through whom doctrine must be certified, and on whom religious union must be based. It matters not how false this was to the true purpose of Jesus. It matters not how pure, how loving, how democratic, how unwilling to be idolized or divinized he may have been. The principle was equally fatal. The moment his followers, misconceiving the unselfish soul that wouid fain have taught men freedom, turned him in imagination into an official personage, "the Christ," the sole representative of Divine Infallibility on earth, it became a necessity that he should be a substitute for the perils of human fallibility. There was His Word, which, being official, must be absolute in its authority and not to be questioned nor tested on pain of divine displeasure. If he was this official Christ, it is perfectly true that we have no right so to inquire or test. He became the authorized subverter of human progress, of inward freedom. And all independent exercise of the intellectual faculties in matters of religion is a revolt against his jurisdiction. Why was such official Mediator sent, if the reason and conscience could be trusted? The principle has but run its natural course. The Encyclic of Pio Nono is the sign that the doctrine of a supernatural Christ is essentially at war with the civilization of the Age. Look at the blossoms bursting from every living bough this radiant spring day, and then at the hard compact rock that never opens to the light. Every atom in the tree is alike living and free, every atom of the rock is compressed and dead. Outward Authority consolidates. Its organizations compress mankind with dead mechanical force. Inward Freedom separates the individual souls, as vital centres of growth, and capacities of inspiration. It is like the penetrative heat which disintegrates the solid granite, and frees the atoms again into living constituents of fertility. It is like the current which stirs the dead lake, and heaves it into separate waves and interfering circles, turning stagnation into healthful movement. It allows organization only as a free combination of forces which retain their natural energies unimpaired. It connects the individual with society not as the piston is part of the machine, but as the lark is part of the morning; not as the atom is part of the crystal, but as the seed is part of the perfect flower. It is native and structural in us, and its day dawns with the advent of our spiritual maturity. Protestantism was Inward Freedom, not indeed in the true principle, but in the germ thereof. It was the law of disintegration, working within the crystallizations of Outward Authority as soon as they were formed. Its history has been the multiplication of sects. Its lesson has been the vanity of attempting to organize upon a doctrinal basis. It has clung to the old dogma of an official Christ, and Infallible Head of the Church and of the Race, and yet incessantly denies this, by progress, by schism, by new interpretations, unauthorized but by the very freedom which it forbids. Nearer and nearer it approaches individualism, and there were never so many sects in Christendom as now. It has unconsciously deserted the old principle, yet refuses to accept the new, which is at once impelling and dissolving it. To insult and suppress that Human Nature, which is forever against Slavery, is a task imposed on Protestants also. In the very same breath in which they claim liberty of thought and conscience, they denounce the Nature in which these inhere as radically impotent, depraved and doomed. They curse the very organs they live by. It is the necessity of Outward Authority to act thus; in some form to do dishonor to the Soul. But Protestantism is not suffered to defeat the Purpose that created it. |