The Papacy

I believe that I have proved that the Ritualist School, in so far as they depreciate the Reformation, show tenderness to Rome, condone her false doctrines, hold the tenet of the Objective Presence in the elements, perform the rites and ceremonies thence flowing, and inculcate the practice of auricular confession as part of the normal religious life, find no justification in the teaching and acts of our seventeenth-century divines. The old historical High Church party in the Church of England is in direct conflict with the Neo-Anglicanism known as Ritualism.

I make not the least doubt in the world but that the Church of England before the Reformation and the Church of England after the Reformation are as much the same Church as a garden before it is weeded and after it is weeded is the same garden.

Let us bless God that we live in a Church wherein no other name is invocated but the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, nor divine worship given to any but to the one true God through Jesus Christ the only Mediator. O happy we, if we knew and valued our own happiness!

If we inquire upon what grounds the primitive Church did rely for their whole religion, we shall find they knew none else but the Scriptures. Ubi Scriptum? was their first inquiry. “Do the prophets and the Apostles, the Evangelists or the Epistles, say so ?” Read it there, and then teach it, else reject it.

We have no unwritten faith, as Rome has, and admit no innovations of any sort in religion, for we have put aside the vain traditions of men and new-born dogmas, unsupported by Holy Scripture and by antiquity, and we rest in the one Catholic truth, faith and religion, as handed down to us from the first ages.

Is there no superstition in adoration of images? None in invocation of saints? None in the adoration of the sacrament? Is there no error in breaking Christ’s own institution of the sacrament, by giving it but in one kind? None about purgatory? About common prayer in an unknown tongue, none? These and many more are in the Roman religion. And it is no hard work to prove every one of them to be error or superstition or both.

Bishop Andrewes and Archbishop Laud are the two divines of the seventeenth century generally selected by medievalists of the present day as their patrons and protectors. They justify their own extravagances by claiming the authority of these learned theologians for them.

Hooker belongs more to the sixteenth than to the seventeenth century ; but the seventeenth-century divines, without exception, take their inspiration from him, and, indeed, after Cranmer, Ridley, and Jewell, he is the father of Anglican theology.

Just as, therefore, a true Christian is one who follows Christ in his life, so a truly apostolic man is the priest who follows the teaching of the apostles, living the life of an apostle and teaching his doctrine. Hence, any pope is to be called apostolic so far as he teaches the doctrine of the apostles and follows them in works. But, if he puts the teaching of the apostles aside, teaching in word or works what is contrary, then he is properly called pseudo-apostolic or an apostate.

Up to this point it is to be noted that human obedience is threefold — spiritual, secular and ecclesiastical — spiritual, which is due purely according to God’s law, and under this kind of obedience Christ and the apostles lived and each Christian should live. Secular obedience is obedience due according to the secular code. Ecclesiastical obedience is obedience according to the regulations of the priests of the church aside from the express authority of Scripture.

It should be evangelical wisdom that all priests are consecrated and guided directly by the one and only pontiff, our Lord Jesus Christ. For this was so at the time of the apostles, when the church grew, and this statement accords with Scripture. Therefore, God is able to bring his church back to its pristine state by taking away the government from the pope and cardinals. And so it stands that others besides these may be vicars of the apostles.

For many have been saved in Judea, Asia and Ethiopia who have believed in Christ, following the teaching of the apostles, and who did not expressly recognize Peter, nay, or expressly believe what concerns Peter, just as they did not hear anything about him.

Inasmuch as these doctors are not writers of sacred Scripture — it being granted that they excel by their sanctity — the faithful are not, therefore, to think a thing is true because they feel it to be true unless by other writers of Scripture or for canonical or probable reasons they prove that these points do not deviate from the truth.

“To be subject to the Roman pontiff is necessary for salvation for every human being.” But there is no other such pontiff except the Lord Jesus Christ himself, our pontiff. This is so because the humanity of Christ is not subject to any other pontiff as of necessity to salvation, inasmuch as God hath exalted him and given him a name which is to be the most worthy above every other name.

Christ’s disciple ought to be on his guard against the fallacy of antichrist, when the following course of argument is pursued: Whatsoever Christ’s vicar shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, but this faithful layman who does not wish to give money for his absolution, him he binds on earth. Therefore, this layman is bound in heaven. Likewise, whatsoever Christ’s vicar shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven, but him who is not contrite and yet is willing to give money, him he looses on earth.

It is not a matter of much doubt to the simple Christian — faithful — that Peter did not dare to claim to be the head of the holy catholic church, for the reason that he did not rule over the whole church and did not excel above the whole church in dignity, nor was he the bridegroom of the catholic church.

It has been said that Christ is the sole Head of the holy universal church and all the predestinate, past and future, are his mystical body and every one of them members of that body. It remains now briefly to examine whether the Roman church is that holy universal church, the bride of Christ.

You must pardon us, good reader, though we seem to utter these things more bitterly and bitingly than it becometh divines to do. For both the shamefulness of the matter, and the desire of rule in the Bishop of Rome is so exceeding and outrageous, that it could not well be uttered with other words, or more mildly.