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Show tht two Brothers .5?bWo Controversial Dialogue Between a Presbyterian and His Catholic Brother, Leading Up to Former's Conversion. When the controversy ended last week, James insisted that the scriptures scrip-tures contained all necessary things to know for man's salvation and needed no church authority Tor explanation. John asked him for proof. "Prove that you are authorized to declare the sense of the scripture," said he. "and then you will have no difficulty." The Presbyterian Pres-byterian makes the reply which opens the controversy. Ed. 1. M. C XVI. "The Church spreads her claim over everything, and leaves me. according to "your principles of logic, no possible means of adopting any line of argument argu-ment against her. wnich does not, in tme sense, aNuiiie uie jiomi 10 ue proved. So subtle and crafty in her tyranny, that it leaves absolutely nothing noth-ing to those who would resist it. This to me is only another evidence of her wicked origin and pernicious influence." "So you are of the opinion, that, if Almighty God should establish a church, he would take good care to leave it open to attack, to give its enemies en-emies a fair and solid ground on which to carry on their operations against it. I am of a different opinion, and predisposed pre-disposed to believe the Almighty to be more than a match for the devil, and that, if he should establish a church, he would so constitute it that no attack at-tack could be made upon it which should not recoil upon those who made it no argument be framed against it w hich should not serve to demonstrate the folly and absurdity of its framers. It is unquestionably a very difficult matter to make an action lie against the Church, or to find a court in which an action can be legally commenced against her; but I have yet to learn that this is her fault. The Church is in possesion of universal and supreme authority, under God. has a prescriptive prescrip-tive right to that authority, and must be presumed to have a valid right to it till the contrary is shown. You cannot can-not assume the contrary, but are bound to prove it. Now you must nrove it! for nroofs which' are sus tained by no authority prove nothing. You must, then, prove it with authority, author-ity, or not prove it at all. That it is difficult to find any authority whose assertion does not assume the nullity of the supreme authority which is to be presumed, is undoubtedly true. You wish to arraign the actual possessor of the supreme authority, but you cannot can-not do so unless you have some court of competent jurisdiction. But any court which should claim authority to issue a precept against the possesor of supreme authority, and summon him to answer at its bar, would assume authority au-thority over him, and by so doing prejudge pre-judge the case. This is in the nature of things, and cannot be avoided; but whose is the fault? The reformers, if they had been lawyers, would have seen that what they attempted was against the law, and a prima facie crime on their part, for which they were liable to suffer the full vengeance of the law. If they had been even tolerable tol-erable logicians, they would have seen that they could urge no argument which did not assume what was in question. But surely the Church is not to be censured, because they were miserable mis-erable pettifoggers and shallow sophists." soph-ists." "But there is a court competent to institute proceedings against the Church." w nac coun: "The court of conscience." "You must prove that conscience is supreme, before you can say that; for the Church, as the vicegerent of the Almighty, claims and posseses jurisdiction juris-diction over conscience, and is supreme judge in foro conscientiae. This is an integral part of her possesion to which she has a prescriptive right. You must dispossess her before you can compel her to plead at the bar of conscience." "But she is at least bound to answer at the bar of the Bible, interpreted by private reason." "Not till you dispossess her, or place the Bible interpreted by private reason rea-son in possession; for she posseses jurisdiction jur-isdiction over them." "At the bar of reason, then." "Reason has and can have no jurisdiction juris-diction in the premises: for the question ques-tion turns on a supernatural fact, lies within the supernatural order, ana therefore out of the province of reason." "The general sense of mankind." "That is against you. and in favor of I the church, as we have already seen, i and is conceded in the fact thiit the I church is allowed to plead prescription." prescrip-tion." "Then to the written word, interpreted inter-preted and its sense declared by the Holy Ghost." "Establish the fact of stub a court, and she will not refuse to appear ami answer. But. she claims to be that court herself.' and is in possession as that court: you must dispossess her by ! direct impeachment of her claims, .or by establishing, before a competent tri- j bunal. the rishts of an adverse claimant claim-ant before you can allege such a court." private illumination of the Holy tShost, and what they did. they did in obedience obedi-ence to His commands. " "That was for them to prove." "Thev did prove it." "How?" "From the written word." "But they could prove nothing from the written word, for they had no legal possession of it." "They had legal possession of it. The Holy Ghost gave them legal possession pos-session of it." "What and where -was the evidence of that fact, if fact it was?" "Tn the Scriptures." "That is. they proved by the Holy Spirit that 'they had legal possession of the holy Scriptures, and by the holy Scriptures fhat they had the Holy Ghost. But this was to reason in a vicious circle." "The reformers set forth other and conclusive reasons for rejecting the church, which T will reproduce on another an-other day: but you must excuse me now, for I have some parochial duties to which I must attend." "So you give up the first reason, namely, our Lord founded no such church as the Catholic?" "Not by any means. I may have erred in bringing that forward before the others. I ought not to have departed de-parted from the example of the re formers. They did not allege that rea-! rea-! son first, and I see now that they were wise in not doing so. They first proved that the Church had forfeited her rights by having abused her trusts. Having thus ejected her, they took possession of the word and easily and clearly demonstrated that she had been null from the beginning, by showing show-ing that our Lord never contemplated such a church." j "That is, they dispossessed themselves them-selves by acquiring possession. Very good Protestant law and logic." "You may spare your sneer, for perhaps per-haps it will soon be retorted with seven-fold vengeance." "Oh, not so bad as that, I hope." "We sdiall see. I will. God willing, j prove that the reformers were rigid reasoners, and sound lawyers." "An herculean task. Clearing the Augean stables was easy compared with it." "The reformers wrere great and glorious glo-rious men; rare men, the like of whom will not soon be seen again." "Some consolation in that." "To call such men miserable pettifoggers petti-foggers and shallow sophists is" "To use soft words, which turn away wrath." "To outrage common sense and common com-mon decency." "Why, would you censure me for not calling them by harder names? I might have easily done so. but I wished to spare your prejudices as much as possible." "I tell you. John, that in becoming a miserable, idolatrous Papist, and drunk with the cup of that sorceress of Babylon, Baby-lon, the mother of every abomination, you seem to have lost all sense of dignity, dig-nity, all self-respect and all regard for the proprieties of civilized life." "Because I do not rave and rant every time I have occasion to allude to the chiefs of the Protestant rebellion?" rebel-lion?" "No; you know that is not what I mean. You degrade yourself in speaking speak-ing so contemptuously of the glorious reformers." "And what does my most excellent, amiable, polite and sweet-spoken brother bro-ther do, when he calls God's holy Church the sorceress of Babylon, etc., and brands the members of her holy communion with the name of idolaters?" idol-aters?" . (To be Continued.) |