OCR Text |
Show Controversial Dialogue Between a Presbyterian and His Catholic Brother, Leading Up to Former's Conversion. XXV. "You will bear in mind. James." remarked re-marked John, on resuming the conversation conver-sation the next day, "that you have pledged yourself to prove that the Catholic church authorizes superstition supersti-tion and idolatry." "And if I do not prove it," replied James, "I will abandon the reformers and the reformation." "Since you prefer the charge, it devolves de-volves upon you to prove it." "That is not difficult. The fact is notorious." no-torious." "Assertions are easily made by the unscrupulous, my brother: but I ask for proofs." "Proofs, proofs? I have them in abundance. What else are your prayers pray-ers for the dead your invocation of the saints your worship of Mary adoration ad-oration of crucifixes, pictures, images, relics of dead men and women? What is all this, but the most abominable idolatry and superstition? What else is your adoration of the mass, and all the vain and empty ceremonies of your church? O, it is frightful to think to what horrible lengths idolatry and superstition su-perstition are carried among you! What more besotted, than a full-grown man to believe that the priest can make his God at will, to fall down and adore ' a bit of bread, or to imagine that he if: worshiping God by kissing the crucifix cruci-fix and telling his beads? 1 hope, John, you ,at least, avoid the superstitious practice of telling your beads." "I say my beads daily for your conversion." con-version." "That is enough. My charge is proved. When a man like you can do that, there is no need of other evidence to prove that your church favors su-pt su-pt rstition." "It requires strong faith, no doubt, to be able to regard your conversion as possible: but all things are possible with God. and he has never been known to deny his holy Mother any request, for she can request nothing not in accordance with his will. If she intercedes in-tercedes for you, your conversion is certain.'" "Worse and worse. You confess all I need to prove my charge." "Did you ever read the record of the trial of our Lord?" "Whv do vou ask that?" "Because you remind me of his accusers, ac-cusers, who pretended to convict him o blasphemy out of his own mouth. Yet it Is nothing strange or uncommon for children to resemble their parents. You say the church is superstitious?" "The Romish church, yes; and I prove it." "What is superstition?" "A spurious religion or false worship; a false system of religion, credulity, vain observance." "You would hardly be able to convict the church, or to attempt to convict her, of superstition, under that definition, defini-tion, without assuming that you have authority to determine, or by which you can determine, what is true religion: re-ligion: which we have not seen is the fact. Allow me to suggest a definition a little more to your purpose. Superstition Super-stition is a vice opposed to true religion, re-ligion, as the schoolmen say, by way of excess, as religion is opposed to it by way of defect, and consists in rendering: ren-dering: worship to an object to which it is not due, or an undue worship of false gods, and, on the other, the false worship of the true God, and includes ali you mean by both superstition and idolatry." "Very well; I say the Romish-church Is guilty of superstition in the sense in whichyou have defined the term." "Superstition, in this sense, divides itself into the worship of false gods, and the false worship of the true God. It will be well to consider each division di-vision separately. Let us begin with the first, that is, idolatry, or giving worship due to God alone to that which is not God: or, in other words, wor- j .sniping as God what is not God." ! "The Romish church worships as God what is not God." "The proof?" "She pays divine worship to the Virgin Vir-gin Mary." "The proof?" "She authorizes prayers to her." "Nonsense! prayer is nothing hut a request of a petition, and may without sin or impropriety be addressed by one man to another. You might as well say the constitution of the United States authorizes idolatry, because it recognizes the right of petition, and forbids congress to -take any law prohibiting pro-hibiting the peopl iom peaceably assembling as-sembling and petitic.ing for a redress of grievances. As -veil say, every subject sub-ject who petitions the king, or citizen who petitions the court or the legislature, legisla-ture, is an idolater. Try again, brother." broth-er." "Your church honors her. a mere i woman, as the mother of God." "Well, if she is the mother of God, where is the harm in that, since! it is only honoring her for what she is?" "But she is not the mother of God." "That is for you to prove. You must remember, however, that you are to convict the church of idolatry by the light of nature, and you can in your argument deny nothing the church teaches, unless it is forbidden by the natural law. Assuming the Blessed Virgin to be the mother of God as she must be, if Christ is God does the law of nature forbid her from being honored hon-ored as such? This is the question." I "The law of nature, which, as you have agreed, forbids idolatry, forbids I her being honored as God." "Unquestionably: but does it forbid her being honored for what she is?" I "But Catholics worship her as divine, and pay her the worship which is due to God alone." "The proof?" "They call her our advocate, our inerlintrlv and thus rob Christ of the glory which is his due; for he is the only media between God and man." "The only mediator and advocate, in his own right: but, for aught the law of nature says, his mother may be an advocate and a mediatrixunder him, by his will and appointment: for she would then advocate or mediate only by his authority, and he would still be our only advocate and mediator since that which I do mediately by another, as my minister or delegate. I do myself as much as if I did it immediately. These terms applied to the Blessed Virgin, no doubt imply that she is exalted ex-alted above every other creature: but as her exaltation is that of a creature, and an exaltation not by her own natural nat-ural right, but by grace, it by no mean-.? places her in the same rank with her son. who is exalted above every creature, crea-ture, by his own right, the right of his own proper divinity which assumed humanity." "But Catholics pray to her much more than they do to God." "That may be questioned; but if so, it is nothing to your purpose. You must prove that they pay to her as God, ask of her what may be rightfully right-fully asked only of God. and that they pay her honors which are due to him alone." "They pray to her to have mercy on them, and mercy is the prerogative of God alone." , "Mercy in the sense of pardon or forgiveness of sin is the property of God only; and in thi3 sense. Catholics never ask the Blessed Virgin to have mercy on them. But mercy, in the sense of pity or compassion, belongs to human beings. Thus we say. 'The merciful man is merciful to his beast.' To ask the Blessed Virgin to have compassion com-passion on us. and to intercede with her divine son for us, to obtain hl3 pardon for us by her powerful intercession, inter-cession, is nothing more than we may lawfully ask of our pastors nothing more than what the Scriptures say the Lord commanded the three friends of Job to do." "The worship which Catholics pay to the saints in general is idolatry." "The highest form of worship we pay-to pay-to any saint in that which we pay tq the holy mother of God. If that is not idolatrous then, a fortiori, not that which we pay to the other saints." "But you honor the saints." "And what do you conclude from that? Does not the law of nature command com-mand us to give honor to whom honor is due? What authority have you for supposing that we pay undue honor to the saints?" "To honor them as God, in place of God, is to give them an honor which is not their due, and is idolatry." "Granted; but who so honors them?" "Catholics." "The proof." "Catholics may not honor them as the supreme God, but they honor them as a species of inferior gods, as the Dii Minores of the heathen." "The proof?" "The fact is evident of itself." "Not by any means. The honors the heathen paid to their inferior gods were different in kind from those which we I pay to the saints, and, moreover, were paid as due them in their own natural right, and not as due only to what they became through grace. The heathen offered sacrifices, and. therefore, there-fore, paid divine honors to their inferior in-ferior gods. Catholics offer no sacrifices sacri-fices and pay no divine honors to the saints: they venerate them for what, through grace, they became, and they ask their prayers and intercession, which is no more than we ask of the living and is no more than your parishioners par-ishioners not unfrequently ask of you no more than you sanction whenever you pray God for your congregation, or for an individual who has requested to be remembered in your prayers." "But you have no warrant in scripture scrip-ture for praying to the saints." "That were nothing to the purpose, if true. You bring your action on the law of nature, and when you find that under the law of nature you have no cause of action, you are not at liberty tn Tilenrt some other law. Tf nrnvinir to the saints is not Idolatry by the law of nature, you cannot allege it under the head of idolatry against the church." "But unless the church has a warrant war-rant in the word of God for praying to the saints, she has no right to pray to them." "And unless it is forbidden by some precept of the law of nature, you cannot can-not deny her right." ; "The Romish church worships crosses, dead men's bones, locks of their hair, their finger nails, and shreds of their garments." "What then?" "Then she is adolatrous, for we must worship God, and him alone." "Worship is a word of more than one meaning; it may mean paying divine honors, and also simply paying a civil respect, honoring or acknowledging worth wherever we find it. In the former for-mer sense, it is due to God alone, and is by Catholics paid to him alone, and never to the objects you enumerate. In the latter sense it may be paid, and the law of nature requires that it should be paid, to kings, judges, magistrates, mag-istrates, to our parents, and to whosoever who-soever by .rank or worth is entitled to honor. In this sense the law of nature not only does not forbid, but commands, com-mands, us to honor or to treat with respect such objects as are related to eminent worth. To honor crosses and relics of the saints, for the worth to which they are related is, then, in accordance with the law of nature and it is only in this sense that we honor, respect, or, if you please, worship them." "But you do not honor them merely as memorials of a worth which was real: you pay them divine honors." "F'alse!" "Not false. Witness the Holy Coat of Treves." "What of that?" "Multitudes, in the recent pilgrimage pilgrim-age to it. prayed to it, saying: 'O Holy Coat, have mercy on us!' " "The evidence of what you assert?" "It is said so." "By whom and on what authority?" "Do you deny iti" "Deny it? Do you suppose Catholics are so besotted as to pray to what has no life, no sense, no power to help them, and that, too, when their church, as I showed you yesterday, positively prohibits praying to relics? The thing is impossible; no Catholic ever did. or ever could, utter such a prayer. You must not judge our people by your own. We preserve and we honor the relics of departed saints; they remind us of the worth of the saints; and when they do so we pray to the saints to pray to God for us, and procure for us the graces and favors we need. What precept of the law of nature does this violate?" (To be Continued.) |