Objection:—Catholic Countries “behind the age”
Church’s Objects not Temporal
Church’s Battlefield and True Foe
Church’s Work Difficult, Results hidden
Standards of Church and World differ
Beggar-woman, State’s pattern-man
Treatment of Poor, Criminals
Conclusion1
1.
I HAVE been engaged in many Lectures in showing that your place, my brethren, if you own the principles of the movement of 1833, is nowhere else but the Catholic Church. To this you may answer, that, even though I had been unanswerable, I should not have done much, formy argument has, on the whole, been a negative one; that there are difficulties on both sides of the controversy; that I have been enlarging on the Protestant difficulty, but there are not a few Catholic difficulties also; that, to be sure, you are not very happy in the Establishment, but you have serious misgivings whether you would be happier with us. Moreover, you might mention the following objection, in particular, as prominent and very practical, which weighs with you a great deal, and warns you off the ground whither I am trying to lead you. You are much offended, you would say, with the bad state of Catholics abroad, and their uninteresting character everywhere, compared with Protestants. Those countries, you say, which have retained Catholicism are notoriously behind the age; they have not kept up with the march of civilization; they are ignorant, and, in a measure, barbarous; they have the faults of barbarians; they have no self-command; they cannot be trusted. They must be treated as slaves, or they rebel; they emerge out of their superstitions in order to turn infidels. They cannot combine and coalesce in social institutions; they want the very faculty of citizenship. The sword, not the law, is their ruler. They are spectacles of idleness, slovenliness, want of spirit, disorder, dirt, and dishonesty. There must, then, be something in their religion to account for this; it keeps them children, and then, being children, they keep to it. No man in his senses, certainly no English gentleman, would abandon the high station which his country both occupies and bestows on him in the eyes of man, to make himself the co-religionist of such slaves, and the creature of such a Creed.
I propose to make a suggestion in answer to this objection; and, in making it, I shall consider you, my brethren, not as unbelievers, who are careless whether this objection strikes at Christianity or no; nor as Protestants proper, who have no concern about so expressing themselves, as to compromise the first centuries of the Church; but as those who feel that the Catholic Church was in the beginning founded by our Lord and His Apostles; again, that the Establishment is not the Catholic Church; that nothing but the Church of Rome can be; that, if the Church of Rome is not, then the Catholic Church is not to be found in this age, or in this part of the world; for this is what I have been proving in my preceding Lectures. What, then, you are saying comes, in fact, to this: We would rather deny our initial principles, than accept such a development of them as the communion of Rome, viewed as it is; we would rather believe Erastianism, and all its train of consequences, to be from God, than the religion of such countries as France and Belgium, Spain and Italy. This is what you must mean to say, and nothing short of it.
2.
I simply deny the justice of your argument, my brethren; and, to show you that I am not framing a view for the occasion, and, moreover, in order to start with a principle, which, perhaps, you yourselves have before now admitted. I will quote words which I used myself twelve years ago:—“If we were asked what was the object of Christian preaching, teaching, and instruction; what the office of the Church, considered as the dispenser of the Word of God, I suppose we should not all return the same answer. Perhaps we might say that the object of Revelation was to enlighten and enlarge the mind, to make us act by reason, and to expand and strengthen our powers: or to impart knowledge about religious truth, knowledge being power directly it is given, and enabling us forthwith to think, judge, and act for ourselves; or to make us good members of the community, loyal subjects, orderly and useful in our station, whatever it be; or to secure, what otherwise would be hopeless, our leading a religious life,—the reason why persons go wrong, throw themselves away, follow bad courses, and lose their character, being, that they have had no education, that they are ignorant. These and other answers might be given; some beside, and some short of, the mark. It may be useful, then, to consider with what end, with what expectation, we preach, teach, instruct, discuss, bear witness, praise, and blame; what fruit the Church is right in anticipating as the result of her ministerial labours. St. Paul gives us a reason … different from any of those which I have mentioned. He laboured more than all the Apostles. And why? Not to civilize the world, not to smooth the face of society, not to facilitate the movements of civil government, not to spread abroad knowledge, not to cultivate the reason, not for any great worldly object, but ‘for the elect’s sake’ … And such is the office of the Church in every nation where she sojourns; she attempts much; she expects and promises little.” 1