“And they, seeing Him walking upon the sea, were troubled, saying: It is an apparition. And they cried out for fear.” Ibid.
Yes, my dear Brethren, would I could end at the point to which I have brought you! I ought to be able to end here; it is hard I cannot end here. Surely I have set before you a character of the Church of this day remarkable enough to attach to her the prerogatives of that divinely favoured bark in which Peter rowed, and into which the Eternal Lord entered, on the lake of Genesareth. Her fortunes during eighteen centuries have more than answered to the instance of that miraculous protection which was manifested in the fisher’s boat in Galilee. It is hard that I must say more, but not strange; not strange, my Brethren, for both our Saviour’s own history and His express word prepare us to expect that what is in itself so miraculous would fail to subdue, nay, would harden, the hearts of those to whom it so forcibly appeals. There is, indeed, no argument so strong but the wilful ingenuity of man is able to evade or retort it; and what happens to us in this day happened to Him also, who is in all things our archetype and forerunner. There was a time when He wrought a miracle to convince the incredulous, but they had their ready explanation to destroy its cogency. “There was offered unto Him,” says the Evangelist, “one possessed with a devil, both blind and dumb; and He healed him, so that he both spoke and saw. And all the multitudes were amazed, and said, Is this not the son of David? But the Pharisees hearing it, said: This man casteth not out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.” So said the Pharisees; and He of whom they spoke forewarned His disciples, that both He and His adversaries would have their respective representatives in after times, both in uttering and bearing a like blasphemy. “The disciple is not above his master,” He said, “nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he is as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the good-man of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of His household!”
So it was, my Brethren, that our Saviour was not allowed to point to His miracles as His warrant, but was thought the worse of for them; and it cannot startle us that we too have to suffer the like in our day. The Sinless was called Beelzebub, much more His sinful servants. And what happened to Him then, is our protection as well as our warning now: for that must be a poor argument, which is available, not only against us, but against Him. For this reason, I am not called upon to enter upon any formal refutation of this charge against us; yet it will not be without profit to trace its operation, and that I shall now proceed to do.
The world, then, witnesses, scrutinizes, and confesses the marvellousness of the Church’s power. It does not deny that she is special, awful, nay, supernatural in her history; that she does what unaided man cannot do. It discerns and recognizes her abidingness, her unchangeableness, her imperturbability, her ever youthful vigour, the elasticity of her movements, the consistency and harmony of her teaching, the persuasiveness of her claims. It confesses, I say, that she is a supernatural phenomenon; but it makes short work with such a confession, viewed as an argument for submitting to her, for it ascribes the miracle which it beholds, to Satan, not to God.
This being taken for granted, as an initial assumption from which the whole course of investigation is to proceed, and to which every result is to be referred,—viz., that the Church is not the spouse of Christ, but the child of the evil one, the sorceress described by St. John; and her supreme head, not the vicar of Christ, and pastor and doctor of His people, but the man of sin, and the destined deceiver and son of perdition,—I say, this being assumed without proof on starting, it is plain that the very evidences, which really demonstrate our divine origin, are plausibly retorted on us, as they were retorted on our Lord and Saviour, as tokens of our reprobation. Antichrist, when he comes, will be an imitative or counterfeit Christ; therefore he will look like Christ to the many, otherwise he would not be a counterfeit; but if Antichrist looks like Christ, Christ, of course, must look like Antichrist. The idolatrous sorceress, if she is to have any success in her enchantments, must feign a gravity, an authority, a sanctity, and a nobleness, which really belong to the Church of Christ alone; no wonder, then, since Satan is to be able to persuade men that she is like the Church, he is also able to persuade them that the Church is like her. Christ Himself twice was not recognized even by His disciples in the boat, who loved Him: St. Peter did not know Him after the resurrection, till St. John detected Him; and when, before this, He came walking on the sea, they at first were afraid of Him, as though He had been some evil or malignant being: “they were troubled, saying: It is an apparition, and they cried out for fear.” No wonder the enemy of souls should have abundant opportunity and means of seducing the thoughtless and the headstrong, when the very Apostles, in the first years of their discipleship, were so dull in spiritual apprehension.