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Page 20
It is this prompt amputation of the diseased members, before the
hideous canker has time to spread, that has kept the Church of God
pure to this day, while heretical bodies have fallen into greater and
greater spiritual decay. It is because she fearlessly and resolutely
insists upon all her children accepting the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, that she presents to the world, century
after century, with miraculous clearness and perspicuity, the Divine
hall-mark of unity.
6. Outside the true Church of God there is no recognised voice strong
enough to enforce any uniformity of belief. Though the Pope's
authority was acknowledged throughout England for over one thousand
years, yet at the time of the so-called Reformation, that Voice of
God, speaking through Peter, was admitted no longer. Hence, as
Cardinal Manning most truly observes: "The old forms of religious
thought are now passing away in England. The rejection of the Divine
Voice has let in the flood of opinion; and opinion has generated
scepticism; and scepticism has brought on contentions without end.
What seemed so solid once, is disintegrated. It is dissolving by the
internal action of the principle from which it sprung. The critical
unbelief of dogma has now reached to the foundation of Christianity,
and to the veracity of Scripture. Such is the world the Catholic
Church Sees before it at this day. The Anglicanism of the Reformation
is _upon the rocks_, like some tall ship stranded upon the shore, and
going to pieces, by its own weight and the steady action of the sea.
We have no need of playing the wreckers. It would be inhumanity to do
so. God knows that the desires and prayers of Catholics are ever
ascending that all that remains of Christianity in England may be
preserved, unfolded and perfected into the whole circle of revealed
truths, and the unmutilated revelation of the Faith.
"It is inevitable that if we speak plainly we must give pain and
offence to those who will not admit the possibility that they are out
of the Faith and the Church of Jesus Christ. But, if we do not speak
plainly, woe unto us, for we shall betray our trust and our Master.
There is a day coming, when they who have softened down the truth, or
have been silent, will have to give account. I had rather be thought
harsh than be conscious of hiding the light which has been mercifully
shown to me" (_Temp. Mission_, etc., p. 215).
It would be well if all Catholics took to heart these noble words of
the great English Cardinal, who was himself once an Archdeacon in the
Anglican Church. Real charity urges us to set forth the truth in all
its nakedness and beauty. This must be done, even though it may
sometimes give pain and cause irritation. If a man be walking in a
trance towards the crumbling edge of some ghastly precipice, who--let
me ask--acts with the greater charity, he who is afraid to interfere,
and will calmly allow the somnambulist to walk on, till he fall over
into the abyss; or he who will shout, and, if need be, roughly shake
him from his fatal sleep, and so, perhaps, save him from destruction?
Surely, to allow a fellow-creature to follow a path of extreme danger,
for fear of wounding his susceptibilities and incurring his anger, by
candidly pointing out his peril, is the mark, not of a lover of his
brethren, but rather of one who loves himself alone.
We will conclude with the warning of God, given through the inspired
writer Ezekiel, the application of which, _positis ponendis_, is
sufficiently plain: "When I say unto the wicked, Thou shall surely
die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked
from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die
in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at thy hand. Yet _if
thou warn the wicked_, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from
his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity, but _thou hast delivered
thy soul_" (Ezek. iii. 18).
_P.S._--Among the authors quoted in THE PURPOSE OF THE PAPACY may be
mentioned the following, as being easily obtainable by English
readers: Allnatt, Allies, Bonomelli, Capel, Castelplano, Dering,
Deviver, Franzelin, Humphrey, Manning, Merry del Val, Meyer, Minges,
Newman, O'Reilly, Rhodes, Ullathorne, Ward.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 9: "Da chi dipender� il Pontefice nell' esercizio del suo
potere Spirituale? Dai R�? Eccovi il gallicanismo parlamentare! Dalle
masse dei fedeli? Eccovi il richerianismo, e febronianismo! Dai
Vescovi? Eccovi il gallicanismo teologico" (_L. di Castelplanio_, p.
104).]
[Footnote 10: Take for instance, 37 Henry VIII. Chap. 17, which
recites that "the clergy have no Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, but by
and under the King, who is the _only Supreme Head of the Church_ of
England, to whom _all_ authority and power is _wholly_ given to hear
and determine all causes ecclesiastical."]
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