LITMIR.BIZ

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of the assembly which is to decide a dispute; the second time in connection with the obscure words in regard to the rock, Peter, and the gates of hell. From these two references, where the word is used only in the sense of an assembly, men have derived the institution which we recognize at present under the same of the Church.

      But Christ could by no means have founded a church, that is, what we understand by that word at the present time, because nothing like our Church, as we know it in these days, with the sacraments, the hierarchy, and above all the establishment of infallibility, was to be found either in the words of Christ, or in the ideas of the men of those times.

      Because men have called something which has been established since, by the same word that Christ used in regard to another thing, by no means gives them a right to assert that Christ founded only one true Church.

      Moreover, if Christ had it in his mind to establish a church which was to be the depository of the whole doctrine and faith, He would surely have expressed this so plainly and clearly, and would have given, apart from all stories of miracles which are repeated with every variety of superstition, such signs as would leave no doubt as to its authenticity; yet this was not the case, and now, as always, one finds different institutions, each one calling itself the only true Church.

      The Catholic catechism says: "L'Eglise est la société des fidèles établie par N.-S. Jésus-Christ, répandue sur toute la terre et soumise à l'autorité de pasteurs légitimes, principalement notre S.-P. le pape,"—meaning by "pasteurs légitimes,"[3] a human institution made up of a number of men bound together by a certain organization of which the Pope is the head.

      The Orthodox catechism says: "Our Church is a society established on earth by Jesus Christ, united by the divine doctrine and the sacraments under the government and direction of a hierarchy established by the Lord,"—those words, "established by the Lord," signifying a Greek hierarchy, composed of certain men who are ordained to fill certain places.

      The Lutheran catechism says: "Our Church is a holy Christian society of believers under Christ, our Master, in which the Holy Ghost, by means of the Bible and the sacraments, offers, communicates, and dispenses the divine salvation,"—meaning by that, that the Catholic Church is in error, and has fallen away from grace, and that the genuine tradition has been preserved in Protestantism.

      For Catholics the divine Church is identified with the Pope and the Roman hierarchy. For the Orthodox it is identified with the institution of the Eastern and Russian hierarchy.[4] For Lutherans the divine Church signifies a congregation of men who acknowledge the Bible and the Lutheran catechism.

      When those who belong to any one of the existing churches speak of the beginnings of Christianity, they generally use the word "church" in the singular, as though there had never been but one church. This is quite unfair. The Church, which as an institution declares itself to be the depository of infallible truth, did not arise until there were already two.

      While the faithful still agreed among themselves, the congregation was united, and there was no occasion for calling itself a church. It was only when it separated into two hostile parties that each party felt obliged to assert its possession of the truth by claiming infallibility.

      During the course of the controversies between the two parties, while each one claimed infallibility for itself and declared its opponent heretical, arose the idea of the one church.

      We know that there was a church in the year 51, which granted the admission of the uncircumcised, and we know it only because there was another, the Jewish Church, which denied their right to membership.

      If at the present time there is a Catholic Church which asserts its infallibility, it is because there are other churches, namely, the Greek Orthodox and the Lutheran, each one asserting its own infallibility, and thus disowning all other churches. Hence the idea of one church is but the product of the imagination, containing not a shadow of reality.

      It is an historical fact that there have existed, and still continue to exist, numerous bodies, each one of whom maintains itself to be the true Church established by Christ, declaring at the same time that all the others who call themselves churches are heretical and schismatic.

      The catechisms of those churches which possess the greatest number of communicants, the Catholic, the Orthodox, and the Lutheran, express this in the plainest language.

      The Catholic catechism says: "Quels sont ceux qui sont hors de l'Eglise? Les infidèles, hérétiques, et schismatiques."[5] By schismatics it means the so-called Orthodox, and by heretics the Lutherans; so that, according to the Catholic catechism, the Church is composed only of Catholics.

      In the so-called Orthodox catechism it says: "The name Church of Christ means only the Orthodox Church, which has remained in perfect union with the universal Church. As to the Roman Church and the Protestant creeds" (they are not even called a church), "they cannot belong to the one true Church, for they have separated themselves from it."

      According to this definition the Catholics and the Protestants are outside of the Church, and only the Orthodox are in it.

      The Lutheran catechism says: "Die wahre Kirche wird darein erkannt, das in ihr das Wort Gottes lauter und rein ohne Menschenzusetzung gelehrt und die Sacramenten treu nach Christ Einsetzung gewartet werden."[6]

      According to this definition, those who have added anything whatsoever to the teaching of Christ and the apostles, as the Catholic and Greek Churches have done, are outside the Church, and the Lutherans alone are in it.

      The Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost dwells perpetually with their hierarchy; the Orthodox assert that the same Holy Ghost resides also with them; the Arians claim that the Holy Ghost manifests itself to them (and they have the same right to assert this as have the prevailing religions of the present day); all the denominations of Protestants—Lutherans, Reformed Presbyterians, Methodists, Swedenborgians, and Mormons—assert that the Holy Ghost manifests itself only with them.

      If the Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost during the separation of the Arian and Greek Churches withdrew from the separating churches and remained in the one true Church, then the Protestants of any denomination whatsoever may assert with as much right that during the separation of their Church from the Catholic, the Holy Ghost left the Catholic Church and entered into their own. And this is exactly what they do say. Every church professes to derive its creed by an unbroken tradition from Christ and the apostles. And certainly every Christian creed derived from Christ must have reached the present generation through tradition of some sort. But this is no proof that any one of these traditions embodies infallible truth, to the exclusion of all others.

      Every branch proceeds from the root without interruption; but the fact that each one comes from one root, by no means proves it to be the only branch. And so it is in regard to the churches. The proofs which each church offers of its apostolic succession, and the miracles which are to prove its authenticity, are the same in every case; consequently there is but one exact definition of what is called a church (not the imaginary church which we may desire, but the actual church which has really existed). The Church is a body of men which lays claim to the exclusive possession of the truth. All these various societies which were afterward transformed by State authority into powerful organizations have really been the chief obstacles to the diffusion of true Christianity. It could not be otherwise: for the principal characteristic which distinguishes the doctrine of Christ from those of earlier times is that the men who accepted it strove to understand and to fulfil it more and more perfectly; whereas the doctrine of the Church affirmed that it was already thoroughly understood and also fulfilled.

      However strange this may seem to us, reared as we have been in the false doctrine of the Church, as if it were a Christian institution, and taught to despise heresy, it is nevertheless in that which men call heresy that true progress, that is, true Christianity, was manifested, and it only ceased to be such when these heresies were checked, and it was, so to speak, stamped with the immutable imprint of the Church.

      What, then, is heresy? Read all the theological works which treat of heresies, of that subject which above all others calls for an exact definition, for every theologian

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