PERPETUITY OF THE CHURCH.
Perpetuity, or duration till the end of time, is one of the most striking
marks of the Church. By perpetuity is not meant merely that Christianity
in one form or another was always to exist, but that the Church was to
remain forever in its _integrity_, clothed with _all_ those attributes
which God gave it in the beginning. For, if the Church lost any of her
essential characteristics, such as her unity and sanctity, which our Lord
imparted to her at the commencement of her existence, she could not be
said to be perpetual because she would not be the same Institution.
The unceasing duration of the Church of Christ is frequently foretold in
Sacred Scripture. The Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that Christ “shall
reign over the house of Jacob _forever_, and of his kingdom _there shall
be no end_.”(101) Our Savior said to Peter: “Thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.”(102) Our blessed Lord clearly intimates here that the Church
is destined to be assailed always, but to be overcome, never.
In the last words recorded of our Redeemer in the Gospel of St. Matthew
the same prediction is strongly repeated, and the reason of the Church’s
indefectibility is fully expressed: “Go ye, teach all nations, ... and
behold I am with you _all days_, even _to the consummation_ of the
world.”(103) This sentence contains three important declarations:
First—The presence of Christ with His Church—“Behold, I am with you.”
Second—His constant presence, without an interval of one day’s absence—“I
am with you all days.” Third—His perpetual presence to the end of the
world, and consequently the perpetual duration of the Church—“Even to the
consummation of the world.”
Hence it follows that the true Church must have existed from the
beginning; it must have had not one day’s interval of suspended animation,
or separation from Christ, and must live to the end of time.
None of the Christian Communions outside the Catholic Church can have any
reasonable claim to _Perpetuity_, since, as we have seen in the preceding
chapter, they are all(104) of recent origin.
The indestructibility of the Catholic Church is truly marvellous and well
calculated to excite the admiration of every reflecting mind, when we
consider the number and variety, and the formidable power of the enemies
with whom she had to contend from her very birth to the present time; this
fact alone stamps divinity on her brow.
The Church has been constantly engaged in a double warfare, one foreign,
the other domestic—in foreign war against Paganism and infidelity; in
civil strife against heresy and schism fomented by her own rebellious
children.
From the day of Pentecost till the victory of Constantine the Great over
Maxentius, embracing a period of about two hundred and eighty years, the
Church underwent a series of ten persecutions unparalleled for atrocity in
the annals of history. Every torture that malice could invent was resorted
to, that every vestige of Christianity might be eradicated.
_“__Christianos ad leones,__”__ the Christians to the lions_, was the
popular war-cry.
They were clothed in the skins of wild beasts, and thus exposed to be
devoured by dogs. They were covered with pitch and set on fire to serve as
lamp-posts to the streets of Rome. To justify such atrocities, and to
smother all sentiments of compassion, these persecutors accused their
innocent victims of the most appalling crimes.
For three centuries the Christians were obliged to worship God in the
secrecy of their chambers, or in the Roman catacombs, which are still
preserved to attest the undying fortitude of the martyrs and the enormity
of their sufferings.
And yet Pagan Rome, before whose standard the mightiest nations quailed,
was unable to crush the infant Church or arrest her progress. In a short
time we find this colossal Empire going to pieces, and the Head of the
Catholic Church dispensing laws to Christendom in the very city from which
the imperial Cæsars had promulgated their edicts against Christianity!
During the fifth and sixth centuries the Goths and Vandals, the Huns,
Visigoths, Lombards and other immense tribes of Barbarians came down like
a torrent from the North, invading the fairest portions of Southern
Europe. They dismembered the Roman Empire and swept away nearly every
trace of the old Roman civilization. They plundered cities, leveled
churches and left ruin and desolation after them. Yet, though conquering
for awhile, they were conquered in turn by submitting to the sweet yoke of
the Gospel. And thus, as even the infidel Gibbon observes, “The progress
of Christianity has been marked by two glorious and decisive victories
over the learned and luxurious citizens of the Roman Empire and over the
warlike Barbarians of Scythia and Germany, who subverted the empire and
embraced the religion of the Romans.”(105)
Mohamedanism took its rise in the seventh century in Arabia, and made
rapid conquests in Asia. In the fifteenth century Constantinople was
captured by the followers of the false prophet, who even threatened to
subject all Europe to their sway. For nine centuries Mohamedanism
continued to be a standing menace to christendom, till the final issue
came when it was to be decided once for all whether Christianity and
civilization on the one hand, or Mohamedanism and infidelity on the other,
should rule the destinies of Europe and the world.
At the earnest solicitation of the Pope, the kingdom of Spain and the
republic of Venice formed an offensive league against the Turks, who were
signally defeated in the battle of Lepanto, in 1571. And if the Cross,
instead of the Crescent, surmounts the cities of Europe today, it is
indebted for this priceless blessing to the vigilance of the Roman
Pontiffs.
Another adversary more formidable and dangerous than those I have
mentioned threatened the overthrow of the Church in the fourth and fifth
centuries. I speak of the great heresy of Arius, which was followed by
those of Nestorius and Eutyches.
The Arian schism, soon after its rise, spread rapidly through Europe,
Northern Africa and portions of Asia. It received the support of immense
multitudes, and flourished for awhile under the fostering care of several
successive emperors. Catholic Bishops were banished from their sees, and
their places were filled by Arian intruders. The Church which survived the
sword of Paganism seemed for awhile to yield to the poison of Arianism.
But after a short career of prosperity this gigantic sect became weakened
by intestine divisions, and was finally swept away by other errors which
came following in its footsteps.
You are already familiar with the great religious revolution of the
sixteenth century, which spread like a tornado over Northern Europe and
threatened, if that were possible, to engulf the bark of Peter. More than
half of Germany followed the new Gospel of Martin Luther. Switzerland
submitted to the doctrines of Zuinglius. The faith was lost in Sweden
through the influence of its king, Gustavus Vasa. Denmark conformed to the
new creed through the intrigues of King Christian II. Catholicity was also
crushed out in Norway, England and Scotland. Calvinism in the sixteenth
century and Voltaireism in the eighteenth had gained such a foothold in
France that the faith of that glorious Catholic nation twice trembled in
the balance. Ireland alone, of all the nations of Northern Europe,
remained faithful to the ancient Church.
Let us now calmly survey the field after the din and smoke of battle have
passed away. Let us examine the condition of the old Church after having
passed through those deadly conflicts. We see her numerically stronger
today than at any previous period of her history. The losses she sustained
in the old world are more than compensated by her acquisitions in the new.
She has already recovered a good portion of the ground wrested from her in
the sixteenth century. She numbers now about three hundred million
adherents. She exists today not an effete institution, but in all the
integrity and fulness of life, with her organism unimpaired, more united,
more compact and more vigorous than ever she was before.
The so-called Reformation of the sixteenth century bears many points of
resemblance to the great Arian heresy. Both schisms originated with
Priests impatient of the yoke of the Gospel, fond of novelty and ambitious
for notoriety. Both were nursed and sustained by the reigning Powers, and
were augmented by large accessions of proselytes. Both spread for awhile
with the irresistible force of a violent hurricane, till its fury was
spent. Both subsequently became subdivided into various bodies. The
extinction of Protestantism would complete the parallel.
In this connection a remark of De Maistre is worth quoting: “If
Protestantism bears always the same name, though its belief has been
perpetually shifting, it is because its name is purely negative and means
only the denial of Catholicity, so that the less it believes, and the more
it protests, the more consistently Protestant it will be. Since, then, its
name becomes continually truer, it must subsist until it perishes, just as
an ulcer disappears with the last atom of the flesh which it has been
eating away.”(106)
But similar causes will produce similar results. As both revolutions were
the offspring of rebellion; as both have been marked by the same vigorous
youth, the same precocious manhood, the same premature decay and
dismemberment of parts; so we are not rash in predicting that the
dissolution which long since visited the former is destined, sooner or
later, to overtake the latter. But the Catholic Church, because she is the
work of God, is always “renewing her strength, like the eagle’s.”(107) You
ask for a miracle, as the Jews asked our Saviour for a sign. You ask the
Church to prove her divine mission by a miraculous agency. Is not her very
survival the greatest of prodigies? If you beheld some fair bride with all
the weakness of humanity upon her, cast into a prison and starved and
trampled upon, hacked and tortured, her blood sprinkled upon her dungeon
walls, and if you saw her again emerging from her prison, in all the bloom
and freshness of youth, and surviving for years and centuries beyond the
span of human life, continuing to be the joyful mother of children, would
you not call that scene a miracle?
And is not this a picture of our Mother, the Church? Has she not passed
through all these vicissitudes? Has she not tasted the bitterness of
prison in every age? Has not her blood been shed in every clime?
And yet in her latter days, she is as fair as ever, and the nursing mother
of children. Are not civil governments and institutions mortal as well as
men? Why should the Republic of the Church be an exception to the law of
decay and death? If this is not a miracle, I know not what a miracle is.
If Augustin, that profound Christian philosopher, could employ this
argument in the fifth century, with how much more force may it be used
today, fifteen hundred years after his time!
But far be it from us to ascribe to any human cause this marvelous
survival of the Church.
Her indestructibility is not due, as some suppose, to her wonderful
organization, or to the far-reaching policy of her Pontiffs, or to the
learning and wisdom of her teachers. If she has survived, it is not
because of human wisdom, but often in spite of human folly. Her permanence
is due not to the arm of the flesh, but to the finger of God. “Not to us,
O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name give glory.”
I would now ask this question of all that are hostile to the Catholic
Church and that are plotting her destruction: How can you hope to overturn
an institution which for more than nineteen centuries has successfully
resisted all the combined assaults of the world, of men, and of the powers
of darkness? What means will you employ to encompass her ruin?
I. Is it the power of Kings, and Emperors, and Prime Ministers? They have
tried in vain to crush her, from the days of the Roman Cæsars to those of
the former Chancellor of Germany.
Many persons labor under the erroneous impression that the crowned heads
of Europe have been the unvarying supporters of the Church, and that if
their protection were withdrawn she would soon collapse. So far from the
Church being sheltered behind earthly thrones, her worst enemies have
been, with some honorable exceptions, so-called Christian Princes who were
nominal children of the Church. They chafed under her salutary discipline;
they wished to be rid of her yoke, because she alone, in time of
oppression, had the power and the courage to stand by the rights of the
people, and place her breast as a wall of brass against the encroachments
of their rulers. With calm confidence we can say with the Psalmist: “Why
have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things? The kings of
the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord, and
against his Christ. Let us break their bonds asunder, and let us cast away
their yoke from us. He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them and the
Lord shall deride them.”(108)
II. Can the immense resources and organized power of rival religious
bodies succeed in absorbing her and in bringing her to naught? I am not
disposed to undervalue this power. Against any human force it would be
irresistible. But if the colossal strength, and incomparable machinery of
the Roman Empire could not prevent the establishment of the Church; if
Arianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism could not check her development, how
can modern organizations stop her progress now, when in the fulness of her
strength?
It is easier to preserve what is created, than to create anew.
III. But we have been told: “Take from the Pope his Temporal power and the
Church is doomed to destruction. This is the secret of her strength; strip
her of this, and, like Samson shorn of his hair, she will betray all the
weakness of a poor mortal. Then this brilliant luminary will wax pale and
she will sink below the horizon, never more to rise again.”
For more than seven centuries after the establishment of the Church the
Popes had no sovereign territorial jurisdiction. How could she have
outlived that period, if the temporal power were essential to her
perpetuity? And even since 1870 the Pope has been deprived of his
temporalities. This loss, however, does not bring a wrinkle on the fair
brow of the Church, nor does it retard one inch her onward march.
IV. Is she unable to cope with modern inventions and the mechanical
progress of the nineteenth century? We are often told so; but far from
hiding our head, like the ostrich in the sand, at the approach of these
inventions we hail them as messengers of God, and will use them as
Providential instruments for the further propagation of the faith.
If we succeeded so well before, when we had no ships but frail canoes, no
compass but our eyes; when we had no roads but eternal snows, virgin
forests and trackless deserts; when we had no guide save faith, and hope,
and God—if even then we succeeded so well in carrying the Gospel to the
confines of the earth, how much more can we do now by the aid of
telegraph, steamships and railroads?
Yes, O men of genius, we bless your inventions; we bless you, ye modern
discoveries; and we will impress you into the service of the Church and
say: “Fire and heat bless the Lord. Lightnings and clouds bless the Lord;
all ye works of the Lord bless the Lord; praise and exalt him above all
forever.”(109)
The utility of modern inventions to the Church has lately been manifested
in a conspicuous manner. The Pope called a council of all the Bishops of
the world. Without the aid of steam it would have been almost impossible
for them to assemble; by its aid they were able to meet from the uttermost
bounds of the earth.
V. But may not the light of the Church grow pale and be extinguished
before the intellectual blaze of the nineteenth century? Has she not much
to fear from literature, the arts and sciences? She has always been the
Patroness of literature, and the fostering Mother of the arts and
sciences. She founded and endowed nearly all the great universities of
Europe.
Not to mention those of the continent, a bare catalogue of which would
cover a large space, I may allude to the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, the two most famous seats of learning in England, which were
established under Catholic auspices centuries before the Reformation.
The Church also founded three of the four universities now existing in
Scotland, viz: St. Andrew’s in 1411, Glasgow in 1450 and Aberdeen in 1494.
Without her we should be deprived to-day of the priceless treasures of
ancient literature; for, in preserving the languages of Greece and Rome
from destruction, she rescued classical writers of those countries from
oblivion. Hallam justly observes that, were it not for the diligent labors
of the monks in the Middle Ages, our knowledge of the history of ancient
Greece and Rome would be as vague today as our information regarding the
Pyramids of Egypt.
And as for works of art, there are more valuable monuments of art
contained in the single museum of the Vatican than are to be found in all
our country. Artists are obliged to go to Rome to consult their best
models. Our churches are not only temples of worship, but depositories of
sacred art. For our intellectual progress we are in no small measure
indebted to the much-abused Middle Ages. Tyndall has the candor to observe
that “The nineteenth century strikes its roots into the centuries gone by
and draws nutriment from them.”(110)
VI. Is it liberty that will destroy the Church? The Church breathes freely
and expands with giant growth, where true liberty is found. She is always
cramped in her operations wherever despotism casts its dark shadow.
Nowhere does she enjoy more independence than here; nowhere is she more
vigorous and more prosperous.
Children of the Church, fear nothing, happen what will to her. Christ is
with her and therefore she cannot sink. Cæsar, in crossing the Adriatic,
said to the troubled oarsman: “Quid times? Cæsarem vehis.” What Cæsar said
in presumption Jesus says with truth: What fearest thou? Christ is in the
ship. Are we not positive that the sun will rise tomorrow and next day,
and so on to the end of the world? Why? Because God so ordained when He
established it in the heavens; and because it has never failed to run its
course from the beginning. Has not Christ promised that the Church should
always enlighten the world? Has He not, so far, fulfilled His promise
concerning His Church? Has she not gone steadily on her course amid storm
and sunshine? The fulfilment of the past is the best security for the
future.
Amid the continual changes in human institutions she is the one
Institution that never changes. Amid the universal ruins of earthly
monuments she is the one monument that stands proudly pre-eminent. Not a
stone in this building falls to the ground. Amid the general destruction
of kingdoms her kingdom is never destroyed. Ever ancient and ever new,
time writes no wrinkles on her Divine brow.
The Church has seen the birth of every government of Europe, and it is not
at all improbable that she shall also witness the death of them all and
chant their requiem. She was more than fourteen hundred years old when
Columbus discovered our continent, and the foundation of our Republic is
but as yesterday to her.
She calmly looked on while the Goths and the Visigoths, the Huns and the
Saxons swept like a torrent over Europe, subverting dynasties. She has
seen monarchies changed into republics, and republics consolidated into
empires—all this has she witnessed, while her own Divine Constitution has
remained unaltered. Of Her we can truly say in the words of the Psalmist:
“They shall perish, but thou remainest; and all of them shall grow old as
a garment. And as a vesture Thou shalt change them, and they shall be
changed. But thou art always the self-same, and thy years shalt not fail.
The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be
directed forever.”(111) God forbid that we should ascribe to any human
cause this marvellous survival of the Church. Her indestructibility is not
due, as some suppose, to her wonderful organization, or to the
far-reaching policy of her Pontiffs, or to the learning and wisdom of her
teachers. If she has survived, it is not because of human wisdom, but
often in spite of human folly. Her permanence is due not to the arm of the
flesh, but to the finger of God.
In the brightest days of the Republic of Pagan Rome the Roman said with
pride: “I am a Roman citizen.” This was his noblest title. He was proud of
the Republic, because it was venerable in years, powerful in the number of
its citizens, and distinguished for the wisdom of its statesmen. What a
subject of greater glory to be a citizen of the Republic of the Church
which has lasted for nineteen centuries, and will continue till time shall
be no more; which counts her millions of children in every clime; which
numbers her heroes and her martyrs by the thousand; which associates you
with the Apostles and Saints. “You are no more strangers and foreigners,
but you are fellow-citizens with the Saints and the domestics of God,
built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles, Jesus Christ
Himself being the chief cornerstone.”(112) Though separated from earthly
relatives and parents, you need never be separated from her. She is ever
with us to comfort us. She says to us what her Divine Spouse said to His
Apostles: “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the
world.”(113)