Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Plain Talk about the Protestantism of Today [1868]

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PART SECOND.


IX. How the Teaching of the Church is the true Rule of Faith.

— By a Rule of Faith is understood that which determines what Christians have to believe, and what to reject.

Now, what is this rule to which we must conform ourselves in order to determine our belief? Where and which is the true Rule of Faith?

Here, as well as in everything else, Protestants are at variance with the Catholic Church. Fifteen hundred years after the preaching of the Apostles, Luther finds out that the whole world has been going astray. The true, the only rule of faith, quoth he, is the Bible. All Protestants admit this principle; but of it more anon.

For the present let us aver what the Christians have believed from the days of the Apostles to those of Luther, what we believe ourselves after the example of our fathers, and what the Christians who will come after us will believe to the world's end.

Our Lord appointed twelve among his disciples, and sent them forth to the world, to teach in his name and with his authority the Christian religion: —

All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach all nations whatever I have commanded you. Matt. xxviii.

Go ye unto the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. Mark xvi.

He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me. Luke x.

Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. Matt. xxviii.

By these last words the Son of God makes it sure, that the spiritual power and the mission of the Apostles was to be a permanent ministry, even to the consummation of the world. Now, if there exists an irrefutable historical fact, it is that, from the Apostles to this day, the pastors of the Catholic Church, ascending through a legitimate and uninterrupted succession, to Saint Peter and the other Apostles, have exercised and do exercise this ministry.

And in what does this ministry consist? That power which is derived from Jesus Christ himself, and by which fallible men teach us infallibly, and infallibly lead us in the path of salvation? It is the authority of the Church, to wit, the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, successor of St. Peter, head of the Church, and the authority of the bishops, coadjutors to the Pope in the grand work of the salvation of men.

This divine authority, intrusted as it is to the hands of men, is the true, the only Rule of Faith. It has been thus believed in all Christian ages; it has been thus taught by all doctors and fathers of the Church. We have to believe only what the Pope and the Bishops teach. We have to reject only that which the Pope and the Bishops condemn and reject. Should a point of doctrine appear doubtful, we have only to address ourselves to the Pope and to the Bishops in order to know what to believe. Only from that tribunal, forever living and forever assisted by God, emanates the judgment on religious belief, and particularly on the true sense of the Scriptures.

Such is the Rule of Faith followed by all true Christians; it is a rule of divine institution, and no one can knowingly reject it without imperilling the salvation of his soul. He that despiseth you despiseth me! (Luke x.) Such is the immovable principle of unity and life in the Church.

It is owing to this that Catholics have ever believed the same one thing for eighteen hundred years.

The Protestants have not this divine rule, and hence as St. Paul has it, they are children tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine. — (Eph. iii. 14.) In spite of the Bible, which they hold up so sanctimoniously, they believe to-day what they rejected yesterday, to reject again to-morrow the belief of to-day, until, through a wonderful operation of believing and disbelieving, they will end in believing nothing.

Then, it becomes necessary summarily to examine this pretension of theirs, by which the invariable and ever-living authority of the Church is displaced for a book, undoubtedly divine, but lifeless and dumb as all books are, and which can do no good where it is read in a wrong sense.

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PART SECOND.


X. The Holy Bible is not, nor can it be, the Rule of Faith.

— The Bible is undoubtedly the word of God. We Catholics know it, even better than Protestants. The Bible contains naught but what is the teaching of God. And yet the Bible is not, the Bible cannot be, the Rule of our faith, in the Protestant sense.

Why?

First. The Bible cannot be the rule of our faith, because Jesus Christ has not said to his disciples "go and carry the Bible," but he said, Go and teach all nations — he that heareth you heareth me. Lessing, a Protestant, remarks that "Christianity had already been diffused before any of the evangelists undertook to write the life of Jesus. They repeated the Our Father before St. Matthew had written the words, for Jesus Christ himself had taught it to his disciples, who had transmitted it to the primitive Christians . . . Baptism was administered in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, before St. Matthew had drawn up the formula of baptism in his Gospel, for Jesus Christ had verbally taught it to his disciples." — (Beitrage fur Geschichte und Litteratur, t. iv. p. 182.)

To this proof of fact we must add another, which Protestants can never answer with even the appearance of reasoning.

Those words of our Saviour at the last supper, This is my body, have received upwards of two hundred interpretations at the hand of Protestants!

Fourthly and lastly. The word of God in the Bible is not, nor can it be, a Rule of Faith for Christians; because, if it were, then the Christian religion would not have been established for the Poor and Little ones, — that is to say, for those whom Jesus has distinguished as the privileged children of his love.

However, this last point is worth the trouble of being treated apart.

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PART SECOND.


XI. Protestantism is not, nor can it be the Religion of the People.

— No; Protestantism is not made for the people. Jesus loves the poor and the humble. But Protestantism, in giving the reading of the Bible as the fundamental rule of Christian Faith, excludes the people from Christianity. In fact, many among the poor cannot read, and what is a book for those who cannot read?* Again; many among them have no leisure to read, their time being wholly taken up with manual labor, and what is a book to him who has no time to read it?

If Protestantism is in the right, if to attain one's salvation one needs read the Bible, then, in the words of the Lutheran Lessing, "Oh, how much do I feel for you, who are born in countries where the native language cannot render the language of the Bible!* you, who are born in these conditions of society wherefrom all knowledge is banished, and cannot therefore read the Bible! You believe yourselves Christians because you are baptized? Unhappy wretches! know, that in order to be saved, it is as much necessary for you to know how to read, as it is to have been baptized. And yet I fear you shall have to learn Hebrew that you may make your salvation perfectly sure."

And even when all the poor will have learned how to read, will they be much benefited by it? Will they not find themselves at a standstill at almost every verse of the Bible, as we have just said? Nor can you tell me that it will be enough for the people if their pastors will read them a lecture on the Holy Scriptures once a week! These explanations rest only on personal opinions, are not supported by any authority, and will vary according to every individual view. It is the word of God no more; it is the word of Mr. A, or of Mr. B, — quite a different affair.

Thus whether the people know how to read or not, it is absolutely impossible that the Bible should be the Rule of their Faith. Had God given the Bible for a Rule of Faith, he would have kept away from his Church and from eternal salvation almost all men; the which it is an impiety to assert, and none will ever believe it.

Then Protestantism, telling us, Take up and read the Bible; away with Church and priests; be satisfied with the word of God, as it is given in the Bible, — cannot be the religion of the people, and accordingly it cannot be, and is not the true Christianity, the religion of all.

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PART SECOND.


XII. How it is possible for a Protestant to know whether the Bible he reads be the Word of God.

— I defy all Protestants, past, present, and future, to prove, without doing violence to their principles, that the Bible is truly the word of God.

As for myself, being a Catholic, the question is easily solved. I know what the Holy Scriptures are. The Church of God, the living and infallible authority established by Jesus Christ on earth to teach me the knowledge and practice of true faith, lays open before me the holy books, and tells me in his name: These books are the writings of the Prophets and of the Apostles. They are authentic; which means, they are indeed written by those to whom they are attributed; and are, moreover, inspired, which means, they are written with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, and they truly contain the word of God. I believe in the teaching of the Church, and, logical in my faith, I say and believe that the Bible is the word of God.

On the other hand, the Protestant, from the moment he rejects the authority of the Church, cannot reason as I do. With Bible in hand, he cannot tell you why he has faith in what it teaches.

1. Are the books of the Bible authentic? — I will ask a Protestant at once, — how do you know that they have been truly written by the Prophets and the Apostles?

Thus we are in a mesh of historical questions, some among them almost inexplicable. Schoerer, a Protestant doctor remarks: "Each individual is here called upon to give his opinion on matters about which doctors have doubts and disagree. The most simple among the faithful must, before he can trust his faith, resolve questions of authenticity, critic, and history. . . In sooth, it is a dish of very palatable food for the mind of the faithful! Behold a rule very accessible to the mass of the Christian people!" (La Critique et la Foi, par E. Schoerer, of Geneva.) But no danger for us Catholics of being in such mazes. The Church avers an authenticity, the certainty whereof she transmits to her children from age to age.

2. But let us, by an impossibility, grant that a Protestant can of a surety know that all the books of the Bible have been written by the holy authors whose names they bear, will he know as well that they are actually inspired, and that they are not above the level of common good books?

It may, in very sooth, be, that Saint Paul, Saint John, Saint Matthew have written a number of letters, and even religious works, which were not at all inspired. Now, how can you tell, outside the infallible judgment of the Church, which one of the writings of those authors is, or is not inspired?

Will you say that the Holy Ghost, assisting as he does every Christian, will give you the means to ascertain which books are inspired? But, then, how is it that you are so little agreed with one another on this point, and Luther rejects what Calvin accepts, and Protestants to-day receive books which their fathers rejected; as for instance the Books of Daniel, Ruth, and Esther, St. James' Epistle, and that of St. Paul to the Hebrews, etc.? What more? Even on the four Gospels Protestants cannot agree, and this very day some pastors will admit only the gospel of St. Matthew, while others will receive none but that of St. John.

This question, a fundamental one if ever there was one, on the certainty of the inspiration of the holy books, must needs be a stumbling block to the Protestant from the moment he becomes earnest in his reasoning. In fact, it is a mortal difficulty for Protestantism.

Thus, many Protestants, wishing to reason on their faith, find that their religious edifice is based on a very dubious foundation, and thereby lose whatever remnant of belief they possessed, and fall into rationalism or indifference.

3. Let us make a third and last remark. — Suppose, then, a Protestant has obtained a certainty of the authenticity and inspiration of the Bible; how will he know that the version which he uses and distributes among his friends is perfectly reliable, and does not substitute, as it often happens, the erroneous interpretation of the translator for the true and not understood sense of the original?

Very few indeed know Hebrew well enough to make a good translation from it; and on the other hand we are not sure in what language some of our holy books have been originally written.

With us the authority of the Church supplies the deficiency of these impossible researches; whereas the poor Protestants, halting before these difficulties, which they cannot overcome, either give up everything, Bible, Faith, and Religion, — or their studies, pursued without direction, entangle them in the meshes of innumerable doubts, from which they escape only by falling into a negation of all truths; or, lastly, they preserve, without the aid of any reasoning, their faith in the Scriptures, do not trouble themselves with any examination of them, and on the guaranty of Catholic tradition, they believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible, which Protestantism is unable to demonstrate to them. In this they are Catholics without knowing it, and happily there are many such.

Whenever a Protestant appeals to the authority of the Bible, he unwittingly invokes the authority of the Catholic Church, whose infallible testimony is indispensable in the demonstration of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. As early as the fourth century St. Augustine protested that "he would not believe the Gospels, were he not forced to it by the authority of the Catholic Church."