FACTS OF FAITH By Christian Edwardson
THE
GOSPEL OF CHRIST VERSUS THE GOSPEL OF ROME
Through sin man has separated himself from God, and his
fallen nature is opposed to the divine will; therefore he cannot by his own
effort live a godly life, nor can he change his own heart. (Isaiah 59:1; Romans
8:7; Jeremiah 13:23; John 15:5.) Only through Christ, our Mediator, can man be
rescued from sin, and again be brought into connection with the source of
purity and power.
But in order to become such a connecting link Christ had to
partake both of the divinity of God and of the humanity of man, so that He with
His divine arm could encircle God, and with His human arm embrace man, thus
connecting both in His own person. In this union of the human with the divine
lies the "mystery" of the gospel, the secret of power to lift man
from his degradation. "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh." 1 Tim. 3:16. The "mystery," or secret
of power to live a godly life in human flesh,
was manifest in the life of Jesus Christ while on earth. (And "Christ in
you" is the secret of power to conquer sin. Colossians 1:27.)
(205) But mark! It was
fallen man that was to be rescued from sin. And to make contact with him Christ
had to condescend to take our nature
upon Himself (not some higher kind of flesh). "Forasmuch then as the
children are partakers of flesh and blood, He
also Himself likewise took part of the same....Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like
unto His brethren." Heb. 2:14, 17. This text is so worded that it cannot
be misunderstood. Christ "took part of the same"
flesh and blood as ours; He came in "the"
flesh. To deny this is the mark of Anti-Christ. (1 John 4:3; 2 John 7.)
To bridge the gulf that sin has made, Christ must be one with the Father in
divinity, and one with man in humanity, and thus connect again earth with
heaven.
God revealed this truth to the Patriarch Jacob that lonely
night at Bethel. When he feared that his sins had cut him off from heaven, God
showed him that mystic Ladder, connecting earth with heaven, which Christ
explained to be "the Son of man." (Genesis 28:12; John 1:51.)
Modernism has tried to cut off the upper part of this ladder by denying
Christ's divinity; while the Roman Catholic Church cuts off the lower rounds by
teaching that the Virgin Mary was born without sin, and that therefore Christ
did not take upon Himself our kind of flesh and blood, but holy flesh, so far
above us that he does not make contact with our humanity. For this reason the
poor sinner cannot come to Him directly, they say, but must come through Mary,
saints, popes, and priests, who will mediate for him. This has opened the
floodgate for all the idolatry of the Catholic Church. Here is this
"dogma" presented in authentic Catholic works:
(206) "'We define
that the Blessed Virgin Mary in the first moment of her conception...was
preserved free from every taint of original sin.'
"Unlike the rest of the children of Adam, the soul of
Mary was never subject to sin." - "Faith
of Our Fathers," Cardinal Gibbons, pp. 203, 204. Baltimore: 1885.
The Sainted Doctor Alphonsus de Liguori says:
"The merits of Jesus, shall be dispensed through the
hands and by the intercession of Mary." - "Glories of Mary," p. 180, New Revised Edition. New York: P.
J. Kenedy and Sons, 1888.
"God has chosen to bestow no grace upon us but by the
hands of Mary." - Id., p. 180.
"Whoever asks and wishes to obtain graces without the
intercession of Mary, attempts to fly without wings." - Id., p. 189.
"Mary is all the hope of our salvation." - Id., p.
195.
"Thou art the only advocate of sinners." - Id., p.
129.
"All those who are saved, are saved solely by means of
this divine mother;...the salvation of all depends upon preaching Mary." -
Id., pp. 19, 20.
"We ask many things of God and do not obtain them; we
ask them from Mary and obtain them." - Id., p. 150. Much more could be
cited.
A Protestant may ask if the merits of Christ's sacrifice on
the cross are not sufficient, so that we can receive grace directly from Him.
To this the Catholic Church answers:
"The merits and virtue of the sacrifice of the cross are
infinite; but that virtue and these merits must be applied, and this can only
be done by certain means." - "Doctrinal
Catechism," S. Keenan, p. 129. New York: Kenedy and Sons, 1846.
"The priest has the power of the keys, or the power of
delivering sinners from hell, of making them worthy of paradise, and of
changing them from the slaves of Satan into the children of God. And God
himself is obliged to abide by the judgment of His priests....'The Sovereign
Master of the universe only follows the servant by confirming in heaven all
that the latter decides upon earth.'" - "Dignity and Duties of the Priest," St. Alphonsus de
Liguori, pp. 27, 28. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1888.
(207) We now have
before us the only means of salvation in the Roman Catholic gospel, as
presented by men of unquestionable authority among them. This throws light on
the reason why the Catholic priest has such a hold on his people. They dare not
oppose him, because he represents their only means of contact with heaven. Cut
off from the church, they feel they are lost; for they do not know of a Christ
who has come all the way down to the lost sinner's side, to whom they can come
personally and receive forgiveness through grace alone. The divine ladder has
been cut off, and Mary, saints, and priests have been substituted. But the
Bible knows of only "one Mediator," Jesus Christ. (1 Tim. 2:5; Psalm
49:7, 8.)
But we
have not yet gone to the depth of this substitute "mystery." Let us
now take the next step.
Having
removed the living Christ from contact with the sinner, they had to substitute
something else to satisfy the longing of the human heart for the indwelling
presence of Christ. And that substitute is the "Sacrifice of the
Mass." The Roman church teaches that the priest in the mass changes the
little wafer into the real Christ, which they then fall down and worship, after
which they eat Him, believing that they become partakers of Christ and receive
the forgiveness of sin. Thus they have substituted a man-made Christ for a
living Christ. Liguori says:
"If the person of the redeemer had not yet been in the
world, the priest, by pronouncing the words of a Man-God. 'O wonderful dignity
of the priests,' cries out St. Augustine; 'in their hands, as in the womb of
the Blessed Virgin, the Son of God becomes incarnate.' Hence priests are called
the parents of Jesus Christ....
"Thus the priest may, in a certain manner, be called the
creator of his Creator....'He that created without me is Himself created by
me!'" - "Dignity and Duties of the
Priest," pp. 32, 33.
(208) "In
obedience to the words of his priests - Hoc est
Corpus Meum - God himself descends on the altar,...he comes wherever
they call him, and as often as they call him, and places himself in their
hands....They may, if they wish, shut him up in the tabernacle;...they may, if
they choose, eat his flesh, and give him for the food of others." - Id.,
pp. 26, 27.
Then priest and people worship the Christ thus created:
"Elevating a particle of the Blessed Sacrament, and
turning towards the people, he [the priest] says: 'Behold the Lamb of God,
behold Him who taketh away the sins of the world.'
"And then says three times: Lord, I am not worthy that
Thou shouldst enter under my roof; but only say the word, and my soul shall be
healed....
"This pure and holy Sacrament. Who livest and reignest
forever and ever. Amen." - "The Key
of Heaven," Right Rev. J. Milner. D. D., approved by Cardinal
Gibbons, pp. 126, 127. Baltimore: J. Murphy and Co., 1898.
In the following quotation the Catholic Church explains why
she believes this worship of the wafer (host) is not idolatry:
"Now turn for a moment to the Catholic altar. The holy
Sacrifice of the Mass is being offered up. The bell has given the signal that
the most solemn and awful moment of consecration is at hand. As yet there is
only bread in the hand of the priest, and wine in the chalice before him. To
worship these lifeless elements would be the grossest idolatry. But suddenly,
amid the silence of the breathless multitude, the priests utters the divine
life-giving words of consecration; and that which was bread and wine, is bread
and wine no longer, but the true Body and Blood of our Lord Himself. It is that
same Body that was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that died for us upon the
cross, that was raised again to life, and that even now sits at the right hand
of God the Father....
"Now in this mystery the power of the creation appears
as much as in the mystery of the incarnation." - "The Holy Mass: The Sacrifice for the Living and the
Dead." M. Muller, pp. 174, 175. New York. 1876.
(209) Pastor Charles
Chiniquy, a former Catholic priest, says:
"No words can give any idea of the pleasure I used to
feel when alone, prostrated before the Christ I had made at the morning mass, I
poured out my heart at His feet....I may say with truth, that the happiest
hours I ever had, during the long years of darkness into which the Church of
Rome had plunged me, were the hours I passed in adoring the Christ whom I had
made with my own lips....
"In fact, the Roman Catholics have no other Saviour to
whom they can betake themselves than the one made by the consecration of the
wafer. He is the only Saviour who is not angry with them, and who does not
require the mediation of virgins and saints to appease His wrath." -
"Fifty Years in the Church of Rome,"
chapter 17, pars. 29, 31.
In the thirty-sixth chapter of his book Pastor Chiniquy tells
how he was led to question seriously this worship of Rome's wafer-god, the
"host." "In the spring of 1840...Father Daule [an old, blind
priest, was residing with him at Beauport, Quebec.] One morning when the old
priest was at the altar, saying his mass, [and had just change the wafer into
the real Christ, and was reaching for it, it was gone. He called to Chiniquy]
with a shriek of distress: 'The Good God has disappeared from the altar. He is
lost!' [Chiniquy, remembering how often rats had tried to get the wafer while
he himself had officiated there, knew what had happened, and in his
consternation replied:] 'Some rats have dragged and eaten the Good God!' [The
sorrow of the old priest knew no bounds, but Chiniquy declared:] "if I
were God Almighty, and a miserable rat would come to eat me, I would surely
strike him dead.'" - Id., chapter 36, pars. 7, 13, 24.
But Catholics deny that the papacy is Antichrist, for, say
they, Antichrist is to come in the last days. To this we answer: It is true
that both Paul and John speak of the activity of Antichrist at the time of
Christ's second coming, but they also speak of its already having begun in
their day. (1 John 2:18; 2 Thess. 2:7.) There is a beautiful harmony in this
when we look at it in the light of Revelation 13:3, 5, 10 and 17:8, where it is
stated that this power will continue forty-two prophetic months, or twelve
hundred sixty literal years, after which it is "wounded to death" and
lies dormant for a time, till its deadly wound is healed, and all the world
will again follow it in wonder and admiration, and finally it will be destroyed
at Christ's second coming. So the Antichrist of the last days is simply the
Papacy restored to power. See "Romanism and the Reformation," by H.
Grattan Guinness, F. R. G. S., and "The Papacy," by Dr. J. A. Wylie.
(210) "The
Romanists themselves shame you in their clear-sighted comprehension of the
issues of this question. Cardinal Manning says, 'The
Catholic Church is either the masterpiece of Satan or the kingdom of the Son of
God.' Cardinal Newman says, 'A
sacerdotal order is historically the essence
of the Church of Rome; if not divinely
appointed, it is doctrinally the essence of antichrist.' Rome declares
she is one or the other. She herself propounds and urges this solemn
alternative. You shrink from it, do you? I
accept it. Conscience constrains me. History compels me. The past, the awful past, rises before me. I
see THE GREAT APOSTASY, I see the desolation of Christendom, I see the smoking
ruins, I see the reign of monsters; I see those vice-gods,
that Gregory VII, that Innocent III, that Boniface VIII, that Alexander
VI, that Gregory XIII, that Pius IX; I see their long succession, I hear their
insufferable blasphemies, I see their abominable lives; I see them worshiped by
blinded generations, bestowing hollow benedictions, bartering lying
indulgences, creating a paganized Christianity; I see their liveried slaves,
their shaven priests, their celibate confessors; I see the infamous
confessional, the ruined women, the murdered innocents; I hear the lying
absolutions, the dying groans; I hear the cries of the victims; I hear the
anathemas, the curses, the thunders of the interdicts; I see the racks, the
dungeons, the stakes; I see that inhuman Inquisition, those fires of
Smithfield, those butcheries of St. Bartholomew, that Spanish Armada, those
unspeakable dragonnades, that endless train of wars, that dreadful multitude of
massacres. I see it all, and in the name of the
ruin it has wrought in the Church and in the world, in the name of the
truth it has denied, the temple it has defiled, the God it has blasphemed, the
souls it has destroyed; in the name of the millions it has deluded, the
millions it has slaughtered, the millions it has damned; with holy confessors,
with noble reformers, with innumerable martyrs, with the saints of ages, I denounce it as the masterpiece of Satan, as the
body and soul and essence of antichrist." - "Romanism and the
Reformation," H. Grattan Guinness, pp. 158, 159. London. 1891.
No comments:
Post a Comment