The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-09
THE TRUE FAITH.


q, 1871.
"The faith which was once delivered to the Saints"
ST. Jude, Sd verse.
It is a oreat pity that people are not more
impartial It is possible that judicial fairness
is a cold frame of mind, and orators aud de-
chalmers seek to excite an impassioned state
of feeling in which men will fuse and take
shape and be moulded into partisans, often
without care or capacity to understand the
points thoroughly to the defense of which they
are once committed. This will be found
to be true in most disaggeements in religion.
It is particularly true in the controversy
between what is called Professionalism and
Catholicism. These terms are difficult to be
defined with precision, and are by no means
contradictory of one another. Professionalism,
at least in its original condition, was opposed
to Romanism or Popery and not to Cath9li-
cism Now, by Catholicism l understand
that system of doctrine, or aggregate of be-
liefs and practices which are retained by the
Greek, the Italian or Latin, aud the Augi-
can Churches in common, after discounting
from each of them the peculiarities it has re-
tanned; and by Professionalism I mean every
phase of belief or unbelief, from the Wal
denses to Theodore Parker, which agrees In
protesting against Romish errors or additions
to the faith That aspect of these different
societies sin which, methinks, they do pro-
test too much, does not save them individu-
Protestant sects, on matters concerning
the faith, which was once delivered
to the saints, are in hopeless muddle. l say
this on my responsibility as a theologian,
from thorough conviction, founded on in
vestigation, that if the Greek and English
Church were out of the way, the sects of
Protestant Christians would be girtuaIly at
the mercy of their great opponent, the Roman
Church, without Bible and without an agree
ment, and without capacity to cohere.
Very few men understand their own faith,
or the true methods of defending their own
positions and doctrines. Still fewer have any
Just conception of their antagonists system.
No more painful or absurd scene can be wit
messed than that of two theological disputants,
each one imputing to the other principles he
does not hold, or logically convincing each
other of holding opinions which each
reciprocally repudiates. Thus, on sew
eral occasions in my younger days, L
have been deluded by Protestants
declaimers with irrefrsgable combinations of
Roman opinions and practices, but had at
last to awake to the conviction that Roman
lists did not always hold their doctrines in the
terms or on the grounds that Protestant
orators assigned them. Instead then, of in
quiries into points of difference, which pro-
woke temper and raise illusive clouds of argu-
ment, it is more rational and Christian to
inquire into points on which there is substan-
tlal agreement, ana see Dy WHAT possible OF
extorted concessions on either side both
could concur in joint statement of substau
tial truth. If that were done men would not
long be separated by needless divisions, but
would abate them. AS long as Satan is prince
of this world, BRETHREN SO long the
truth of God passeth in the world
for a stranger, and being among
strangers, easily fndeth an enemy
and is ill-treated. ''This only thing truth
desireth, that no man condemn her before he
know her." (Veritas scit Sc pereginam, etc.
Tertul in Apol., d. @. 1.)
AS an example of the haste and injustice
with which judgments are formed, we may
recall the statements made respecting st.
John the Baptist and our blessed Lord Him
self recorded in the Scriptures.
st. John, rebuking sin, preaching repen-
tance, and hearing confessions, offended the
Jews by his simplicity, abstinence, roughness
of speech, and love of solitude, and was said
to be possessed with the devil. While our
Lord who went to the feast at Cana and ate
and drank in the houses where he was in
vited was thought to be a gluttonous man
and wine-bibber and ''friend of Sinners"
which indeed they both were, you know, but
in a way their enemies did not wish to ac-
knowledge.
We know from Scripture and history that
equally unj just, capricious, and even fagrantly
blasphemous opinions have prevailed against
the doctrines OF CnrlSt ana against earnest
men, like the Baptist, who make them a
reality. When their good life, or their re-
formed life, cannot be denied or their work
has become success, as St. Johns was when
the region round about went out to him ''re-
penting and confessiDg their sins, then ting
old heather method is revived The friendly
Herod of the day, who hears the preachers
gladly, but cannot bear personal reproof, and
desires to shut up the preachers in prison,
hT1ff hn Ia hn 1nff fNrl-
phets, is at last urged on, in spite of his own
regret, to cut off st. Johns head, and, for
the sake of his consistency in q bad promise
and false human respect for those with him,
he gives it to the women of his family who
had been waiting, if not plotting to rece ve
it long before. And thus the world often
triumphs over the Church, private spite over
public principle, and the concubine, Hero
dias, has power to destroy; and her daughter,
Salome, is exultant, while the Bride of Christ
herself-the Chureh-is outraged, and her
sons and her daughters denied place or a
voice in the household.
Both the hostile and the friendly being in
more or less of muddle respecting the
truth, some say, "This is a good man,
others say, ''Nay, but he deceiveth the
people, and his greatest enemies, who are
nothing if they are not Episcopalans, say
honestly that he is not only in a wing of the
castle, but in the very citadel, defending
the literal truth of the Prayer Book, and that
he has a right to be there, and this avowal is
made with the distinct admission that it is
not the destruction of the man they crave,
but the overthow of the citadel itself, the
Prayer Book he defends and stands protected
by. Our Lord, when accused of demonism