Book Description

This is the Catholic faith. We trust in God--we rely on His word, and His appointments; as being anxious to recognize His presence among us, as really and truly as the Holy Apostles did, when their Lord stood visibly before them and said, "Lo! I AM WITH YOU always!" And it may safely be left to any man to judge, how far these thoughts and feelings are in harmony with the literal word of God. Every one may see that we have nothing there to explain away--nothing to "account for." It is such as we might have written ourselves, so far as the sentiments are concerned, to the full extent that those sentiments may be apprehended. How simple and natural to us sounds the injunction, "Obey them that have the Rule over you, for they watch for your souls!" and how awkward, to say the least, when spoken of self-sent teachers, or those whom the people have commissioned and "called."--Believing that the Church is the perpetual depositary of those awful gifts, which Christ gave to men when He "ascended up on high," knowing that He gave some Apostles, "some prophets, some pastors, and teachers," for the perfecting of the saints, "till we all come in the Unity of the faith, . . . unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ"--Not doubting that these, Christ's gifts, have remained and ever shall remain in His Church; with what thoughts must we regard the Church's Ministry! How can we feel the thrilling solemnity of St. Paul's exclamation, after he had absolved the Corinthian penitent, "Such trust have we through Christ to God-ward!"--"Such trust!"--words may not describe it--"Such trust!"--"not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, WHO also hath MADE US Ministers of the New Testament!" What depth of meaning to us is there in such language as, "Feed the flock of God over whom the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers!" We feel that we are using it in the Apostle's divine sense--yes, the very same solemn sense! All systematizers are obliged to put some lower diluted meaning upon it! And not on this alone, but on every similar text of the Sacred Word! Which of them can say, in the same sense as the Apostles did, of the Ministers of Christ, that they are "Workers together with God?"--Let any man revolve in his mind all those words so copiously quoted already, concerning the unearthly responsibilities of those who have to "save themselves, and them that hear them." Let a man deeply think of his Savior's words, "I give unto you the keys of the kingdom of heaven," "He that heareth you heareth Me," and he will feel it strange mockery, to apply such language to a minister self-authorized, or commissioned by civil governors; and he will come to feel, as the believers in an Apostolic Ministry feel, the power of the question; "How shall men preach except they be SENT?" CONTENTS. LECTURE I. THE DOCTRINE LECTURE II. THE EVIDENCE LECTURE III. THE OBJECTIONS LECTURE IV. THE SUMMARY FOOTNOTES