Source Book for Bible Students
“I” Entries
Idolatry, Nature of.—Idolatry is not, as some have supposed, the natural outcome of the pious ignorance of men in a state of barbarism, nor are its different forms the varied inventions of different nations and peoples separated from each other. All are similar in nature and origin, and emanated from the most highly civilized nation of antiquity. For although there is good reason for believing that idolatry first originated in antediluvian times, and brought upon the world the judgment of the deluge, yet it arose again, after that event, with the Chaldeans of ancient Babylon, whose mighty works and wisdom were famed throughout antiquity. “Babylon,” says the prophet, “hath been a golden cup in the hand of the Lord to make all the earth drunken. The nations have drunken thereof; therefore are the nations mad.” SBBS 214.6
Although the gods and goddesses of the heathen were so numerous, yet “all,” says Faber, “as we are repeatedly informed by the ancient mythological writers, are ultimately one and the same person.” Strictly speaking, they are resolved into one or other of a Trinity, composed of a Father, Mother, and Son, the various attributes of whom were personified and worshiped under different titles, and known under different names in different nations.—“The True Christ and the False Christ,” J. Garnier, Vol. II, pp. 4, 5. London: George Allen, 1900. SBBS 214.7
Moreover, although it was taught that they were one and the same god, yet, as even the prince of the demons is neither omniscient nor omnipresent, it was necessary that he should be represented at the innumerable temples and shrines, and in the multitude of idols all over the world, by a host of subordinate spirits, the demons over whom he was prince, who personated the various gods.—Id., pp. 20, 21. SBBS 214.8
It will be noticed that the worship of the pagan gods was always carried on through their idols or images, and that these idols being the characteristic, and apparently an inseparable feature of that worship, it had the appearance of being the worship of idols, and is spoken of as “idolatry.” The reason of this has already been alluded to. The demon gods were neither omniscient nor omnipresent, and to have invoked their aid at all times and in all places would therefore have been useless. Hence the necessity for some local habitation for them, such as an image, temple, grove, or sacred symbol, which when consecrated by the priestly adept who had already established communication with them, might become the special abode of some one spirit, who would thus be ever at hand to influence and delude those who sought his aid.—Id., pp. 22, 23. SBBS 214.9
Idolatry, The Pagan Idea of, Romanized.—The real presence of our divine Lord in the blessed eucharist [the host kept in the monstrance] makes every Catholic church a tabernacle of the Most High.—The True Voice (R. C.), Omaha, Nebr., April 18, 1913. SBBS 215.1
Idolatry, Unspiritual Rites of.—The pagan rites were regarded as a service done to the Deity, as acts of homage which satisfied his demands and appeased his anger, while they were rites also which were supposed to purify the souls, and obtain pardon for the sins of the worshipers. But there was nothing spiritual in them, nothing which could call forth a single spiritual thought, or produce the slightest moral change, save the blinding and satisfaction of the conscience of the sinner. Holy water purified him; the sacrifice of the round cake atoned for his sins; charms, relics, and holy signs preserved him from danger; righteousness consisted of ritual acts and ordinances, penances and self-mortifications; auguries and oracles revealed the will of the gods, whom he worshiped through their images; while the priesthood stood in the place of God to him, both as mediators between the gods and men, and as the sole channel through which all spiritual effects were to be obtained. SBBS 215.2
Thus the mind and affections, and entire dependence of the pagan, were confined to that which was earthly, material, and created, and this, as the apostle implies, is the whole spirit and principle of idolatry. It is “worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator,” seeking spirit from matter, life from that which is without life, and placing the dependence due to God on men and created things; by which it both satisfied and deadened the conscience, and shut out from the mind all thoughts of spiritual things and true righteousness.—“The True Christ and the False Christ,” J. Garnier, Vol. II, pp. 37, 38. London: George Allen, 1900. SBBS 215.3
Idolatry Transferred from Babylon to Rome.—On the overthrow of Babylon by the Persians, who nourished a traditional hatred for its idolatry, the Chaldean priesthood fled to Pergamos in Asia Minor, and made it the headquarters of their religion. Hence Christ in his charge to the church in that city speaks of it as being “where Satan’s seat is.” The last pontiff king of Pergamos was Attalus III, who at his death bequeathed his dominions and authority to the Roman people, 133 b. c., and from that time the two lines of Pontifex Maximus were merged in the Roman one.... SBBS 215.4
But just as pagan Rome was the true offspring and successor of Babylon, so is papal Rome the true offspring and successor of pagan Rome. When paganism was nominally abolished in the Roman Empire, the head of the pagan hierarchy was also suppressed. Some of the Christian emperors did indeed accept the title of Pontifex Maximus, while others, refusing it themselves, appointed a pagan priest, until the reign of Gratian, who, refusing to do either, abolished the office 376 a. d. Two years afterwards, however, fearing that religion might become disorganized, he offered the title and office to Damasus, Bishop of Rome. ... This bishop, less scrupulous than the emperor, accepted the office, and from that time until now the title has been held by the popes of Rome, from whom, and through whom, the whole hierarchy of Western Christendom have received their ordination. So also the honors and powers attached to the title, the dominion of the civilized world, previously wielded by the pontiff emperors of pagan Rome, passed to the pontiffs and hierarchy of papal Rome, who for centuries imposed their will upon kings, and held the nations in thraldom.... SBBS 215.5
Hence we see that there was good reason for entitling the seven-hilled city of papal Rome “Babylon Roma” or “Babylon the Great.” Moreover, although the actual city of Rome is the center and seat of that vast organization which for centuries “ruled over the kings of the earth,” and over “peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.” yet “the great city” includes all, in every place, who can claim to be its citizens, all who are subject to its laws and ordinances, who bow to its authority, or are morally identified with it. Just as the citizens of pagan Rome included multitudes who had never seen Rome but who claimed to be its citizens, bowed to its laws and authority, and were entitled to its privileges.—Id., pp. 94-96. SBBS 216.1
Idolatry, Modern.—The image worshipers in Christianity allege that the whole worship is merely representative and symbolical, exhibiting to them an invisible Deity in visible types and images; so that every image has reference to its prototype, and no virtue is inherent in the image or in its material substance. So said all the enlightened among the heathen, and yet the Christian apologists convicted them of idolatry, notwithstanding all the refinements of their relative worship.... SBBS 216.2
But it is said, as an apology for this semipagan system, that “images are laymen’s books,” and that the gospel is read by the unlearned in these visible types and representations of its history and founders. If this be so, the whole system must pass away before the progress of education; and had the work of instruction been earlier and more successful, must have been obsolete long since. Yet we cannot but remember that the same apology was advanced in behalf of the idol worship of heathenism. “Images of this kind,” as the heathen advocate alleges in St. Athanasius, “are like literary eleme nts ([Greek words, transliterated “osper gramma” [Original illegible]) to men; which when they meet with, they are able to realize the conception of God ([Greek words, transliterated “ginoskein peri tes ton theon katalepseos”).” Would that the Church of Rome had gone no further even than this in its imitation, and in a certain sense revival, of the idolatry of the Gentile world! SBBS 216.3
But here another stage is given us by St. Athanasius, who shows that images were regarded by the heathens as means of “discovering to them the divine will,-that they might acquire the knowledge of sacred things through angelic apparitions.” No one who is even superficially acquainted with the image worship of the modern Church of Rome, with its wonder-working shrines and votive offerings and oracles, can fail to confess how faithfully she has reproduced this worst feature of heathen idolatry, and how fatally she clings to those idols from which once she turned in order to serve the living God.—“Romanism: A Doctrinal and Historical Examination of the Creed of Pope Pius IV,” Rev. Robert Charles Jenkins, M. A., pp. 220-222. London: The Religious Tract Society. SBBS 216.4
Idolatry, Veneration of Images Enjoined.—The Holy Synod enjoins on all bishops and others who sustain the office and charge of teaching that ... they especially instruct the faithful diligently concerning the intercession and invocation of saints; the honor (paid) to relics; and the legitimate use of images.... Moreover, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints, are to be had and to be retained particularly in temples, and that due honor and veneration are to be given them; not that any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them, on account of which they are to be worshiped; or that anything is to be asked of them; or that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old done by the Gentiles who placed their hope in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; in such wise that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head, and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ; and we venerate the saints whose similitude they bear; as, by the decrees of councils, and especially the second Synod of Nicaa, has been defined against the opponents of images.—“Dogmatic Canons and Decrees,” pp. 167-169. New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1912. SBBS 216.5
Idolatry, Protest of the Reformers Against.—The protest of the Reformers was directed, not only against the worship of the Virgin and saints, but against the priestly assumptions of the clergy and the principle of sacramental efficacy, and it was the protest against the latter which evoked the chief fury of their persecutors. Their protest, in short, was against the principle of Catholicism, which is idolatry, or the substitution of material and created things for Christ. For whether it is the mediation of the Virgin and saints, or a trust in the guidance of the priesthood and in the spiritual efficacy of the sacraments administered by them, or a belief in the virtue of holy water, holy oil, images, crucifixes, relics, and other material symbols and ritual acts, they one and all combine to take the place of Christ to the sinner, and keep him from going to Him for life. SBBS 217.1
Instead of these things, the Reformers asserted that salvation was dependent on Christ alone, and that the sinner, instead of assuming himself to be a Christian in virtue of the rite of baptism, could only become so by a true, living, and constant faith in Christ; and that the Word of God and the Spirit of God, and not the priesthood, were the only guide to the truth.—“The True Christ and the False Christ,” J. Garnier, Vol. II, p. 140. London: George Allen, 1900. SBBS 217.2
Idolatry, a Plain Parallel.—Romanism is the same perversion of Christianity that paganism was of patriarchal truth, and its false Christ is morally identical with the false Christ of paganism.—“The True Christ and the False Christ,” J. Garnier, Vol. II, p. 104. London: George Allen, 1900. SBBS 217.3
Idolatry, Rome Guilty of.—On four counts at least Rome can be proved guilty of idolatry without any difficulty. SBBS 217.4
She worships graven and molten images, and to justify the idolatry frequently omits the second commandment in her catechisms, and divides the tenth into two, in order to make up the number. SBBS 217.5
She worships dead men and women, and angels. SBBS 217.6
She worships relics, especially pieces of the cross, to which she gives the highest kind of worship, called latria. SBBS 217.7
She worships a piece of bread in the mass, in that sacrament which the Church of England, in her thirty-ninth article, designates as “a blasphemous fable.” SBBS 217.8
On these four counts, then, without going further, we maintain that Rome is guilty of idolatry.—“Rome: Pagan and Papal,” Mourant Brock, M. A., p. 33. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1883. SBBS 217.9
Idolatry, of the Church of Rome.—The awful idolatry of the Church of Rome, as it respects the worship of the Virgin Mary, needs no other proof than what is afforded by a book entitled, “The Glories of Mary,” written in Italian, by Alphonsus de Liguori, and translated into English and published with the formal approval of Cardinal Wiseman. I will give a few quotations from the edition of 1852. SBBS 218.1
Of Mary it is said, that “she opens the abyss of the mercy of God to whomsoever she wills, when she wills, and as she wills” (p. 16), and “that the Son is under great obligation to her for having given him his humanity” (p. 17). “We say that Mary is the mediatress of grace.” “Whatever graces we receive, they come to us through her intercession.” ... “There is certainly nothing contrary to faith in this, but the reverse; it is quite in accordance with the sentiments of the church, which in its public and approved prayers teaches us continually to have recourse to this Divine Mother, and to invoke her as the ‘health of the weak, the refuge of sinners, the help of Christians, and as our life and hope’” (pp. 124, 125). “Shall we scruple to ask her to save us, when ‘the way of salvation is open to none otherwise than through Mary’?” (p. 135). SBBS 218.2
Of the prayers to be addressed to her, the following may serve as a specimen: “‘I am thine; save me.’ Accept me, O Mary, for thine own, and as thine take charge of my salvation” (pp. 20, 21). “Thou hast all power to change hearts, take thou mine and change it” (p. 42). “Behold, O Mother of my God, my only hope, Mary, behold at thy feet a miserable sinner, who asks thee for mercy. Thou art proclaimed and called by the whole church and by all the faithful the refuge of sinners. Thou art consequently my refuge, thou hast to save me.... I present thee, O my Mother, the sufferings of Jesus” (p. 58). “Thou art the Queen of heaven, the Mistress of the universe” (p. 77).—“Fulfilled Prophecy,” Rev. W. Goode, D. D., F. S. A., 2nd ed., p. 197. London: James Nisbet & Co., 1891. SBBS 218.3
Idolatry, The Douai Version of Exodus 20:5.—It is worth remarking that Roman Catholics, who translate the passage in Exodus 20:5, “Thou shalt not adore them,” sometimes complain that the Authorized Version, “Thou shalt not bow down to them,” is a misleading rendering, and goes too far. As a fact, the Hebrew verb shachah, here found, strictly means to bow or prostrate one’s self, and only secondarily comes to mean worship or adoration, and is translated bowed down in the Douai Version of Genesis 42:6, speaking of Joseph’s brethren’s obeisance towards him.—“Plain Reasons Against Joining the Church of Rome,” Richard Frederick Littledale, LL. D., D. C. L., p. 39, note. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1905. SBBS 218.4
Idolatry, Reappearance of, in the Church.—The early Christian Fathers believed that painting and sculpture were forbidden by the Scriptures, and that they were therefore wicked arts; and, though the second Council of Nicaa asserted that the use of images had always been adopted by the church, there are abundant facts to prove that the actual worship of them was not indulged in until the fourth century, when, on the occasion of its occurrence in Spain, it was condemned by the Council of Illiberis. During the fifth century the practice of introducing images into churches increased, and in the sixth it had become prevalent. The common people, who had never been able to comprehend doctrinal mysteries, found their religious wants satisfied in turning to these effigies. With singular obtuseness, they believed that the saint is present in his image, though hundreds of the same kind were in existence, each having an equal and exclusive right to the spiritual presence. The doctrine of invocation of departed saints, which assumed prominence in the fifth century, was greatly strengthened by these graphic forms. Pagan idolatry had reappeared.—“History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,” John William Draper, M. D., LL. D., Vol. I, p. 414. New York: Harper & Brothers. SBBS 218.5
Idolatry, the Gigantic Sin.—I hold that no reader of the Bible can be unaware of the fact that the gigantic sin which looms out in gloomiest form throughout the sacred pages is that of idolatry or apostasy from the true worship of the Almighty. There are only two kinds of worship, true and false. The true worship is to be found in the Bible, and there alone; false worship is to be found in all systems of so-called religion not founded on God’s Word, and even in infidelity itself. The heart-infidel-if there be such a person-is a false worshiper and an idolater of self. He is his own god; and a false god he is. Apostasy, then, and idolatry-for they are in many cases inseparable from each other-are the great objects of prophetic denunciation and apostolic warning.—“Rome, Antichrist, and the Papacy,” Edward Harper, p. 15. London: Protestant Printing and Publishing Company. SBBS 219.1
Idolatry.—See French Revolution, 175, 176; Images; Mass, 297. SBBS 219.2
Ignatius.—See Greek Church, 195. SBBS 219.3
Images, Worship of.—Next, let us take the worship of images and pictures. Here it must first be said (a) that the Roman Church in terms denies that any such act as can be strictly called worship is done to pictures and images, even by the most ignorant, since no one believes that these representations can see, hear, or help of themselves; (b) that there is no question as to the lawfulness of making some such images and representations, if not intended to receive homage, as even the Jews had the brazen serpent, and the figures of the cherubim in the holy of holies, where, however, only one man ever saw them, and that only once a year; and the early Christians set up pictures of our Lord in the catacombs, still to be seen there. But, on the other hand, there is a very suspicious fact which meets us at the outset of the inquiry as to the actual Roman practice, as distinguished from any finespun theories in books, namely, that many Roman catechisms omit the second commandment, while no Roman catechism teaches that there is either danger or sin in any making or using of images for religious honor, short of actual paganism. The point is ... whether in practice one Roman Catholic in a million ever knows that image worship can be abused or sinful without virtual apostasy from Christianity. The Shorter Lutheran Catechism cuts down the first and second commandments just in the same way as many Roman ones do; but, then, on the one hand, Lutherans have free access to the Bible in their own language, and, on the other, nothing of the nature of image worship has ever been practised amongst them. SBBS 219.4
Intelligent and shrewd heathens, when arguing in favor of idols, say exactly what Roman Catholic controversialists do in defense of their practice, namely, that they do not believe in any sentient power as residing in the mere stone, wood, or metal, of which their idols are made, but regard them as representing visibly certain attributes of Deity, to bring them home to the minds of worshipers; and that homage addressed to these idols on that ground is acceptable to the unseen spiritual Powers, who will listen to and answer prayers so made indirectly to themselves.—“Plain Reasons Against Joining the Church of Rome,” Richard Frederick Littledale, LL. D., D. C. L., pp. 37-39. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1905. SBBS 219.5
Immaculate Conception, the Dogma Defined.—Since we have never ceased in humility and fasting to offer up our prayers and those of the church to God the Father through his Son, that he might deign to direct and confirm our mind by the power of the Holy Ghost, after imploring the protection of the whole celestial court, and after invoking on our knees the Holy Ghost the Paraclete, under his inspiration we pronounce, declare, and define, unto the glory of the holy and invisible Trinity, the honor and ornament of the Holy Virgin, the mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian religion, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and in our own authority, that the doctrine which holds the Blessed Virgin Mary to have been, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Christ Jesus the Saviour of mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was revealed by God, and is, therefore, to be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful. Therefore, if some should presume to think in their hearts otherwise than we have defined (which God forbid), they shall know and thoroughly understand that they are by their own judgment condemned, have made shipwreck concerning the faith, and fallen away from the unity of the church; and, moreover, that they by this very act subject themselves to the penalties ordained by law, if by word, or writing, or any other external means, they dare to signify what they think in their hearts.—Extract from the Bull “Ineffabilis Deus,” of Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8, 1854, promulgating the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary; cited in “Dogmatic Canons and Decrees,” pp. 183, 184. SBBS 220.1
Immaculate Conception, Its Significance.—Who can believe that, it being in the power of God the Son to prepare a spotless holy temple wherein to dwell incarnate for nine months, he preferred to have one which had been first profaned by the stain of original sin? SBBS 220.2
Who can imagine that God, who could become incarnate by preparing for himself a mother immaculate in her conception, should have preferred a mother who had first been stained by sin and once in the power and slavery of Satan? SBBS 220.3
To admit such suppositions is shocking to Christian minds.... It being in the power of God to preserve Mary unstained from original sin, there is every reason to believe that he did it. God is able; therefore he did it.—“Catholic Belief,” Joseph Faa di Bruno, D. D. (R. C.), p. 218. New York: Benziger Brothers. SBBS 220.4
God the Son, by assuming this perfect human nature, which he took from the Blessed Virgin, was born in the flesh.—Id., p. 208. SBBS 220.5
Note.—The Scripture plainly teaches that Jesus, when born of woman, assumed sinful flesh (Hebrews 2:14; Romans 8:3), and thus became united with man in his fallen condition. This doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary separates Jesus from the human family in its present state, by giving him a “perfect human nature,” free from the stain of original sin, and thus prepares the way for the introduction of that human mediation which is one of the prominent features of the Roman Catholic system. The very essence of Christianity being the experience, “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” it thus appears that the dogma of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary strikes at the very heart of Christianity.—Eds. SBBS 220.6
Immaculate Conception, Explained by a Roman Catholic.—Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul. Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin, the state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam-from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death. SBBS 220.7
The person of Mary, in consequence of her origin from Adam, should have been subject to sin, but, being the new Eve who was to be the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal counsel of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin. Her redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ’s redeeming wisdom.—“Immaculate Conception,” William Bernard Ullathorne, p. 89; quoted in Truth (R. C.), December, 1914. SBBS 221.1
Immaculate Conception, Some Objections to the Doctrine of.—(1) The doctrine contradicts the express Biblical teaching of “Christ alone without sin,” and the teaching of antiquity for eleven centuries. (2) It supposes the creation of one sui generis, neither strictly human nor divine. (3) It interferes with the reality of the incarnation, since by this doctrine Christ did not partake of that human nature which he came to redeem. (4) It takes away from Christ’s glory in the miracle of the incarnation by conferring a portion of it upon Mary. (5) It is the climax of a monstrous doctrine which ought to have been nipped in the bud-a doctrine which attributes to Mary a more perfect love and sympathy towards sinners than to Christ, with a more accessible and powerful mediation than that of the Son of God, and indirectly aims at exalting Mary to an equality with the incarnate Son of the Highest.—“Modern Romanism Examined,” Rev. H. W. Dearden, M. A., pp. 240, 241. London: James Nisbet & Co., 1899. SBBS 221.2
Immaculate Conception.—See Infallibility, 249, 250. SBBS 221.3
Immortality.—See Nature of Man. SBBS 221.4
Increase of Knowledge, Study of Prophecy as Time of End Approached.—But I may say, that I did not out of choice apply myself to the study of the prophecies: I found myself forced to it by a kind of violence, which I could not resist. SBBS 221.5
Two things led me to it: 1. The cruel and horrible persecution [revival of persecution in France, preceding Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.—Eds.], which at this day makes such terrible ravage and desolation in the church: endeavoring some consolation under the deepest sorrow I ever felt, by searching into the grounds, we may have to hope for a speedy deliverance of the church, and not finding them other where, I inquired after them in the prophecies, which foretell the destiny of the church, and the most remarkable changes through which she is to pass.—“The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies,” Peter Jurieu, Preface, pp. 6, 7. London, 1687. SBBS 221.6
Increase of Knowledge, Sir Isaac Newton on.—But in the very end, the prophecy should be so far interpreted as to convince many. Then, saith Daniel, many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. For the gospel must be preached in all nations before the great tribulation, and end of the world.... An angel must fly through the midst of heaven with the everlasting gospel to preach to all nations, before Babylon falls, and the Son of man reaps his harvest. The two prophets must ascend up to heaven in a cloud, before the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of Christ. ‘Tis therefore a part of this prophecy, that it should not be understood before the last age of the world; and therefore it makes for the credit of the prophecy, that it is not yet understood. But if the last age, the age of opening these things, be now approaching, as by the great successes of late interpreters it seems to be, we have more encouragement than ever to look into these things. If the general preaching of the gospel be approaching, it is to us and our posterity that those words mainly belong: “In the time of the end the wise shall understand, but none of the wicked shall understand.” Daniel 12:4, 10. “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein.” Apoc. 1:3.—“Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John,” Sir Isaac Newton, Part II, chap. 1, pp. 250, 251. London: J. Darby and T. Browne, 1733. SBBS 221.7
Increase of Knowledge, Events of French Revolution Lead to Prophetic Study.—The prophecies respecting the downfall of the anti-Christian usurpations, must have their accomplishment in some era,-it may be the present. It is therefore surely worth our while to inquire how far the predictions of God’s Word will agree with the rise and progress of known events. SBBS 222.1
Thus it has appeared to me, and the more I examine and think upon the subject, the more I am convinced that the last days spoken of by God’s servants the prophets, are fast approaching.—“The Signs of the Times, or the Overthrow of the Papal Tyranny in France,” J. Bicheno, M. A., Preface to first edition, dated Jan. 19, 1793. London, 1793. SBBS 222.2
But the consequences of this terrible convulsion to the church were most important and beneficial. She was thereby shaken out of the sloth which had crept over her; was driven in her terror to the Scriptures, her only anchor and pole-star; and found, to her joy, that they were no longer a sealed book, but that the mystery of God was drawing to its close, and that the events of every year explained something previously unknown. Multitudes, no doubt, thus strengthened their faith, who have never published the results; but many did immediately publish, and the sudden perspicuity of interpretation is very observable.—The Morning Watch, or Quarterly Journal on Prophecy, December, 1829, Vol. I, p. 540. London: James Nisbet, 1830. SBBS 222.3
Increase of Knowledge, Unsealing the Book of Prophecy.—The wonderful events which have taken place since the year 1792, have so much increased the number of facts forming prophetic data, as to have introduced a new era for prophetic history; and writers of the present day, in their attempts to elucidate the prophecies, possess advantages very superior to those enjoyed by their predecessors.—“Combined View of the Prophecies of Daniel, Esdras, and St. John,” James Hatley Frere, Esq., p. 2. London, 1815. SBBS 222.4
Increase of Knowledge, John Wesley on Prophecies About to be Fulfilled.—Happy is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy.” Some have miserably handled this book. Hence others are afraid to touch it. And while they desire to know all things else, reject only the knowledge of those which God hath shown. They inquire after anything rather than this: as if it were written, Happy is he that doth not read this prophecy. Nay, but happy is he that readeth, and they that hear and keep the words thereof: especially at this time, when so considerable a part of them is on the point of being fulfilled.—“Explanatory Notes on the New Testament,” John Wesley, Vol. III, On Revelation 1:3; first American edition. Philadelphia: John Dickens, 1791. SBBS 222.5
Increase of Knowledge, The Knowledge of Salvation.—“Many shall run to and fro,” hither and thither, like couriers in the time of war, and “knowledge shall be increased:” knowledge of the most important kind, the knowledge of God’s salvation. Then, those who are wise themselves, shall endeavor to enlighten others; to “turn them from darkness to light,” and from sin to righteousness.—“The Cottage Bible,” Thomas Williams’s note on Daniel 12:1-13 (Vol. II, p. 937). Hartford: Case, Tiffany & Co., 1853. SBBS 223.1
Increase of Knowledge, Sir Isaac Newton on Opening of Prophecies.—Amongst the interpreters of the last age there is scarce one of note who hath not made some discovery worth knowing; and thence I seem to gather that God is about opening these mysteries. The success of others put me upon considering it; and if I have done anything which may be useful to following writers, I have my design.—“Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John,” Sir Isaac Newton, Part II, chap. 1, p. 253. London: J. Darby and T. Browne, 1733. SBBS 223.2
Increase of Knowledge, Accompanied by World Travel.—The natural meaning [of the phrase, “many shall run to and fro.” Daniel 12:4.—Eds.] must be upheld, i. e., wandering to and fro.—“Daniel and Its Critics,” Rev. Charles H. H. Wright, D. D., p. 209. London: Williams and Norgate, 1906. SBBS 223.3
Why should not that expression be used in the sense in which it is employed in Jeremiah 5:1, namely, of rapid movement hither and thither?-“Daniel and His Prophecies,” Rev. Charles H. H. Wright, D. D., p. 321. London: Williams and Norgate, 1906. SBBS 223.4
Increase of Knowledge, Spirit Animating Columbus.—In the execution of my enterprise to the Indies, human reason, mathematics, and maps of the world have served me nothing. It has accomplished simply that which the prophet Isaiah had predicted,-that before the end of the world all the prophecies should have their accomplishment.—Christopher Columbus, quoted in “Examen Critique,” A. von Humboldt, Vol. I, pp. 15-19; cited in “The Reign of Christ on Earth,” Daniel T. Taylor, p. 294. Boston: Scriptural Tract Repository, 1882. SBBS 223.5
In a letter to his sovereign, dated Jamaica, July 7, 1503, Columbus, after saying he must hasten and finish up his work of divine inspiration, namely, the opening up of the whole earth to the spread of Christianity preparatory to the coming of the Lord, added as follows: “According to my calculations there remain now to the end of the world but one hundred and fifty years! “How very striking it is that the great discoverer of the earth’s Western Hemisphere should have been impelled to his task and have enthusiastically performed it all under a deep and solemn conviction of the fast approaching, and, we may say, the actual imminence of the Great Consummation.—Id. (Taylor), p. 295. SBBS 223.6
Increase of Knowledge, Era Long Foreseen.—Nor should the prophecy of Daniel be forgotten, touching the last ages of the world: “Many shall go to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased; “clearly intimating that the thorough passage of the world (which now by so many distant voyages seems to be accomplished, or in course of accomplishment), and the advancement of the sciences, are destined by fate, that is, by divine Providence, to meet in the same age.—“Novum Organum,” Francis Bacon (died, 1626), book l, p. xciii; in Bacon’s Works, Vol. IV, p. 92. Spedding and Ellis. SBBS 223.7
Increase of Knowledge, Jurieu, on Invention of Sea Compass.—Why did God reserve the invention of the sea compass to these last times? why was it not known three or four hundred years ago, what it was to sail upon the ocean far from the shore? was there less curiosity, covetousness, or industry among men formerly than now? for what reason would God that one half of the world should live in ignorance of the other for so long a time? Why hath God in these latter days more visibly favored the designs which men have always had, to enrich themselves by commerce and trade, going in pursuit of riches to the end of the world? For my own part, I cannot but look upon this as a work of a most wise Providence, discovering to us unknown people, whose conversion he intends to bring about within a short time.—“The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies,” Peter Jurieu, Preface, p. 13. London, 1687. SBBS 224.1
Increase of Knowledge, All Lands Now Explored.—The same task [the penetration of every unknown tract, to which eighteenth-century explorers set themselves.—Eds.] has occupied modern explorers, who pride themselves on not passing over in their surveys the smallest corner of the earth, or the tiniest islet. With a similar enthusiasm are imbued the intrepid navigators who penetrate the ice-bound solitudes of the two poles, and tear away the last fragments of the veil which has so long hidden from us the extremities of the globe. SBBS 224.2
All then is now known, classed, catalogued, and labeled! Will the results of so much toil be buried in some carefully laid down atlas, to be sought only by professional savants? No! it is reserved to our use, and to develop the resources of the globe, conquered for us by our fathers at the cost of so much danger and fatigue. Our heritage is too grand to be relinquished. We have at our command all the facilities of modern science for surveying, clearing, and working our property. No more lands lying fallow, no more impassable deserts, no more useless streams, no more unfathomable seas, no more inaccessible mountains! We suppress the obstacles nature throws in our way. The isthmuses of Panama and Suez are in our way; we cut through them.—“Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century,” Jules Verne, p. 378. SBBS 224.3
Increase of Knowledge, Travel and Spread of Information.—One very remarkable feature of this Day of God defies adequate description. We might call it acceleration, concentration, condensation; but there is no fit word for it. Centuries are practically crowded into years, and years into days. Travel is so rapid that what would have taken months, one hundred years ago, is now easily accomplished in weeks, perhaps in days. We keep in touch, day by day, with the whole world, so that, in the morning papers, we read the news from Japan and China, India and Africa as naturally as from London and Dublin, New York and Chicago. So much can be done, in a brief space of time, and over a vast space of territory, that practically time and space are annihilated, and nothing seems any longer impossible to human achievement. The last fifty years have brought to the race an absolutely new era and epoch, abundant illustrations of which it would be easy to adduce.—“The Modern Mission Century,” Arthur T. Pierson, p. 44. New York: The Baker and Taylor Company. SBBS 224.4
Increase of Knowledge, Spread of Geographical Study.—The first [geographical society] was founded at Paris in 1821, the second at Berlin in 1828, and the third, which is now the most influential, at London in 1830. The largest is the National Geographic Society at Washington, which had 30,000 members in 1908. There were in 1901 no less than 89 active geographical societies in Europe, with more than 60,000 members, 6 in Asia, 8 in North America, 5 in South America, 3 in Africa, and 4 in Australia,-115 altogether. There are also more than 150 different geographical journals or magazines published regularly in all parts of the world. It may safely be said that this argues a more widespread interest in geography than exists in any other science.—“International Geography,” H. R. Mill, p. 12. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1909. SBBS 224.5
Increase of Knowledge, “The Century of Wonders.”—The nineteenth century is conceded to be a century of wonders. Judged by human progress along the highway of scientific discovery and invention, and by the general widening out of the horizon of human knowledge, it is not only unsurpassed, but it leaves all previous centuries far behind. Mr. Gladstone thought that a single decade of years might be found, within its limits, during which the race had advanced farther than during five hundred decades preceding. This estimate is probably, not an exaggeration; but, if so, what must be true of the whole century! SBBS 225.1
The catalogue of its achievements is both long and lustrous. In modes of travel, it has given us the railway and steamship, and come near to aerial navigation [now achieved]; in labor-saving machinery, it has invaded every department of handiwork; in transmission of thought and intelligence, it has bequeathed us the telegraph, ocean cable, and telephone, and, last of all, wireless telegraphy; in the department of fire and light, the lucifer match, gas, and electricity; in the new application of light, photography, the Röntgen ray, and the miracle of spectrum analysis; in the department of physics, the conservation of energy and the molecular theory of gases, and solidified air; in the application of physical principles, the velocity of light, and the phonograph; it has demonstrated the “importance of dust” and the “ethics of dust,” and unveiled great mysteries of chemistry; it has multiplied the elemental substances by the score; in astronomy, unveiled new worlds; ... in physiology, this last century gave us the cell theory and the germ theory; in medicine and surgery, anesthetics and antiseptics; ... it has improved prison discipline, revolutionized the treatment of lunatics, introduced aniline dyes, and given us a new set of explosive; it has carried on investigation in anthropology and archeology, and has explored land and sea until the secrets of ages have been unlocked.—“The Modern Mission Century,” Arthur T. Pierson, pp. 41, 42. New York: The Baker and Taylor Company. SBBS 225.2
Increase of Knowledge, The Steamship Comes at a Providential Hour.—There was one other force which was needed to fully equip the church for its universal activity, and to draw the nations of the world together into a net, as the peoples of old had been drawn into the Greco-Roman Empire. That was the power of steam, which was to bind the lands together with bands of steel, turn the oceans into a Mediterranean, make the locomotive an emissary of God’s kingdom, and the steamer a morning star to herald the day. That invention was not ready to begin its task of annihilating space until the dawn of the nineteenth century. But it was ready in time, for not until then was the purified church itself roused to a fidelity grand enough to undertake the work for which God had been preparing this equipment. It was in 1807, while the young men at Williamstown [Massachusetts] were praying and studying about missions, that Robert Fulton was making the first trip of the “Clermont” from New York to Albany.—“Introduction to Foreign Missions,” Dr. Edward Lawrence, p. 20. SBBS 225.3
Increase of Knowledge, When Transatlantic Steamships were Counted Impossible.—As to the project, however, which was announced in the newspapers, of making the voyage directly from New York to Liverpool [under steam alone], it was, he had no hesitation in saying, perfectly chimerical, and they might as well talk of making a voyage from New York or Liverpool to the moon.—Report of Lecture by Dr. Lardner, quoted in Liverpool Albion, Dec. 14, 1835. SBBS 226.1
Increase of Knowledge, Fulton’s First Steamship, 1807.—Fulton’s biographer [Dyer] describes the trial: “Before the boat had made the progress of a quarter of a mile, the greatest unbeliever was converted, and Fulton was received with shouts and acclamations of congratulation and applause. The vessel, ‘Clermont,’ made her first voyage from New York to Albany, 140 miles, at the average rate of five miles an hour; stopping some time at Clermont to take in water and coals. SBBS 226.2
The whole progress up the Hudson was a continual triumph. The vessel is described as having the most terrific appearance. The dry pine-wood fuel sent up many feet above the flue a column of ignited vapor, and, when the fire was stirred, tremendous showers of sparks. The wind and tide were adverse to them, but the crowds saw with astonishment the vessel rapidly coming towards them; and when it came so near that the noise of the machinery and paddles was heard, the crew, in some instances, shrunk beneath their decks from the terrific sight; while others prostrated themselves, and besought Providence to protect them from the approach of the horrible monster, which was marching on the tide, and lighting its path by the fire that it vomited.” SBBS 226.3
Mr. Dyer had sailed in the “Clermont,” and remembers the sensation created by her appearance, and the high admiration bestowed on the projector of so great an enterprise. That sensation in 1807 was precisely the same as the “Margery” created among the vessels on the Thames in 1815. In 1816, the Marquis de Jauffroy complained that the “Fulton” steamboat on the Seine had taken the “paddle wheels” invented by him and used at Lyons thirty-four years before, but also abandoned by him. To this charge Mons. Royou replied in the Journal des Debats, thus: “It is not concerning an invention, but the means of applying a power already known. Fulton never pretended to be an inventor with regard to steamboats in any other sense. The application of steam to navigation had been thought of by all artists, but the means of applying it were wanting, and Fulton furnished them.” The “Fulton,” of 327 tons, was built in 1813, and the first steamer for harbor defense, was built under Fulton’s direction, 2,740 tons, launched in 1814.—“Wonderful Inventions,” John Timbs, p. 258. London, 1868. SBBS 226.4
Increase of Knowledge, Beginning of Steamships in Britain.—[Symington, in England, had preceded Fulton in steamship building, but his scheme was frowned down. Some objected that the river and and canal banks would be washed away by the stirring of the waters. After Fulton’s success, Dyer revived the matter in England.—Eds.] SBBS 226.5
“We don’t doubt the success of steamboats in the wide rivers and harbors of America [said the engineers], but in our comparatively small rivers and crowded harbors they will never answer.” Even such scientific engineers as John Rennie and Peter Ewart, both advised Dyer to relinquish the attempt to introduce steamboats, as sure to prove a waste of time and money to no purpose. However, when conviction came over the public mind that steam navigation would answer here-but not until after more than 5,000 tons of steamboats had been launched on the Hudson in 1816, did it so come-then began the spread of steam navigation, since extended with such marvelous rapidity and perfection as to atone for the sluggish beginning. SBBS 226.6
The success of these enterprises was not likely to pass unnoticed by the shipowners and builders of the greatest port in the world; and we find that in 1814, a steamboat was employed between London and Richmond. George Dodd, son of Ralph Dodd, the well-known engineer, from 1814 to 1828, had more to do with establishing steamboats on the Thames than any other individual. He it was who started the Richmond packet, in 1814-the first steamboat which succeeded in plying for hire on the Thames. He had to contend against the Watermen’s Company, who for a long time succeeded in preventing any steamboat plying for hire unless navigated by free watermen. The “Richmond” was not, however, the first steamboat seen on the Thames. Sir I. M. Brunel, as may be read in his “Life” by Beamish, made a voyage to Margate in a boat of his own, propelled by a double-acting engine, and met with such opposition and abuse that the landlord of the hotel where he stopped, refused him a bed!-Id., p. 261. SBBS 227.1
Increase of Knowledge, Establishment of Transatlantic Steamship Service.—What may be the ultimate fate of this excitement [arrival of steamships “Sirius” and “Great Western” in New York, from England]-whether or not the expense of equipment and fuel will admit of the employment of these vessels in the ordinary packet service-we cannot pretend to form an opinion; but of the entire feasibility of the passage of the Atlantic by steam, as far as regards safety, comfort, and dispatch, even in the roughest and most boisterous weather, the most skeptical must now cease to doubt.—New York Courier and Enquirer, April 24, 1838. SBBS 227.2
Increase of Knowledge, Progress in Steamships.—It is a far cry from the year 1838, when the steam conquest of the ocean was achieved definitely and commercially, to 1912. Yet in these seventy-four years progress has been marked. The pioneer liner “Sirius” [from England to New York, 1838] was driven by paddle wheels, and with the collective energy of three hundred twenty horses resolved into harnessed steam, her engines were able to give her an average speed of seven and a half knots-eight and three-fourths miles-per hour. At the time, this was considered an amazing engineering achievement, but it pales into insignificance when ranged beside the pace of the crack liners of today.... They travel three and a half times faster than did the “Sirius,” but their engines are more than two hundred times as powerful in order to cross the North Atlantic in a quarter of the time occupied by the little vessel which led the way. This comparison offers a graphic idea of the enormous strides that have been made by the marine engineer in the space of three quarters of a century.—“Steamship Conquest of the World,” F. A. Talbot.* SBBS 227.3
Increase of Knowledge, Transportation Changes in Nineteenth Century.—From the earliest historic and even in prehistoric times till the construction of our great railways in the second quarter of the present century [the nineteenth], there had been absolutely no change in the methods of human locomotion.—“The Wonderful Century,” Prof. Alfred Russel Wallace, p. 7. SBBS 227.4
Increase of Knowledge, The First Steam Railway.—The first public steam railway in the world was formally opened in England, Sept. 27, 1825. The Stockton and Darlington was thirty-eight miles in length. The line was laid with both malleable and cast-iron rails, and cost L250,000. Its opening was attended with great curiosity and excitement. SBBS 227.5
There was to be a competition between various kinds of motive power, horses, stationary engines, and a locomotive being tried. The train consisted of six loaded wagons, a passenger carriage, twenty-one trucks fitted with seats, and six wagons filled with coal. George Stephenson [the builder of it] drove the locomotive. “The signal being given,” says a writer. of the time, “the engine started off with this immense line of carriages, and such was the velocity that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an hour, and the number of passengers was counted to be 450, which, together with the coals, merchandise, and carriages, would amount to near ninety tons. SBBS 228.1
“The engine, with its load, arrived at Darlington, traveling the last eight and three quarter miles in sixty-five minutes. The six wagons loaded with coals, intended for Darlington, were then left behind, and obtaining a fresh supply of water, and arranging the procession to accommodate a band of music and numerous passengers from Darlington, the engine set off again, and arrived at Stockton in three hours and seven minutes, including stoppages, the distance being nearly twelve miles.” SBBS 228.2
The passenger coaches, with their rough, uncomfortable seats, were in great contrast to the plainest passenger cars of today, but people crowded the “wagons” with feelings of mingled curiosity, delight, suspense, and fear, and there were six hundred persons on the train when it returned to Darlington. SBBS 228.3
In 1829 the Stephensons invented the steam blast, which, continually feeding the flame with a fresh supply of oxygen, enabled the “Rocket,” their prize engine, to make steam enough to draw ten passenger cars, at the rate of ten miles an hour. SBBS 228.4
In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened in spite of bitter opposition from landowners and canal companies, who sought in every way to prevent the building of the road. The surveyor and his assistants were attacked with guns and pitchforks and sticks.—“The World’s History and Its Makers: Achievements of the Nineteenth Century.”* SBBS 228.5
Increase of Knowledge, First Railway Expectations.—In 1825, Mr. Nicholas Wood, in his work on railways, took the standard at six miles an hour, drawing forty tons on a level; and so confident was he that he had gauged the power of the locomotive, that he said: “Nothing could do more harm towards the adoption of railways than the promulgation of such nonsense, as that we shall see locomotive engines traveling at the rate of twelve, sixteen, eighteen, and twenty miles an hour.” ... SBBS 228.6
[The London] Quarterly Review gravely observed: “As to those persons who speculate on the making of railroads generally throughout the kingdom, and superseding all the canals, all the wagons, mail and stage coaches, postchaises, and in short every other mode of conveyance by land and by water, we deem them and their visionary schemes unworthy of notice.—“Wonderful Inventions,” John Timbs, p. 297. London, 1868. SBBS 228.7
Increase of Knowledge, When Railways Were Counted Impossible.—Henry Meigs, a member of the New York Legislature in 1817, a young man of fine talents, lost his influence, ruined his prospects, and came to be regarded as a proper subject for a strait-jacket, because he expressed his belief that steam carriages would be operated successfully on land.—“When Railroads Were New,” C. F. Carter, p. 8. SBBS 228.8
Increase of Knowledge, When Railways Were New in France.—The council of ministers, on being acquainted with His Majesty’s project [to go by rail from Paris to Rouen, 1843], held a sitting, and came to the conclusion that this mode of traveling by railway was not sufficiently secure to admit of its being used by the king, and consequently His Majesty went to Bizy with post horses.—“Railways of England,” W. M. Acworth, p. 19. SBBS 228.9
Increase of Knowledge, A Massachusetts Town Avoiding a Railway.—Dorchester, Mass., in a town meeting assembled in 1842, instructed its representatives in the legislature to use their utmost endeavors to prevent, if possible, so great a calamity to our town as must be the location of any railroad through it.—“When Railroads Were New,” C. F. Carter, p. 11. SBBS 229.1
Increase of Knowledge, First Railway Office in New York City.—Cornelius Vanderbilt opened a railway office on Manhattan Island in 1844, and that was the beginning of the railway methods that have grown into such enormous proportions on the island today, with ninety-six railway corporations and all of their direct and indirect interests represented here. All of this means the interests of 280,000 miles of railway.—New York Herald, Jan. 22, 1911. SBBS 229.2
Increase of Knowledge, Growth of Railways in United States.—The American railway system has grown as follows: SBBS 229.3
| Miles | |
| 1850 | 9,021 |
| 1860 | 30,626 |
| 1870 | 52,922 |
| 1880 | 93,267 |
| 1890 | 167,191 |
| 1900 | 198,964 |
| 1910 | 249,992 |
The United States have the most wonderful system of railways. Their mileage is far greater than that of all Europe, which in 1910 had only 207,432 miles of railway.... The great republic possesses forty per cent of the railway mileage of the world.—J. Ellis Barker, in the Nineteenth Century and After, London, May, 1918, pp. 941, 912. SBBS 229.4
Increase of Knowledge, Railway Crossing of Australian Continent.—At 428 miles from Augusta the route [of the railway connecting We tern Australia with South Australia, completed in 1918] debouches suddenly on to the famous “Nullarbor,” an absolutely level and treeless plain-a plain as big as France, averaging 600 feet above the sea level.... For 330 miles on the “Nullarbor” the line runs without a curve-the longest tansent in the world. There is no surface water, but an extensive boring is producing fresh water in large quantities.... It renders possible one of the longest railway runs in the world. From Tropical Townsville, sheltered behind the barrier Reef, the traveler may soon run by way of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, to Perth, on the surf-beaten shores of the Indian Ocean-a run of 4,000 miles. He may do this in the running time of 150 hours.—“Engineering,” London; reprinted in Literary Digest, New York, May 18, 1918. SBBS 229.5
Increase of Knowledge, Birth of Modern Postal System, of 1839-1843.—Coleridge, when a young man, was walking through the lake district, when he one day saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying she could not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother. Coleridge pail the post-age in spite of the manifest unwillingness of the woman. As soon as the postman was out of sight, she showed Coleridge how his money had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There was an agreement between her brother and herself that as long as all went well with him, he should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter; and she thus had tidings of him without expense of postage. Most persons would have remembered this incident as a curious story to tell; but there was one mind which wakened up at once to a sense of the significance of the fact. It struck Mr. Rowland Hill that there must be something wrong in a system which drove a brother and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire to hear of one another’s welfare.—“A Short History of Our Own Times,” Justin McCarthy, pp. 10, 11. London: Chatto and Windus, 1904. SBBS 229.6
Increase of Knowledge, Coming of the Electric Telegraph.—It is a somewhat curious coincidence that in the year [1837] when Professor Wheatstone and Mr. Cooke took out their first patent “for improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric currents transmitted through metallic circuit,” Professor Morse, the American electrician, applied to Congress for aid in the construction and carrying on of a small electric telegraph to convey messages a short distance, and made the application without success. In the following year he came to this country [England] to obtain a patent for his invention; but he was refused. He had come too late. Our own countrymen were beforehand with him.—Id., p. 9. SBBS 230.1
Increase of Knowledge, First Long-Distance Establishment of Telegraph, 1844.—The system is daily extending. It was, however, in the United States of America that it was first adopted on a great scale, by Professor Morse, in 1844, and it is there that it is now already developing most extensively.—Speech in 1847 by Sir Robert Inglis, President of the British Association; quoted in “Lives of the Electricians.” W. F. Jeans, p. 285. London. SBBS 230.2
Increase of Knowledge, Morse on the Telegraph as a Gift of Providence.—If not a sparrow falls to the ground without a definite purpose in the plans of Infinite Wisdom, can the creation of an instrument so vitally affecting the interests of the whole human race have an origin less humble than the Father of every good and perfect gift? I am sure I have the sympathy of such an assembly as is here gathered together, if in all humility, and in the sincerity of a grateful heart, I use the words of Inspiration in ascribing honor and praise to Him to whom first of all and most of all it is pre-eminently due. “Not unto us, not unto us, but to God be all the glory”-not, What hath man, but, “What hath God wrought!” [the words of the first long-distance message, sent by Morse from Washington to Baltimore, May, 1844.—Eds.]-Prof. S. F. B. Morse, in speech, Dec. 31, 1868; quoted in “Lives of the Electricians,” W. F. Jeans, p. 315. London. SBBS 230.3
Increase of Knowledge, Telephony.—Long-distance transmission from coast to coast by metallic circuits has been successfully accomplished during past year. By the use of well-known and commercially practicable apparatus, the human voice may now be clearly transmitted over the span of 3,400 miles between New York and San Francisco. This transcontinental line is now in regular commercial use, and already the traffic over it has reached sufficient proportions to justify the expense involved.—The American Year Book, 1915, edited by Francis G. Wickware, B. A., B. Sc., p. 560. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1916. SBBS 230.4
Increase of Knowledge, Wireless Telephony.—In September, 1915, the human voice was carried by wireless transmission from Arlington, Va., near Washington, to Honolulu, a distance of 4,900 miles. Two weeks later words spoken at Arlington were received by the station on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Since the nrst successful transmission, messages have been sent from Arlington to Mare Island, San Diego, Darien, and Paris.—Id., p. 561. SBBS 231.1
Increase of Knowledge, Modern Inventions Counted Gospel Agencies.—The development of scientific invention in the past hundred years is sufficient to bewilder the careful thinker. He feels almost like Alice in Wonderland. It is said that when the battle of Waterloo was fought, in 1815, all haste delivered the thrilling dispatches in London three days later. How does that appear in contrast with wireless telegraphy and wireless telephony? All the world is now becoming a vast whispering gallery. SBBS 231.2
The Watchman and Examiner, in a July issue, refers to three events which it calls modern marvels. The first is the Institute of American Electrical Engineers’ simultaneous convention in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco. Telephone connection was made so that speakers in each city were perfectly heard by the members of the Institute in all the other cities named. At the close, each city furnished a song. Atlanta’s song was “Way Down South in Dixie,” other cities furnished other songs, while Philadelphia closed with “The Star Spangled Banner.” When the first notes of this last song were heard, the president of the Institute asked all to stand, and the five thousand men composing the Institute in the seven cities stood loyally while this national song was being sung. The song was heard in the different places, and also the applause at the close. The second wonder was the sending of two thousand words from Nauen, Germany, to Long Island by wireless telegraphy, beating the cable message of the German government by over seven hours. The third of these remarkable events was the hearing of the human voice at the wireless telephone in New York City, by an operator in Honolulu. SBBS 231.3
Such astonishing facts are suggestive of the greatness of the world’s future. God is developing these agencies for the welfare of the human race, and the progress of his kingdom in this world. They are intended to be conveyors of his truth. Satan is quick to employ new inventions in his work, and he uses them most effectively; but they are also channels for the work of the kingdom. God wants his people to control them in his service; and the day is coming when they will. These things are developments in the providence of God, and foretokens of a far greater era of spirituality for this world than it has ever seen.—The Christian Statesman, Pittsburgh, Pa., August-September, 1916. SBBS 231.4
Increase of Knowledge, A Lifetime’s Measurement.—There ought to be no reluctance of imagination. No dream should be too bold to be dreamed by inhabitants of a world which has passed through the marvels of the last half-century. Lord Avebury, writing for the New York Times the other day, remarked: “Though not eighty, I am older than any railway company in the world, any gas company, any steamboat company, any telegraph, telephone, or electric light company.” SBBS 231.5
One need only ponder these words-pondering is required before it is possible to realize that they can be true-to get a sense of the world of yesterday. No electric light, no telephone-any man of forty can remember that he lived in that world, but nobody can quite remember what it was like. Fifty years ago all Africa, except its coast, was a blank on the map; Asia was a dwelling place of mystery; Japan was unborn; United Italy had no existence, and the German Empire was still a dream. Transportation was primitive; business was done on the basis of the country tore; the feats of modern engineering were unattempted; electricity was an interesting toy; machinery had only begun its revolutionizing service. Ex-president Eliot’s saying-that the world has been practically remade in the last half century-is a moderate and truthful statement.—The World’s Work, New York.* SBBS 231.6
Increase of Knowledge, The Rise of Modern Missions.—The closing years of the eighteenth century con titute in the history of Protestant missions an epoch indeed, since they witnessed nothing less than a revolution, a renaissance, an effectual and manifold ending of the old, a substantial inauguration of the new. It was then that for the first time since the apostolic period, occurred an outburst of general missionary zeal and activity. Beginning in Great Britain, it soon spread to the Continent and across the Atlantic. It was no mere push of fervor, but a mighty tide set in, which from that day to this has been steadily rising and spreading.—“A Hundred Years of Missions,” Rev. Lelevan L. Leonard, p. 69. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1895. SBBS 232.1
Increase of Knowledge, Europe’s Message to Britain on Birth of Modern Missions.—It is like the dawn promising the beautiful day after the dark night. It is the beginning of a new epoch for the kingdom of God on earth. Your undertaking and its success fills our hearts with joy and our eyes with tears. The history of Great Britain is sanctified by this unparalleled mission. What harmony among different persuasions! You call on the wise and good of every nation to take interest in the work and bear a part. Such a call was never heard of before. It was reserved for the close of the eighteenth century to be distinguished by it.—Message or Basle (Switzerland) Belevers, days of 1796-98; cited in “A Hundred Years of Missions,” p. 91. SBBS 232.2
Increase of Knowledge, Wm. Carey’s Pioneer Missionary Society.—Carey’s Baptist society [1792], which originated in his brain, was the model for the scores and hundreds which followed after. Thus was ushered in the happy day of voluntary societies, organizations sustained by such as are interested in the promotion of the objects sought. SBBS 232.3
And the year of grace 1792 is annus mirabilis, the famous date from which to reckon backward and forward. Well may it stand side by side with 44 a. d., when the Holy Ghost said, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them;” or 53 a. d., when in vision Faul was bidden to lay the foundations of the gospel in Europe. Whatever has been accomplished since can be traced to forces which began to operate a hundred years ago.—“A Hundred Years of Missions.” Rev. Delevan L. Leonard, p. 70. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1895. SBBS 232.4
Increase of Knowledge, The Hour at Hand, Delay Impossible.—Even Andrew Fuller, in 1787, replied to Carey’s urgency for immediate action: “If the Lord should make windows in heaven, then might this thing be.” The fact, published by his contemporaries in 1793, and verified by all the history since, is thus expressed by Dr. Ryland, another unbeliever in immediate duty, like Fuller: “I believe God himself infused into the mind of Carey that solicitude for the salvation of the heathen which cannot be fairly traced to any other source.”-“Short History of Christian Missions,” George Smith, LL. D., F. R. G. S., p. 160, revised edition. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. SBBS 232.5
Increase of Knowledge, Origin of the Idea of Bible Societies—[Mary Jones, Welsh girl, walked twenty-five miles with six years’ savings to buy a Welsh Bible-only to find that Mr. Thomas Charles, minister, had no copies save a few spoken for, and knew not how to get further copies.—Eds.] Poor Mary! When she heard this answer, her disappointment was so great that she burst into tears, and sobbel as if her heart would break. Mr. Charles was deeply moved, and tears filled his eyes, partly in sorrow for his country, where the Word of Col was so scarce, and partly in pity for Mary. He could not bear that she should return home in grief and disappointment. “You shall have a Bible,” he said, and he gave her one of the reserved copies. Mary’s tears were now tears of joy as she paid for her treasure. “Well, David Edward,” said Mr. Charles, turning to the elder, who had been weeping too, “is not this very sad-that there should be such a scarcity of Bibles in the country, and that this poor child should have walked some twenty-eight or thirty miles to get a copy? If something can be done to alter this state of things, I will not rest till it is accomplished.”-“Little Hands and God’s Book,” William Canton, p. 22. London: The Bible House. SBBS 233.1
Increase of Knowledge, Diary Recording Birth of British Bible Society.—March 7, 1804.—Memorable day! The British and Foreign Bible Society founded. I and others belonging to the tract society had long had it in view; and after much preparation, in which we did not publicly appear, a meeting was called in the I ondon Tavern, and the society began with a very few.... Nations unborn will have cause to bless God for the meeting of this day.—Entry in George Burder’s Diary, quoted in British and Foreign Bible Society’s Centenary Report, “After a Hundred Years,” p. 2. SBBS 233.2
Increase of Knowledge, Wonderful Development of the Printing Press.—If the spirit of the man [Gutenberg] who invented printing from movable type could animate his striking statue outside the big Hoe building [New York] and step down from his pedestal, how he would marvel at the triumphs of his beloved art at the dawn of the twentieth century! SBBS 233.3
R. Hoe & Co. have just completed the construction of the largest printing press in the world.... It is a double octuple press, and so called, but in reality is much more than this, inasmuch as it combines the ability to do printing in colors as well as in black.... Altogether there are 18 plate cylinders in the machine, each carrying eight plates the size of a newspaper rage.... SBBS 233.4
The full capacity of the machine, when printing all black, on eight rolls, is equivalent to 300.000 four-, six-, or eight-page papers per hour. SBBS 233.5
The maximum product of the machine when running as a color press is 50,000 twenty-four-page papers per hour, with two outside pages printed in three colors and black; the other pages in black only. Papers with any number of pages from four to twenty-four, with four colors and black on the outside pages, the other pages in black only, can be obtained at a speed of 50,000 to 100.000 per hour.... Running at a speed of 300 revolutions per minute of the cylinders and using eight rolls of paper, the consumption of paper will be at the rate of 108 miles an hour, six feet wide, or 216 miles an hour three feet wide. The weight of this paper would be about eighteen tons.—Statement to Publishers, from R. Hoe & Co., March 29, 1916. SBBS 233.6
Index of Prohibited Books.—See Censorship of Books; Galileo, 180, 181. SBBS 234.1
Indulgences, Origin of.—Under the head of “Discipline” we should not pass over a custom, under pretense of which the modern theory of indulgence has been introduced. Such as were convicted of notorious crimes were compelled to make confession of them publicly before the whole congregation, to implore pardon, and to undergo whatever punishment should be imposed on them. The church inflicted some punishment on them. This was done as well for example, as also to prevent reproach to the Christian religion amongst infidels. These punishments were not supposed to be satisfactions to God by redeeming temporal punishments. Such an idea cannot be traced in any of the writers of the age who mention this practice. We refer to the period a. d. 160. At the latter end of the third century, when several lapsed through fear of persecution, the punishment and period of probation were more severe and lengthened before they were readmitted. Sometimes the period was protracted for years together. Hence arose the custom of prescribing times or periods-five, ten, or more years of penance. SBBS 234.2
But, lest the penitent should die, lose heart and courage, or despair, the bishops took upon themselves, under certain circumstances, to mitigate the period of punishment. This act was termed a relaxation or remission. It was long after this period that the term indulgence was substituted; but still, when introduced, it was quite in another sense to its modern use. It signified only a discharge or a mitigation of ecclesiastical censures and penalties inflicted by the church, and not a forgiveness of the penalty due to God’s justice for the sin of the penitent which had been forgiven, which is the modern theory. But the transition from one to the other can well be comprehended, when we have craft and avarice on the one side, and superstition and ignorance on the other.—“The Novelties of Romanism,” Charles Hastings Collete, pp. 115, 116. London: William Penny, 1860. SBBS 234.3
Indulgences Defined.—What is an indulgence? SBBS 234.4
It is the remission of the temporal punishment due to sins, remitted as to their guilt, by the power of the keys, without the sacrament, by the application of the satisfactions which are contained in the treasury of the church. SBBS 234.5
What is understood by the treasury of the church? SBBS 234.6
It is the collection (cumulus) of the spiritual goods remaining in the divine possession, the distribution of which is intrusted to the church. SBBS 234.7
From whence is this treasury collected? SBBS 234.8
In the first place it is collected from the superabundant satisfactions of Christ, next from the superfluous satisfactions of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the other saints. SBBS 234.9
This treasury is the foundation or matter of indulgences, and is that infinite treasury made up in part from the satisfactions of Christ; moreover it is never to be exhausted; and it daily receives the superabundant satisfactions of pious men.—Dens’ “Theologia,” Tom. VI, Tractatus de Indulgentiis; De Indulgentiarum Natura (Dens’ Theology [R. C.], Vol. VI, Treatise on Indulgences; On the Nature of Indulgences). SBBS 234.10
Indulgences.—A plenary indulgence is a receipt in full for the penalties inflicted in purgatory for sins forgiven but not satisfied for by works worthy of repentance.... In dealing with sinners, he [God] distinguishes between the principal and the interest, or sins and the temporal pains incurred by them. He forgives the principal in the confessional; but the accrued interest must be met by good works or indulgences earned by the good works of others and imputable to us in the communion of saints.—The Western Watchman (R. C.), St. Louis, Mo., July 3, 1913. SBBS 234.11
Indulgences, The Meaning of, Explained.—5. What means does the church offer us to cancel the temporal punishment due still to sin? SBBS 235.1
The means that the church offers us to cancel the temporal punishment due still to sin is to grant us indulgences. SBBS 235.2
6. What is an indulgence? SBBS 235.3
An indulgence is the remission of temporal punishment due still to sin, after the guilt of sin (the offense of God) has been forgiven in the sacrament of penance. SBBS 235.4
10. Is it not true, then, that the church, by granting indulgences, frees us from the obligation of doing penance? SBBS 235.5
No; the church does not free us from the obligation of doing penance; for the greater our spirit of penance and love for God are, the more certain we are of gaining indulgences. The church wishes to assist us in our efforts to expiate in this life all temporal punishments, in order thus to effect what in ancient times she endeavored to attain by rigorous penitential canons. SBBS 235.6
12. Who has the power to grant indulgences? SBBS 235.7
(1) The Pope has the power to grant plenary and partial indulgences; for, as successor of St. Peter, he has received from Christ the keys of the kingdom of heaven; that is, he has power to remove such obstacles as hinder our entrance into heaven. Temporal punishment is an obstacle to our entrance into heaven. Therefore, the Pope has power to remit temporal punishment. SBBS 235.8
“Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.” Matthew 16:19; 18:18. SBBS 235.9
(2) The bishops also have power to grant partial indulgences. SBBS 235.10
14. How does the church remit the temporal punishment due to our sins? SBBS 235.11
The church remits temporal punishment due to sin by making to divine justice compensation for us from the inexhaustible treasure of the merits of Christ and his saints. SBBS 235.12
16. Can indulgences be applied to the souls in purgatory? SBBS 235.13
Indulgences can be applied to the souls in purgatory, when the Pope has declared that they can be so applied. SBBS 235.14
17. What awaits us in the next life, if we neglect to make due satisfaction to divine justice? SBBS 235.15
If, in this world, we neglect to make due satisfaction to divine justice, greater suffering, without any merit, will await us in purgatory.—“Familiar Explanation of Catholic Doctrine,” Rev. M. Müller (R. C.), pp. 390-392. New York: Benziger Brothers. SBBS 235.16
Indulgences, the Treasury of Merit.—Upon the altar of the cross, Christ shed of his blood not merely a drop, though this would have sufficed, by reason of the union with the Word, to redeem the whole human race, but a copious torrent, ... thereby laying up an infinite treasure for mankind.... This treasure he neither wrapped up in a napkin, nor hid in a field, but intrusted to blessed Peter, the key bearer, and his successors, that they might, for just and reasonable causes, distribute it to the faithful in full or in partial remission of the temporal punishment due to sin.—Extrav. Com., lib. v, tit. ix, cap. ii (The Common Extravagants [R. C.], book 5, title 9, chap. 2). SBBS 235.17
Indulgences, Decree Concerning.—The sacred, holy synod teaches and enjoins that the use of indulgences for the Christian people, most salutary and approved of by the authority of sacred councils, is to be retained in the church; and it condemns with anathema those who either assert that they are useless, or who deny that there is in the church the power of granting them.... It ordains generally by this decree that all evil gains for the obtaining thereof-whence a most prolific cause of abuses amongst the Christian people has been derived-be wholly abolished.—“Dogmatic Canons and Decrees,” Decree Concerning Indulgences, published in the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent. pp. 173, 174. New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1912. SBBS 235.18
Indulgences. the Pardon of Sins.—Further, it is much insisted on in Roman Apologetic books that indulgences are in no sense pardons for sin, far less licenses to commit sin. nor purchasable for money. This is true now. but it was not always true. The existing practice, whatever its errors and abuses may be, is at any rate free from the horrible scandals which attended the older method, abolished by the Council of Trent in consequence of the outcry raised on the subject at the Reformation-one proof, amongst many, that Rome can be forced to mend her ways by pressure from without, though she never does it voluntarily. The Roman Catholic princes of Germany, alarmed at the progress of Lutheranism, met in Diet at Nuremberg in 1523, and addressed a petition to Pope Hadrian VI for the remedy of a “Hundred Grievances of the German Nation,” which they set forth in that document. Amongst the e occur- SBBS 236.1
No. 5. How license to sin with impunity is granted for money. SBBS 236.2
No. 67. How more money than penitence is exacted from sinners. SBBS 236.3
No. 91. How bishops extort money from the concubinage of priests. They restated these grievances more at length, classifying them in chapters, and alleged that the vendors of bulls of indulgence “declare that by means of these purchasable pardons, not only are past and future sins of the living forgiven, but also those of such as have departed this life and are in the purgatory of fire, provided only something be counted down.... Every one, in proportion to the price he had expended in these wares, promised himself impunity in sinning. Hence came fornications, incests, adulteries, perjuries, homicides, thefts, rapine, usury, and a whole hydra of evils. For what wickedness will mortals shudder at any longer, when they have once persuaded themselves that license and impunity for sinning can be had for money, however extravagant the sum, not only in this life but after death also, by means of these marketings of indulgences?”-“Plain Reasons Against Joining the Church of Rome,” Richard Frederick Littledale. LL. D., pp. 102, 103. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1905. SBBS 236.4
Indulgences, Boniface VIII on.—We, by the mercy of Almighty God, etc., relying on his merits and authority and in the fulness of our apostolic power, will and do grant to all who, in the present year 1300, beginning with the feast of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ just past and in every following hundredth year, reverently come to the basilicas themselves, truly repenting and after confession, or who shall truly repent and confess in this present year and in every succeeding hundredth year, not only full and greater, but indeed most full pardon for all their sins, provided that those who desire to be partakers in this indulgence granted by us visit the aforesaid basilicas, if they are Romans, at least on thirty consecutive or non-consecutive days, and at least once each day, but if they are strangers or foreigners, on fifteen days in like manner.—Extract from the Bull of Boniface VIII (R. C.), published in 1300; “Extravagantes Communes,” lib. v, tit. ix, cap. i (The Common Extravagants, book 5, title 9, chap. 1). SBBS 236.5
Indulgences, Some of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses Against.— SBBS 237.1
5. The Pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties, except those which he has imposed by his own authority, or by that of the canons. SBBS 237.2
27. They preach man, who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles. SBBS 237.3
28. It is certain that, when the money rattles in the chest, avarice and gain may be increased, but the suffrage of the church depends on the will of God alone. SBBS 237.4
32. Those who believe that, through letters of pardon, they are made sure of their own salvation, will be eternally damned along with their teachers. SBBS 237.5
35. They preach no Christian doctrine, who teach that contrition is not necessary for those who buy souls out of purgatory or buy confessional licenses. SBBS 237.6
39. It is a most difficult thing, even for the most learned theologians, to exalt at the same time in the eyes of the people the ample effect of pardons and the necessity of true contrition. SBBS 237.7
43. Christians should be taught that he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man, does better than if he bought pardons. SBBS 237.8
50. Christians should be taught that, if the Pope were acquainted with the exactions of the preachers of pardons, he would prefer that the basilica of St. Peter should be burnt to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep. SBBS 237.9
52. Vain is the hope of salvation through letters of pardon, even if a commissary-nay, the Pope himself-were to pledge his own soul for them. SBBS 237.10
56. The treasures of the church, whence the Pope grants indulgences, are neither sufficiently named nor known among the people of Christ. SBBS 237.11
66. The treasures of indulgences are nets, wherewith they now fish for the riches of men.—“Luther’s Primary Works,” Wace and Buchheim, pp. 414-419. London: Hodder and Stoughton. SBBS 237.12
Indulgences, Doctrine of, Developed by Schoolmen.—The development of this doctrine in explicit form was the work of the great Schoolmen, notably Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, and St. Thomas.—The Catholic Encyclopedia, art. “Indulgences,” sec. on “The Treasury of the Church,” Vol. VII, p. 784. New York: Robert Appleton Company. SBBS 237.13
Indulgences, Uncertainty of, for Souls in Purgatory.—There is this difference between indulgences gained for the living and the dead, that in the former case their effect is produced by way of absolution, and in the latter by way of suffrage. The church exercises direct authority over the faithful on earth; and when she absolves them from censures, from sin, or from the debt of punishment, the effect is infallible, provided the person so absolved be in proper dispositions. We are certain, therefore, in this case, that the fruit of the indulgence will be applied where there is no obstacle, because Christ has promised the church that “whatever, she [sic] shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.” Matthew 16:19. It is an article of faith that the souls in purgatory are helped by our prayers; but the church does not exercise the same authority over the faithful departed that she does over those upon earth. She cannot, therefore, directly release the suffering souls by absolving them from their debt of punishment; but she offers to God a satisfaction equal to that debt, and she begs him to accept it in their behalf. The indulgences thus gained will certainly not be lost, and should God not see fit to accept them in behalf of the particular souls for whom they are offered, he will not fail to allow them to serve for the benefit of others.—“A Manual of Instructions in Christian Doctrine,” edited by the late Provost Wenham, revised by the Rev. W. J. B. Richards, D. D., and the Rt. Rev. James Carr. V. G. (R. C.), 15th edition, pp. 359, 360. London: W. J. Cahill, 1901. SBBS 237.14
Indulgences, “Taxes of the Apostolic Chancery.”—It is not only in the rituals or penitentials we have quoted that the nomenclature of the commutations of penalties and that of the taxes imposed upon penitents by the popes, bishops, and monks, is to be found. There existed such in every diocese in the Middle Ages; but they varied according to the period and the spirit in which they were composed. If a greater number of them have not reached our own time, it is because they were kept secret in the hands of a limited number of confessors without it being lawful to communicate them to the laity. Accordingly, we find that Pope Nicholas, on being consulted thereon in 1366, replied: “It is not meet that laymen should be acquainted with these things, for they have no right to judge the acts of the priesthood.” SBBS 238.1
The custom of obtaining absolution for sins having been gradually introduced into the Latin Church, the popes took almost exclusive possession of this lucrative branch of revenue. Leo X then ordered lists and catalogues of sins to be drawn up at Rome, designating the sum that was to be paid to obtain absolution for them. Therein we find also permissions and dispensations which concern either the laity or the ecclesiastics, and for the obtaining of which payment was to be made, as is also the custom in the present day in several cases. This ecclesiastical budget is entitled: “Taxes of the Apostolic Chancery,” and “Taxes of the Holy Apostolic Penitentiary.” This monstrous abuse, as pernicious to morality as to religion, was, for several centuries, set working on a large scale, and procured considerable revenues to the court of Rome. To satisfy the reader’s curiosity, we give here an extract of a few of the articles which are found in this work: SBBS 238.2
For a town to be entitled to coin money, 500 drachms (gros). SBBS 238.3
Remission given to a rich man for the wealth which he has absconded with, 50d. SBBS 238.4
For a poor man, 20d. SBBS 238.5
For a layman not to be bound to observe fasts commanded by the church, and to eat cheese, 20d. SBBS 238.6
For permission given to counts to eat meat and eggs on forbidden days, on account of their health, 12nd. SBBS 238.7
For exempting a layman from a vow thoughtlessly made, 12nd. SBBS 238.8
For enabling a king and queen to procure indulgences, as if they had been to Rome, 200d. SBBS 238.9
For permission to have mass celebrated in a forbidden place, 10d. SBBS 238.10
For absolution at the point of death, for one person, 14d. SBBS 238.11
For the absolution of any one practising usury in secret, 7d. SBBS 238.12
For the absolution of any one who has been intimate with a woman in a church, and has done any other harm, 6d. SBBS 238.13
For the absolution of him who has connu charnellement any female of his kindred, 5d. SBBS 238.14
For the absolution of him who has violated a virgin, 6d. SBBS 238.15
For the absolution of perjury, 6d. SBBS 238.16
For the absolution of any one who has revealed the confession of another person, 7d. SBBS 238.17
For permission to eat meat, butter, eggs, and whatever is made of milk, during Lent or other fast days, 7d. SBBS 238.18
For the absolution of him who has killed his father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or any other of his lay relations, 5 or 6d. SBBS 238.19
For the absolution of a husband who, beating his wife, causes abortion, 6d. SBBS 239.1
For a woman who takes any beverage or employs any other means to cause her child to perish, 5d. SBBS 239.2
For an absolution for spoilers, incendiaries, thieves, and homicidal laymen, 8d. SBBS 239.3
It would be supererogatory to give further extracts from a book which contains more than eight hundred cases subject to the apostolic tax.—“History of Auricular Confession,” Count C. P. de Lasteyrie, (2 vols.) Vol. II, pp. 131-135. London: Richard Bentley, 1848. SBBS 239.4
Indulgences, Tetzel’s Claims Concerning.—Tetzel conducted himself, on his commercial journeys, like a high prelate. He drove into the cities in superb style, amidst the pealing of bells. The papal indulgence bull was carried before him on a velvet cushion. Solemn processions, bearing crosses and banners, went to meet him and escorted him into the church. Then a red cross, upon which were the pontifical arms, was set up, and this Tetzel affirmed to be as efficacious as the cross of Christ himself. One of his train even tried to make the multitude believe that he saw the blood of Christ flowing gently down over it (the red color of the cross, if steadily gazed upon by the credulous, might easily engender such an optical illusion). Indulgences were offered upon every condition-even for future sins. The little couplet of which the indulgence vendors made use is well known: “When in the chest the coin doth ring, the soul direct to heaven doth spring” [“Wenn nur das Geld im Kasten ringt, die Seele gleich gen Himmel springt”].—“History of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland Chiefly,” Dr. K. R. Hagenbach, Vol. I, pp. 95, 96. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1878. SBBS 239.5
Infallibility, Importance of the Doctrine of.—For what is the subject in dispute when we discuss the primacy of the Pontiff? In a few words, it is the sum and substance of Christianity. The inquiry is nothing less than, Whether the church ought any longer to maintain its existence, or to be dissolved and to fall to ruin? What is the difference between asking whether it is expedient to remove the foundation from a building, the shepherd from his flock, the general from his army, the sun from the stars, the head from the body; and asking whether it is expedient that the building should fall, the flock be scattered, the army routed, the stars darkened, the body prostrate?-“On the Chief Pontiff,” Bellarmine (R. C.), preface, par. 2. SBBS 239.6
Infallibility Defined.—Infallibility, (in general) exemption or immunity from liability to error or failure; (in particular) in theological usage, the supernatural prerogative by which the church of Christ is, by a special divine assistance, preserved from liability to error in her definitive dogmatic teaching regarding matters of faith and morals.—Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, art. “Infallibility,” p. 790. SBBS 239.7
Infallibility, What It Is Not.—1. The infallibility of the popes does not signify that they are inspired.... SBBS 239.8
2. Infallibility does not mean that the Pope is impeccable, or specially exempt from liability to sin.... SBBS 239.9
3. Bear in mind, also, that this divine assistance is guaranteed to the Pope, not in his capacity as a private teacher, but only in his official capacity, when he judges of faith and morals as head of the church.... SBBS 239.10
4. Finally, the inerrability of the popes, being restricted to questions of faith and morals, does not extend to the natural sciences, such as astronomy or geology, unless where error is presented under the false name of science, and arrays itself against revealed truth.—“The Faith of Our Fathers,” James Cardinal Gibbons (R. C.), pp. 145-148. Baltimore, Md.: John Murphy & Co., 1893. SBBS 239.11
Infallibility, Decree of the Vatican Council on.—Therefore faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith, for the glory of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of Christian people, the Sacred Council approving, we teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedrâ, 16 that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals: and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the church.—From “First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ,” chap. 4, published in the fourth session of the Vatican Council, July 18, 1870; “Petri Privilegium” (The Vatican Council and Its Definitions), Archbishop Manning (R. C.), p. 218. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1871. SBBS 240.1
Infallibility, Newman’s Celebrated Letter on.—As to myself personally, please God, I do not expect any trial at all; but I cannot help suffering with the many souls who are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to defend decisions which may not be difficult to my own private judgment, but may be most difficult to maintain logically in the face of historical facts. SBBS 240.2
What have we done to be treated as the faithful never were treated before? When has a definition de fide been a luxury of devotion and not a stern, painful necessity? Why should an aggressive, insolent faction [evidently meaning the Jesuits] be allowed to “make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful”? Why cannot we be let alone when we have pursued peace and thought no evil? ... SBBS 240.3
Then, again, think of the store of pontifical scandals in the history of eighteen centuries, which have partly been poured forth and partly are still to come. What Murphy inflicted upon us in one way, M. Veuillot is indirectly bringing on us in another. And then again, the blight which is falling upon the multitude of Anglican ritualists, etc., who themselves, perhaps-at least their leaders-may never become Catholics, but who are leavening the various English denominations and parties (far beyond their own range) with principles and sentiments tending towards their ultimate absorption into the Catholic Church. SBBS 240.4
With these thoughts ever before me, I am continually asking myself whether I ought not to make my feelings public; but all I do is to pray those early doctors of the church, whose intercession would decide the matter (Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Basil), to avert this great calamity. SBBS 240.5
If it is God’s will that the Pope’s infallibility be defined, then is it God’s will to throw back “the times and moments” of that triumph which he has destined for his kingdom, and I shall feel I have but to bow my head to his adorable, inscrutable providence.—Extract from a Letter from John Henry Newman to Bishop Ullathorne; “Letters from Rome,” Quirinus (Lord Acton) (R. C.), pp. 356-358. London: Rivingtons, 1870. SBBS 240.6
Note.—Among the most noted converts from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church was John Henry Newman, who was made cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. This letter was written by him when it appeared likely that the Vatican Council would adopt the decree of infallibility.—Eds. SBBS 241.1
Infallibility, Excerpt from Archbishop Kenrick’s Famous Speech Against.—I say that the infallibility of the Pope is not a doctrine of faith. SBBS 241.2
1. It is not contained in the symbols of the faith; it is not presented as an article of faith in the catechisms; and it is not found as such in any document of public worship. Therefore the church has not hitherto taught it as a thing to be believed of faith; as, if it were a doctrine of faith, it ought to have delivered and taught it. SBBS 241.3
2. Not only has not the church taught it in any public instrument, but it has suffered it to be impugned, not everywhere, but, with the possible exception of Italy, almost everywhere in the world, and that for a long time.—“An Inside View of the Vatican Council,” Archbishop Kenrick, p. 139. SBBS 241.4
Note.—Among “the most illustrious and learned prelates and scholars of the Roman communion” who strenuously opposed the doctrine of the dogma of infallibility, were the Archbishop of Paris, the Bishop of Orleans, the Bishop of Rottenburg (Charles Joseph Hefele, the author of the celebrated “History of Church Councils”), the Archbishop of St. Louis, and J. J. Ign. von Döllinger, the well-known historian and theologian. Peter Richard Kenrick, Archbishop of St. Louis, prepared a speech to be delivered in the Vatican Council, but as he was prevented from delivering this speech by the sudden and unexpected closing of the debate, it was printed and circulated among the bishops at the council. The original of this famous speech is found in “Documenta ad Illustrandum Concilium Vaticanum,” part 1, pp. 189-226. A translation of it is found in “The Vatican Council,” issued by the American Tract Society, New York, pp. 95-166.—Eds. SBBS 241.5
Infallibility, Dr. Döllinger on.—The root of the whole ultramontane habit of mind is the personal infallibility of the Pope, and accordingly the Jesuits declare it to be the wish of true Catholics that this dogma should be defined at the forthcoming council. If this desire is accomplished, a new principle of immeasurable importance, both retrospective and prospective, will be established-a principle which, when once irrevocably fixed, will extend its dominion over men’s minds more and more, till it has coerced them into subjection to every papal pronouncement in matters of religion, morals, politics, and social science. For it will be idle to talk any more of the Pope’s encroaching on a foreign domain; he, and he alone, as being infallible, will have the right of determining the limits of his teaching and action at his own good pleasure, and every such determination will bear the stamp of infallibility.... SBBS 241.6
Papal infallibility, once defined as a dogma, will give the impulse to a theological, ecclesiastical, and even political revolution, the nature of which very few-and least of all those who are urging it on-have clearly realized, and no hand of man will be able to stay its course. In Rome itself the saying will be verified, “Thou wilt shudder thyself at thy likeness to God.” SBBS 241.7
In the next place, the newly coined article of faith will inevitably take root as the foundation and corner-stone of the whole Roman Catholic edifice. The whole activity of theologians will be concentrated on the one point of ascertaining whether or not a papal decision can be quoted for any given doctrine, and in laboring to discover and amass proof for it from history and literature. Every other authority will pale beside the living oracle on the Tiber, which speaks with plenary inspiration, and can always be appealed to. SBBS 241.8
What use in tedious investigations of Scripture, what use in wasting time on the difficult study of tradition, which requires so many kinds of preliminary knowledge, when a single utterance of the infallible Pope may shatter at a breath the labors of half a lifetime, and a telegraphic message to Rome will get an answer in a few hours or a few days, which becomes an axiom and article of faith? ... SBBS 242.1
To prove the dogma of papal infallibility from church history nothing less is required than a complete falsification of it. The declarations of popes which contradict the doctrines of the church, or contradict each other (as the same pope sometimes contradicts himself), will have to be twisted into agreement, so as to show that their heterodox or mutually destructive enunciations are at bottom sound doctrine, or, when a little has been subtracted from one dictum and added to the other, are not really contradictory, and mean the same thing.—“The Pope and the Council,” Janus (Döllinger) (R. C.), pp. 45-50. London: Rivingtons, 1869. SBBS 242.2
Even the boldest champions of papal absolutism, men like Agostino Trionfo [Augustinus de Ancona] and Alvaro Pelayo, assumed that the popes could err, and that their decisions were no certain criterion.... So, too, Cardinal Jacob Fournier, afterwards pope, thought that papal decisions were by no means final, but might be overruled by another pope, and that John XXII had done well in annulling the offensive and doctrinally erroneous decision of Nicolas III on the poverty of Christ, and the distinction of use and possession.... And Innocent IV allowed that a papal command containing anything heretical, or threatening destruction to the whole church system, was not to be obeyed, and that a pope might err in matters of faith.—Id., pp. 272, 273. SBBS 242.3
Note.—The standing of J. J. Ign. von Döllinger as a historian and a theologian will not be disputed by any one who is fairly well versed in the history of the Roman Church. It is well known that he persistently refused to subscribe to the dogma of infallibility, and that he was on this account excommunicated (April 18, 1871) by the church to which he had rendered such signal service. Using the pseudonym “Janus,” Dr. Döllinger wrote a book, “Der Pabst und der Concil” (The Pope and the Council), in which he discussed the question of papal infallibility from the standpoint of both a theologian and a historian, and presented the most telling arguments against it. This book created a great stir in the council, and of course was speedily placed upon the papal Index.—Eds. SBBS 242.4
Infallibility, and the Catechism Before 1870.—Question.-Must not Catholics believe the Pope in himself to be infallible? SBBS 242.5
Answer.-This is a Protestant invention: it is no article of the Catholic faith: no decision of his can oblige, under pain of heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body; that is, by the bishops of the church.—“Doctrinal Catechism,” Rev. Stephen Keenan (previous to 1870). SBBS 242.6
Do we believe that, as a consequence of this primacy, the Pope is infallible and may decide as Christ himself, as the non-Catholics allege? SBBS 242.7
No. The Pope possesses in controversies of faith only a judicial decision, which can only become an article of faith when the church gives its concurrence.—“Catechism of the Catholic Religion,” Krautheimer, p. 87. SBBS 242.8
Note.—As remarked by Dr. Döllinger (“The Pope and the Council,” p. 76), “Up to the time of the Isidorian Decretals [about 850 A. D.] no serious attempt was made anywhere to introduce the Neo-Roman theory of infallibility.” Even thereafter, and until the Vatican Council (1870), papal infallibility was not generally taught in Catholic catechisms, as is witnessed by the two questions and answers given under this heading.—Eds. SBBS 242.9
Infallibility, The Testimony of History Concerning.—As to concrete examples of the fallibility of the Pope, even when speaking ex cathedrâ, scholars, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant, have supplied us with enough to convince any one whose mind is not closed against conviction. SBBS 243.1
Two popes of the third century, Zephyrinus and Callistus, were guilty of heresy in relation to the person of our Lord, according to the testimony of Hippolytus, saint and martyr. SBBS 243.2
Pope Liberius (a. d. 358) subscribed an Arian creed and condemned Athanasius, the great champion of the divinity of Christ. SBBS 243.3
Pope Zosimus gave the stamp of orthodoxy to the Pelagian heresy, but afterwards, under pressure from St. Augustine, reversed his decision. SBBS 243.4
Pope Vigilius (538-555), having been repudiated by the fifth ecumenical council, made his submission to the council and confessed that he had been the tool of Satan. SBBS 243.5
Pope Honorius I (625-638) taught ex cathedrâ the Monothelite heresy, and was excommunicated as a heretic by an ecumenical council-universally acknowledged both in the East and in the West-which assembled in Constantinople in 680. Their anathema was repeated by the seventh and eighth ecumenical councils. And finally the succeeding popes for three hundred years pronounced “an eternal anathema” on Pope Honorius, thus recognizing both the justice of his condemnation and also the principle that a general council may condemn a pope for heresy. SBBS 243.6
All attempts to escape the iron grasp of the facts of history in this crucial instance of the breakdown of the theory of papal infallibility have failed conspicuously.—“Romanism in the Light of History,” Randolph H. McKim, D. D., pp. 133, 134. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1914. SBBS 243.7
Alvaro Pelayo, who, next to Augustine of Ancona [Augustinus Triumphus], furthered the aggrandizement of the papal power, with the greatest zeal, beyond all previous bounds, and almost beyond all limits whatever, in his great work on the condition of the church, makes mention of the judgment which came upon Anastasius, in order to prove his dictum that a heretical pope must receive a far heavier sentence than any other. Occam, also, makes use of the “heretical” Anastasius as an instance to prove, what was his main point, that the church erred by his recognition. The Council of Basle in like manner, with a view to establishing the necessary supremacy of an ecumenical council over the Pope, did not fail to appeal to the fact that popes who did not obey the church were treated by her as heathens and publicans, as one reads of Liberius and Anastasius. SBBS 243.8
“The Pope,” says Domenicus Dei Domenici, Bishop of Torcello, somewhat later, in a letter addressed to Pope Calixtus III (1455-58), “the Pope by himself alone is not an infallible rule of faith, for some popes have erred in faith, as, for example, Liberius and Anastasius II, and the latter was in consequence punished by God.” After him the Belgian John le Maire, also, says (about 1515) Liberius and Anastasius are the two popes of ancient times, who, subsequent to the Donation of Constantine, obtained an infamous reputation in the church as heretics.—“Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages,” John J. Ign. von Döllinger (R. C.), pp. 219, 220. London: Rivingtons, 1871. SBBS 243.9
Infallibility, The Principle Extended.—Not only are the Scriptures and apostolic traditions infallible sources of doctrine which is unerringly transmitted, but the general sense and belief of the faithful is. also infallible.—The Catholic World, August, 1871, p. 582. SBBS 243.10
Infallibility and Omnipotence.—The infallible possession of truth in the head of a mortal appears so nearly related to omniscience and so exclusive an attribute of the Godhead, that a man might almost as readily be declared omnipotent as infallible.—“Handbook to the Controversy with Rome,” Karl von Hase, Vol. I, p. 252. London: The Religious Tract Society, 1909. SBBS 244.1
Infallibility, Its Remarkable Effect.—External force may frighten a man into altering his outward profession, but has no effect on his inward belief. But if he comes to persuade himself of the existence of a guide incapable of leading him wrong, he is ready to surrender his previous beliefs in deference to that authority, to accept as true what he had before proved to be false, and to renounce as false what he had before proved to be true: even though he can point out no flaw in his previous demonstrations, and though he might find it hard to explain why he was not as liable to error in the process by which he persuaded himself of the infallibility of his guide as in his earlier reasonings.—“The Infallibility of the Church,” George Salmon, D. D., p. 23, note. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1914. SBBS 244.2
Infallibility and the Infallible Book.—In one of the popular controversial works upon which Roman Catholics greatly rely (“The Faith of Our Fathers,” by Cardinal Gibbons), the following argument is employed, and the poor Protestant is shown that his “infallible Bible” is of no use whatever without an infallible interpreter. I will place in parallel columns the cardinal’s argument turned against his own doctrine: SBBS 244.3
| The Cardinal to the Protestant | The Protestant to the Roman Catholic |
| “Let us see, sir, whether an infallible Bible is sufficient for you. Either you are infallibly certain that your interpretation of that Bible is correct, or you are not. | “Let us see, my friend, whether an infallible pope is sufficient for you. Either you are infallibly certain that your interpretation of the meaning and extent of the dogma of infallibility is correct, or you are not. |
| “If you are infallibly certain, then you assert for yourself, and, of course, for every reader of the Scripture, a personal infallibility which you deny to the Pope, and which we claim only for him. You make every man his own pope. | “If you are infallibly certain, then you assert for yourself, and, of course, for every Roman Catholic, a personal infallibility. You make every Roman Catholic his own pope. |
| “If you are not infallibly certain that you understand the true meaning of the whole Bible,-and this is a privilege you do not claim,-then, I ask, of what use to you is the objective infallibility of the Bible, without an infallible interpreter?”-Page 155. | “If you are not infallibly certain that you understand the scope and meaning of the dogma of infallibility,-and how can you make such a claim, when the great scholars and princes of the church differ about it so widely?-then, I ask, of what use to you is the dogma of infallibility without an infallible interpreter of its scope and intent?” |
The logical dilemma is a dangerous bull, for he will sometimes turn and gore his own master!-“Romanism in the Light of History,” Randolph H. McKim, D. D., pp. 139, 140. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1914. SBBS 244.4
Infallibility, Unquestioning Submission to.—We have no right to ask reasons of the church, any more than of Almighty God, as a preliminary to our submission. We are to take with unquestioning docility whatever instruction the church gives us.—The Catholic World, August, 1871, p. 589. SBBS 245.1
Infallibility, A Declaration Against.—The bishops on both sides of the ocean all submitted to the new dogma. It was the scrupulousness of some German professors which rose up against it. At the end of August eleven of them united in making this declaration in Nuremberg: “The resolutions of the majority of the assemblage of bishops at the Vatican published by means of the bull of July 18, we are unable to recognize as the pronouncements of a truly ecumenical council. We reject them as new doctrines, never recognized by the church.”-” Handbook to the Controversy with Rome,” Karl von Hase, Vol. I, p. 320. London: The Religious Tract Society, 1909. SBBS 245.2
Infallibility, Blasphemous in Character.—If the claims which are put forth by the bishops of Rome to infallibility and universal supremacy are not just,-we are compelled very reluctantly to say it,-then there is no alternative, they are nothing short of blasphemy. For they are claims to participation in the attributes of God himself. And if he does not authorize these claims, they are usurpations of his divine prerogatives. They therefore who abet those claims are fighting against him. They are defying him, who “is a jealous God, and will not give his honor to another,” and who is “a consuming fire.” May they therefore take heed in time, lest they incur his malediction!-“St. Hippolytus and the Church of Rome,” Chr. Wordsworth, D. D., p. 300. London: Rivingtons, 1880. SBBS 245.3
Infallibility and Inspiration.—According to this theory [of infallibility], then, all the prerogatives of Scripture are annulled: the dicta of Pius IX and Leo XIII are as truly inspired by God’s Spirit, and are to be received with as much reverence, as the utterances of Peter and Paul.... It is a very short way from the doctrine that Pius IX and Leo XIII were as much inspired as Peter and Paul, to the doctrine that Peter and Paul were no more inspired than Pius or Leo.—“The Infallibility of the Church,” George Salmon, D. D., pp. 43, 45. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1914. SBBS 245.4
Infallibility, Effect of.—One can scarcely open any book that attempts to deal with controversy by such a Roman Catholic as, for instance, Cardinal Manning, without being forced to observe how his faith in the infallibility of the present church makes him impenetrable to all arguments. Suppose, for example, the question in dispute is the Pope’s personal infallibility, and that you object to him the case of Honorius: he replies, At most you could make out that it is doubtful whether Honorius was orthodox; but it is certain that a pope could not be a heretic. Well, you reply, at least the case of Honorius shows that the church of the time supposed that a pope could be a heretic. Not so, he answers, for the church now holds that a pope speaking ex cathedrâ cannot err, and the church could not have taught differently at any other time. SBBS 245.5
Thus, as long as any one really believes in the infallibility of his church, he is proof against any argument you can ply him with. Conversely, when faith in this principle is shaken, belief in some other Roman Catholic doctrine is sure also to be disturbed; for there are some of these doctrines in respect of which nothing but a very strong belief that the Roman Church cannot decide wrongly will prevent a candid inquirer from coming to the conclusion that she has decided wrongly. This simplification, then, of the controversy realizes for us the wish of the Roman tyrant that all his enemies had but one neck. If we can but strike one blow, the whole battle is won.—Id., p. 18. SBBS 245.6
Infallibility and Private Judgment.—It is common with Roman Catholics to speak as if the use of private judgment and the infallibility of the church were things opposed to each other. They are fond of contrasting the peace, and certainty, and assurance of him whose faith rests on the rock of an infallible church, with the uncertainty of him whose belief rests only on the shifting sands of his own fallible judgment. But it must be remembered that our belief must, in the end, rest on an act of our own judgment, and can never attain any higher certainty than whatever that may be able to give us. We may talk about the right of private judgment, or the duty of private judgment, but a more important thing to insist on is the necessity of private judgment. We have the choice whether we shall exercise our private judgment in one act or in a great many; but exercise it in one way or another we must. We may either apply our private judgment separately to the different questions in controversy-purgatory, transubstantiation, invocation of saints, and so forth-and come to our own conclusion on each; or we may apply our private judgment to the question whether the Church of Rome is infallible, and, if we decide that it is, take all our religious opinions thenceforward on trust from her. But it is clear that our certainty that any of the things she teaches us is right cannot be greater than whatever certainty we have that our private judgment has decided the question rightly whether we ought to submit unreservedly to her teaching.—Id., pp. 47, 48. SBBS 246.1
Infallibility, View of, Before 1870.—Thus, the visible church, from the point of view here taken, is the Son of God himself, everlastingly manifesting himself among men in a human form, perpetually renovated, and eternally young-the permanent incarnation of the same, as in Holy Writ, even the faithful are called “the body of Christ.” Hence it is evident that the church, though composed of men, is yet not purely human. Nay, as in Christ the divinity and the humanity are to be clearly distinguished, though both are bound in unity; so is he in undivided entireness perpetuated in the church. The church, his permanent manifestation, is at once divine and human-she is the union of both. He it is who, concealed under earthly and human forms, works in the church; and this is wherefore she has a divine and a human part in an undivided mode, so that the divine cannot be separated from the human, nor the human from the divine. Hence these two parts change their predicates. If the divine-the living Christ and his spirit-constitute undoubtedly that which is infallible, and eternally inerrable in the church; so also the human is infallible and inerrable in the same way, because the divine without the human has no existence for us; yet the human is not inerrable in itself, but only as the organ and as the manifestation of the divine. Hence we are enabled to conceive how so great, important, and mysterious a charge could have been intrusted to men.—“Symbolism,” John Adam Moehler, D. D. (R. C.), p. 259. London: Thomas Baker, 1906. [This book was first printed in 1832.—Eds.] SBBS 246.2
Infallibility, Roman Catholic Doctrine of, Before 1870.—It is no matter of faith to believe that the Pope is in himself infallible, separated from the church, even in expounding the faith: by consequence papal definitions or decrees, in whatever form pronounced, taken exclusively from [apart from] a general council, or universal acceptance of the church, oblige none, under pain of heresy, to an interior assent.—“Roman Catholic Principles in Reference to God and the King,” Kirk’s edition; cited in “Documenta ad Illustrandum Concilium Vaticanum,” Dr. Johann Friedrich, p. 213. Nordlingen: C. H. Beck’sche Buchhandlung, 1871. SBBS 246.3
The doctrine of Scripture is one and the same with the doctrine of the church, since the church hath to interpret the Scripture, and in this interpretation cannot err.—Id., p. 288. SBBS 247.1
Infallibility, Döllinger’s Rejection of.—As Christian, as theologian, as historian, as citizen, I cannot accept this doctrine. I cannot do so as a Christian, because it is incompatible with the spirit of the gospel, and with the lucid sayings of Christ and the apostles; it simply wishes to establish the kingdom of this world, which Christ declined to do, and to possess the sovereignty over the congregations, which Peter refused for every one else, as well as for himself. I cannot do so as a theologian, because the whole genuine tradition of the church stands irreconcilably opposed to it. I cannot do so as a historian, because, as such, I know that the persistent endeavors to realize this theory of a universal sovereignty has cost Europe streams of blood, distracted and ruined whole countries, shaken to its foundations the beautiful organic edifice of the constitution of the older church, and begotten, nursed, and maintained the worst abuses in the church. Finally, I must reject it as a citizen, because, with its claims on the submission of states and monarchs and the whole political order of things to the papal power, and by the exceptional position claimed by it for the clergy, it lays the foundation for an endless and fatal discord between the state and the church, between the clergy and the laity.—“Declarations and Letters on the Vatican Decrees,” Ignaz von Döllinger (R. C.), p. 103. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1891. SBBS 247.2
Infallibility, Unlimited Power of.—It is the whole fulness of power over the collective church, as well as over every individual, claimed by the popes since Gregory VII, and expressed in the numerous bulls since Unam Sanctam, which is henceforth to be believed by every Catholic, and acknowledged in public life. This power is boundless and incalculable; it can interfere everywhere, as Innocent III says, where sin is, can punish everybody, brooks no appeal, and is absolute arbitrariness; for the Pope, as Boniface VIII expressed it, carries every privilege in the shrine of his breast. As he has become infallible, he can, at any moment, with the one little word orbi (thereby addressing the whole church), make every statute, every doctrine, and every postulate, an infallible and irrevocable article of faith. As opposed to him, there exists no right, no personal or corporative freedom, or, as the canonists say, “the tribunals of God and the Pope are one and the same.”-Id., p. 102. SBBS 247.3
Infallibility, Based upon Fictions and Forgeries.—In a memorial, which has now been printed, a considerable number of Italian bishops demanded that the papal infallibility should be raised to an article of faith, because it had been taught by two men, both of whom were Italians and the pride of their nation, viz., those two bright shining lights of the church, Thomas Aquinas and Alphonse of Liguori. Now, it was well known, and had already been noticed by Gratry as well as by myself, that Aquinas had been deluded by a long series of invented evidences, as he, indeed, in proof of his doctrine, only appeals to such forgeries, and never to the genuine passages of the Fathers or councils. And as far as Liguori is concerned, one glance at his writings is sufficient to show an experienced theologian that he handled forged passages in a much worse way than Aquinas. SBBS 247.4
My reference to the fraud of which Thomas had been a victim, had caused a great sensation in Rome; the author of a paper that was at that time written in Rome, and directed against me, says that round about him it was received with cries of disapproval. It would accordingly have been unavoidably necessary to subject the matter to examination. This examination, it is true, had it been comprehensive and thorough, would have led very far; it would have produced the result that the theory of papal infallibility had been introduced into the church only by a long chain of purposeful fictions and forgeries, and had then been propagated and confirmed by violence, by suppression of the old doctrine, and by the manifold ways and means that are at the disposal of a sovereign.—Id., pp. 94-96. SBBS 248.1
Infallibility, Not Universally Taught.—In several pastoral letters and manifestoes of recent date from the bishops, the opinion is maintained, or a historical proof is attempted, that the new doctrine of papal omnipotence over every individual Christian, and of papal infallibility in decisions of faith as proclaimed at Rome, has always been believed and taught universally, or, at all events, almost universally in the church from the earliest times and throughout all the centuries. This assertion rests, as I am ready to prove, on a complete misunderstanding of ecclesiastical tradition in the first thousand years of the church, and on a distortion of her history; it contradicts the clearest facts and evidences.—Id., p. 84. SBBS 248.2
Infallibility, a Usurpation of What Belongs to God.—They had perceived and shown that the infallibility of the Pope is contrary to Scripture and tradition; that it is the usurpation on the part of a poor child of man of what God has reserved to himself; that it is injurious to the church, as placing the government now altogether in the hands of the Jesuits, and perhaps sometime in the future in the hands of a frivolous or even criminal Pope.—“Handbook to the Controversy with Rome,” Karl von Hase, Vol. I, p. 299. London: The Religious Tract Society, 1909. SBBS 248.3
Infallibility, a Monstrosity.—The Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung of August 15 [1870] delivered this judgment: “The monstrosity has taken place. The paramount party in the church has committed the crime of declaring to be a heresy the oldest principle of the Catholic faith, that revealed truth is made known only by the continuous consent of all churches, and, on the other hand, has declared as a dogma by the mouth of the unhappy Pius IX the crazy opinion of mere human origin that the Pope by himself is infallible.”-Id., pp. 311, 312. SBBS 248.4
Infallibility, Difficulties of.—At this moment Roman theologians are at hopeless variance on three questions raised by this decree: SBBS 248.5
1. When does the Pope speak ex cathedrâ? SBBS 248.6
2. How is the fact to be known publicly? SBBS 248.7
3. What is “that infallibility,” in kind or degree, mentioned? SBBS 248.8
And some of the difficulties which encompass the subject may be gathered from the subjoined extract from a pastoral of the hyperultramontane Cardinal Dechamps of Mechlin, dated Dec. 8, 1879, and intended to minimize the force of Leo XIII’s disapproval of his policy: “Infallibility is not what is alleged by the editors of certain papers, the members of certain -parliaments, the professors of certain universities, and sometimes also by lawyers and soldiers. No; for the Pope is not infallible when he expresses only his own ideas, but he is infallible when, as head of the church, he defines truths contained in the depository of revelation, the Scriptures and tradition. The Pope is not infallible when he judges purely personal questions; but he is so when he judges doctrinal questions affecting faith or morals; that is to say, revealed truth or revealed law, the Pope being infallible only when he rests on the testimony of God or revelation. The Pope is not infallible when he treats as a private doctor questions even of doctrine, but when he judges by virtue of his apostolic authority that a doctrine affecting revealed truth and revealed law ought to be held by the universal church.”-“Plain Reasons Against Joining the Church of Rome,” Richard Frederick Littledale, LL. D., D. C. L., pp. 186, 187. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1905. SBBS 248.9
Infallibility, Events Connected with Proclamation of.—It is also a remarkable coincidence, that the promulgation of the dogma of the personal infallibility of the Papacy by the present Pope, in the council which commenced its sessions on the festival of the Immaculate Conception, was followed on the next day after that promulgation (July 19, 1870) by the declaration of war on the part of France against Prussia; which has led to the sudden humiliation of France, the protectress of Rome, and to the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome, and to the opening of the gates of Rome to the forces of Victor Emmanuel. SBBS 249.1
It is also worthy of notice that in the same year, 1870, on the very next day after the anniversary of the festival of the Immaculate Conception on which (in 1854) the novel dogma of the Immaculate Conception was promulgated, and on which (in 1869) the Vatican Council met, which has decreed the Pope’s infallibility,-a public document and manifesto was laid before the Italian Parliament, in which the government of the king of Italy announced a royal decree, accepting the city and provinces of Rome, transferred to the king by a plebiscito of the Roman people themselves, and in which it is declared that the Pope’s temporal power is extinct, and that Rome is no longer to be the metropolis of the Roman Papacy, but is henceforth to become, in lieu of Florence, the capital of the kingdom of Italy. SBBS 249.2
There coincidences were undesigned; the principal actors in them thought nothing of the Apocalypse. SBBS 249.3
But they who have that divine book in their hands, and who remember Christ’s command to “discern the signs of the times,” and who consider the blessing which is promised to those who read and meditate upon the Apocalypse, will mark these facts, and will observe these coincidences, and will inquire with reverence, whether the prophecies of the book of Revelation are not now receiving their accomplishment in Italy and at Rome.—“Union with Rome,” Chr. Wordsworth, D. D., pp. 98, 99. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909. SBBS 249.4
Infallibility, Significance of.—The sinlessness of the Virgin Mary and the personal infallibility of the Pope are the characteristic dogmas of modern Romanism, the two test dogmas which must decide the ultimate fate of this system. Both were enacted under the same Pope, and both faithfully reflect his character. Both have the advantage of logical consistency from certain premises, and seem to be the very perfection of the Romish form of piety and the Romish principle of authority. Both rest on pious fiction and fraud; both present a refined idolatry by clothing a pure, humble woman and a mortal, sinful man with divine attributes. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which exempts the Virgin Mary from sin and guilt, perverts Christianism into Marianism; the dogma of Infallibility, which exempts the Bishop of Rome from error, resolves Catholicism into papalism, or the church into the pope. The worship of a woman is virtually substituted for the worship of Christ, and a man-god in Rome for the God-man in heaven. This is a severe judgment, but a closer examination will sustain it. SBBS 249.5
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, being confined to the sphere of devotion, passed into the modern Roman creed without serious difficulty, but the dogma of Papal Infallibility, which involves a question of absolute power, forms an epoch in the history of Romanism, and created the greatest commotion and a new secession. It is in its very nature the most fundamental and most comprehensive of all dogmas. It contains the whole system in a nutshell. It constitutes a new rule of faith. It is the article of the standing or falling church. It is the direct antipode of the Protestant principle of the absolute supremacy and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures. It establishes a perpetual divine oracle in the Vatican. Every Catholic may hereafter say, I believe-not because Christ, or the Bible, or the church, but-because the infallible Pope has so declared and commanded. SBBS 250.1
Admitting this dogma, we admit not only the whole body of doctrines contained in the Tridentine standards, but all the official papal bulls, including the medieval monstrosities of the Syllabus (1864), the condemnation of Jansenism, the bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII (1302), which, under pain of damnation, claims for the Pope the double sword, the secular as well as the spiritual, over the whole Christian world, and the power to depose princes and to absolve subjects from their oath of allegiance. The past is irreversibly settled, and in all future controversies on faith and morals we must look to the same unerring tribunal in the Vatican. Even ecumenical councils are superseded hereafter, and would be a mere waste of time and strength. SBBS 250.2
On the other hand, if the dogma is false, it involves a blasphemous assumption, and makes the nearest approach to the fulfilment of St. Paul’s prophecy of the man of sin, who “as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself off that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4).—“Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion,” Hon. W. E. Gladstone, pp. 83, 84. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875. SBBS 250.3
Infallibility. -See Councils, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124; Gallicanism, 181; Papacy, 341; Papal Supremacy, 369. SBBS 250.4
Infidelity.—See French Revolution. SBBS 250.5
Innocent III.—See Inquisition, 252; Magna Charta, 292; Papacy, Builders of, 351-353. SBBS 250.6
Inquisition, Defined.—By this term is usually meant a special ecclesiastical institution for combating or suppressing heresy. Its characteristic mark seems to be the bestowal on special judges of judicial powers in matters of faith, and this by supreme ecclesiastical authority, not temporal or for individual cases, but as a universal and permanent office.—The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, art. “Inquisition,” p. 26. New York: Robert Appleton Company. SBBS 250.7
Inquisition, Character of Inquisitors.—History shows us how far the inquisitors answered to this ideal. Far from being inhuman, they were, as a rule, men of spotless character and sometimes of truly admirable sanctity, and not a few of them have been canonized by the church. There is absolutely no reason to look on the medieval ecclesiastical judge as intellectually and morally inferior to the modern judge. No one would deny that the judges of today, despite occasional harsh decisions and the errors of a few, pursue a highly honorable profession. Similarly, the medieval inquisitors should be judged as a whole, and not by individual examples.—The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, art. “Inquisition,” p. 31. SBBS 250.8
Inquisition, Origin of.—The power of the church, according to Fleury, is “purely spiritual,” and he held with Marsilius that the Pope could employ no coactive punishment of any kind unless the emperor-i. e., the civil power-gave him leave. From such a view it logically follows that St. Paul ought to have asked the permission of Sergius Paulus before striking Elymas the sorcerer with blindness. The overwhelming majority of the canonists take the opposite view, namely, that the church can and ought to visit with fitting punishment the heretic and the revolter; and since the publication of the numerous encyclical letters and allocutions of the late Pope treating of the relations between church and state, and the inherent rights of the former, the view of Fleury can no longer be held by any Catholic. SBBS 251.1
For many ages after the conversion of Constantine it was easier for the church to repress heresy by invoking the secular arm than by organizing tribunals of her own for the purpose. Reference to ecclesiastical history and the codes of Justinian and Theodosius shows that the emperors generally held as decided views on the pestilent nature of heresy, and the necessity of extirpating it in the germ before it reached maturity, as the popes themselves. They were willing to repress it; they took from the church the definition of what it was; and they had old-established tribunals armed with all the terrors of the law. The bishops, as a rule, had but to notify the appearance of heretics to the lay power, and the latter hastened to make inquiry, and, if necessary, to repress and punish. SBBS 251.2
But in the thirteenth century a new race of temporal rulers rose to power. The emperor Frederic II perhaps had no Christian faith at all; John of England meditated, sooner than yield to the Pope, openly to apostatize to Islam; and Philip Augustus was refractory towards the church in various ways. The church was as clear as ever upon the necessity of repressing heretics, but the weapon-secular sovereignty-which she had hitherto employed for the purpose seemed to be breaking in her hands. The time was come when she was to forge a weapon of her own; to establish a tribunal the incorruptness and fidelity of which she could trust; which in the task of detecting and punishing those who misled their brethren should employ all the minor forms of penal repression, while still remitting to the secular arm the case of obstinate and incorrigible offenders. Thus arose the Inquisition.—A Catholic Dictionary, William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold (R. C.), art. “Inquisition,” p. 488. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1893. SBBS 251.3
Inquisition, Its Development.—Historically, the Inquisition may be traced back as far as the thirteenth century, but it was not until 1542 that Pope Paul III, by the bull Licit ab Initio, gave it the form and extent which made it a supreme tribunal for the whole church; it can reach cardinals and bishops as well as plain laymen. Paul III placed at its head Cardinal Caraffa, who proved pitiless. He began by renting a house in which he installed surgeons and provided chains and instruments of torture. He then proclaimed these four fundamental principles: There must be no delay in matters of faith; no consideration for princes or prelates; no clemency for any one who seeks protection from the secular power; indefatigable activity in seeking out traces of Calvinism everywhere. When he became Pope Paul III, Caraffa pursued his course with extreme severity, and did not spare such cardinals as Morone and Pole, who had spent their lives in defense of the church. Pius IV, Pius V, Sixtus V, were to complete the work begun by Paul III, and to make the Congregation of the Inquisition, or the Holy Office, the highest authority of the Roman Curia.—“The Catholic Church; the Renaissance and Protestantism,” Alfred Baudrillart (R. C.), pp. 156, 157. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1908. SBBS 251.4
Inquisition, Work of.—In 1208 Innocent III established the Inquisition. In 1209 De Montfort began the massacre of the Albigenses. In 1215 the Fourth Council of the Lateran enjoined all rulers, “as they desired to be esteemed faithful, to swear a public oath that they would labor earnestly, and to the full extent of their power, to exterminate from their dominions all those who were branded as heretics by the church.”-“History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,” William Edward Hartpole Lecky, Vol. II, p. 30. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1904. SBBS 252.1
Inquisition in Spain.—In 1478 a bull was obtained from Pope Sixtus IV establishing the Inquisition in Spain, it being provided that the inquisitors were to be appointed by the sovereign. The Holy Office in this way became an instrument for establishing a civil despotism, as well as a means for repressing heresy. It did its work with a ruthless severity hitherto unexampled. Sixtus himself and some of his successors, moved by repeated complaints, endeavored to restrain its savage energy; but the Inquisition was too useful an instrument in the hands of a despotic sovereign, and the popes were forced to allow its proceedings, and to refuse all appeals to Rome against its sentences. It was put in use against the Moorish subjects of the Catholic kings, notwithstanding the terms of the capitulation of Granada, which provided for the exercise of civil and religious liberty. The result was that, in spite of fierce rebellions, all the Moors, save small groups of families under the special protection of the Crown, had become nominal Christians by 1502, although almost a century had to pass before the Inquisition had rooted out the last traces of the Moslem faith in the Spanish peninsula. SBBS 252.2
The death of Isabella, in 1504, roughly dates a formidable rising against this process of repression and consolidation. The severities of the Inquisition, the insistence of Ferdinand to govern personally the lands of his deceased wife, and many local causes led to widespread conspiracies and revolts against his rule. The years between 1504 and 1522 were a period of revolutions and of lawlessness which was ended when Charles V, the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, overcame all resistance and inaugurated a reign of personal despotism which long distinguished the kingdom of Spain.—“A History of the Reformation,” Thomas M. Lindsay, M. A., D. D., pp. 29, 30. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906. SBBS 252.3
Inquisition, Victims of.—Entire volumes would be requisite to give an adequate idea of the way in which the Papacy has worn out and overcome the saints of the Most High by her cruel persecutions.... SBBS 252.4
The Inquisition-a name at which humanity has learned to shudder-is a long and supremely cruel and wicked history compressed into one word! Instituted for the avowed purpose of suppressing heresy, it was established in every country which submitted to papal authority. In Spain alone it has been proved by the careful statistical investigations of Llorente, that between the years 1481 and 1808 over three hundred and forty-one thousand persons were condemned by this “Holy Office,” of whom 31,912 were burned alive, 17,000 burned in effigy, and nearly three hundred thousand tortured and condemned to severe penances. Every Catholic country in Europe, Asia, and America had its Inquisition, and its consequent unexplained arrests, indefinitely long imprisonments of innocent persons, its secret investigations, its horrible torture chambers and dreadful dungeons, its auto da fés, or burnings of obstinate heretics, and its thousand nameless cruelties and injustices.—“The Approaching End of the Age,” H. Grattan Guinness, p. 204. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1880. SBBS 252.5
It has been calculated that the popes of Rome have, directly or indirectly, slain on account of their faith, fifty millions of martyrs; fifty millions of men and women who refused to be parties to Romish idolatries, who held to the Bible as the word of God.—Id., p. 212. SBBS 253.1
Inquisition, The Medium of, Lost.—The duties and powers of inquisitors are minutely laid down in the canon law, it being always assumed that the civil power will favor, or can be compelled to favor, their proceedings.... No such state of things as that here assumed now exists in any part of Europe; nowhere does the state assist the church in putting down heresy; it is therefore superfluous to describe regulations controlling jurisdiction which has lost the medium in which it could work and live.—“Half-Hours with the Servants of God,” Catholic Church History, chap. 9, p. 60. New York: Murphy and McCarthy (R. C.), 1888. SBBS 253.2
Inquisition, Decline of.—From the year 1760 the vigor of the Inquisition began to decline. Literature aimed its sharpest blows at the institutions of Dominic. The free press, which it had striven to destroy, covered the secret tribunal with ignominy, and denounced its most glorious triumphs as more savage than the wild orgies of the Carib. Even Spain and Italy felt the abhorrence of mankind; the acts of faith no longer drew applauding crowds at Valladolid and Seville; the bullfight and the blood-stained matador supplied the excitement that had once followed the inquisitor and his victim; and liberal priests began to lament the fanatical rage that had covered their church and their native land with infamy. Yet the Holy Office still defied the indignation of the Reformers, and as late as 1763 heretics were burned in the midst of Spanish civilization; the Inquisition still ruled with a mysterious terror over the minds of men; literature, science, and invention still withered beneath its frown. The French Revolution and Napoleon swept away the inquisitors and the holy houses; they were restored by the arms of Wellington and the return of the old dynasty. In 1823, a Tribunal of Faith punished heretics; and in 1856, English and American missionaries were imprisoned or banished by the Spanish priests.—“Historical Studies,” Eugene Lawrence, pp. 400, 401. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1876. SBBS 253.3
Inquisition and Spanish Civilization.—In Spain the savage genius of Dominic gained its highest triumph. The Spanish Inquisition for more than six centuries has awakened the wonder and the horror of mankind. From Provence it was early transferred to Aragon and Castile; but its beginnings were modest, its influence comparatively slight, and it was not until the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella that its fatal tyranny began to sap the energy and destroy the foundations of Spanish civilization.—Id., p. 367. SBBS 253.4
Inquisition.—See Councils, 121; Persecution. SBBS 254.1
Interdict.—An interdict is a censure, or prohibition, excluding the faithful from participation in certain holy things (D’Annibale, “Summula,” I, n. 369). These holy things are all those pertaining to Christian worship, and are divided into three classes: (1) The divine offices, in other words, the liturgy, and in general all acts performed by clerics as such, and having reference to worship: (2) the sacraments, excepting private administrations of those that are of necessity; (3) ecclesiastical burial, including all funeral services. This prohibition varies in degree, according to the different kinds of interdicts to be enumerated: SBBS 254.2
First, interdicts are either local or personal; the former affect territories or sacred buildings directly, and persons indirectly; the latter directly affect persons. Canonical authors add a third kind, the mixed interdict, which affects directly and immediately both persons and places; if, for instance, the interdict is issued against a town and its inhabitants, the latter are subject to it, even when they are outside of the town (arg. cap. xvi, “De sent. excomm.” in VI°). Local interdicts, like personal interdicts, may be general or particular. A general local interdict is one affecting a whole territory, district, town, etc., and this was the ordinary interdict of the Middle Ages; a particular local interdict is one affecting, for example, a particular church. A general personal interdict is one falling on a given body or group of people as a class, e. g., on a chapter, the clergy or people of a town, of a community; a particular personal interdict is one affecting certain individuals as such, for instance, a given bishop, a given cleric. Finally, the interdict is total if the prohibition extends to all the sacred things mentioned above; otherwise it is called partial.—“The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, art. “Interdict,” p. 73. New York: Robert Appleton Company. SBBS 254.3
Interdict, Effect of.—The Pope by a stroke of the pen could prevent a whole nation, so it was believed, from approaching God, because he could prohibit priests from performing the usual sacramental acts which alone brought him near. An interdict meant spiritual death to the district on which it fell, and on the medieval theory it was more deadly to the spiritual life than the worst of plagues, the black death itself, was to the body. An interdict made the plainest intellect see, understand, and shudder at the awful and mysterious powers which a mediatorial priesthood was said to possess.—“A History of the Reformation,” Thomas M. Lindsay, M. A., D. D., p. 440. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906. SBBS 254.4
The interdict was directed against a city, province, or kingdom. Throughout the region under this ban the churches were closed; no bell could be rung, no marriage celebrated, no burial ceremony performed. The sacraments of baptism and extreme unction alone could be administered.—“Medieval and Modern History,” Philip van Ness Myers, p. 117. Boston: Ginn and Company. SBBS 254.5
Inventions.—See Increase of Knowledge, 231-233. SBBS 254.6
Irenaus.—See Easter, 147; Fathers, 169. SBBS 254.7
Isidorian Decretals.—False Decretals, or the Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore, is a name given to certain apocryphal papal letters contained in a collection of canon laws composed about the middle of the ninth century by an author who uses the pseudonym of Isidore Mercator, in the opening preface to the collection.... SBBS 254.8
Nowadays every one agrees that these so-called papal letters are forgeries. These documents, to the number of about one hundred, appeared suddenly in the ninth century and are nowhere mentioned before that time. The most ancient MSS. of them that we have are from the ninth century, and their method of composition, of which we shall treat later, shows that they were made up of passages and quotations of which we know the sources; and we are thus in a position to prove that the pseudo-Isidore makes use of documents written long after the times of the popes to whom he attributes them. Thus it happens that popes of the first three centuries are made to quote documents that did not appear until the fourth or fifth century; and later popes up to Gregory I (590-604) are found employing documents dating from the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, and the early part of the ninth. Then again there are endless anachronisms. The Middle Ages were deceived by this huge forgery, but during the Renaissance men of learning and the canonists generally began to recognize the fraud.—The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. V, art. “False Decretals,” p. 773. SBBS 255.1
Isidorian Decretals, Time of.—The era of the false decretals has not been precisely fixed; they have seldom been supposed, however, to have appeared much before 800. But there is a genuine collection of canons published by Adrian I in 785, which contains nearly the same principles, and many of which are copied by Isidore, as well as Charlemagne in his Capitularies.... Fleury, Hist. Ecclés., t. ix. p. 500, seems to consider the decretals as older than this collection of Adrian; but I have not observed the same opinion in any other writer.—“History of Europe During the Middle Ages,” Henry Hallam, Vol. II, p. 98, note. New York and London: The Colonial Press, 1900. SBBS 255.2
Isidorian Decretals, Object of.—In the middle of that century-about 845-arose the huge fabrication of the Isidorian Decretals, which had results far beyond what its author contemplated, and gradually, but surely, changed the whole constitution and government of the church. It would be difficult to find in all history a second instance of so successful, and yet so clumsy a forgery. For three centuries past it has been exposed, yet the principles it introduced and brought into practice have taken such deep root in the soil of the church, and have so grown into her life, that the exposure of the fraud has produced no result in shaking the dominant system. SBBS 255.3
About a hundred pretended decrees of the earliest popes, together with certain spurious writings of other church dignitaries and acts of synods, were then fabricated in the west of Gaul, and eagerly seized upon by Pope Nicolas I at Rome, to be used as genuine documents in support of the new claims put forward by himself and his successors. The immediate object of the compiler of this forgery was to protect bishops against their metropolitans and other authorities, so as to secure absolute impunity, and the exclusion of all influence of the secular power. This end was to be gained through such an immense extension of the papal power, that, as these principles gradually penetrated the church, and were followed out into their consequences, she necessarily assumed the form of an absolute monarchy subjected to the arbitrary power of a single individual, and the foundation of the edifice of papal infallibility was already laid-first, by the principle that the decrees of every council require papal confirmation; secondly, by the assertion that the fulness of power, even in matters of faith, resides in the Pope alone, who is bishop of the universal church, while the other bishops are his servants.—“The Pope and the Council,” Janus (Dr. J. J. Döllinger [R. C.]), pp. 94-96. London: Rivingtons, 1869. SBBS 255.4
Isidorian Decretals, Use of, by Nicolas I.—When, in the middle of the ninth century, the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals were first brought from beyond the Alps to Rome, they were almost immediately cited by Nicholas I in reply to an appeal of Hincmar of Rheims, in order to justify and extend the then advancing claims of the Roman chair. We must then either suppose that this Pope was really incapable of detecting a forgery, which no Roman Catholic writer would now think of defending, or else we must imagine that, in order to advance an immediate ecclesiastical object, he could condescend to quote a document which he knew to have been recently forged, as if it had been of ancient and undoubted authority. The former supposition is undoubtedly most welcome to the common sense of Christian charity; but it is of course fatal to any belief in the personal infallibility of Pope Nicholas I.—“The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” H. P. Liddon, M. A., “Bampton Lectures,” 1866, pp. 470, 471. London: Rivingtons, 1869. SBBS 256.1
Isidorian Decretals, One of the Pillars.—The Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and manufacture, which, according to the occasion, have produced or concealed a various collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or suspicious, acts, as they tended to promote the interest of the Roman Church. Before the end of the eighth century, some apostolic scribe, perhaps the notorious Isidore, composed the decretals, and the Donation of Constantine, the two magic pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes.—“The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon, chap. 49, par. 16. New York: Harper & Brothers. SBBS 256.2
Isidorian Decretals, Contents of.—The compilation contains in Part I, besides a few other pieces, the fifty so-called Apostolic Canons received by the church (vid. I. 234, II. 11) and fifty-nine alleged, but all spurious, letters of the Roman bishops, from Clemens down to Melchiades (d. 314), in chronological order; in Part II there follow, after a few other pieces (of which the Donatio Constantini ad Sylvestrum is the most important) the canons of many councils, beginning with that of Nicaa, essentially following the Hispana (falsification is only perceptible in one passage); Part III gives the decretal letters of the Roman bishops from Sylvester to Gregory II (d. 731), of which thirty-five are spurious. The author has therefore admitted a number of already existing anonymous pieces, and the Epistle of Clement to James (from the Clementine Homilies), the Donatio Constantini and the Constitutio Sylvestri, but has invented the most of the spurious papal letters, for doing which Rufinus, Cassiodorus, and the Liber Pontificalis must have supplied him with the historical substratum, and older ecclesiastical authors, acts of councils, etc., with the material.—“History of the Christian Church in the Middle Ages,” Dr. Wilhelm Moeller, p. 161. New York: The Macmillan Company. SBBS 256.3
Isidorian Decretals, Purpose of.—To bring men to listen to, and receive, this new system of ecclesiastical law, which was so very different from the ancient system, there was need of ancient documents and records, with which it might be enforced and defended against the assaults of opposers. Hence the Roman pontiffs procured the forgery, by their trusty friends, of conventions, acts of councils, epistles, and other documents; by which they might make it appear that from the earliest ages of the church, the Roman pontiffs possessed the same authority and power which they now claimed. Among these fraudulent supports of the Romish power, the so-called Decretal Epistles of the pontiffs of the first centuries, hold perhaps the first rank. They were produced by the ingenuity of an obscure man, who falsely assumed the name of Isidore, a Spanish bishop. Some vestiges of these fabricated epistles appeared in the preceding century; but they were first published and appealed to in support of the claims of the Roman pontiffs, in this [ninth] century.—“Ecclesiastical History,” Mosheim, book 3, cent. 9, part 2, chap. 2, sec. 8. SBBS 256.4
Isidorian Decretals, Importance of.—The theory of the papal monarchy over the church was not the result merely of grasping ambition and intrigue on the part of individual popes; it corresponded rather to the deep-seated belief of Western Christendom. This desire to unite Christendom under the Pope gave meaning and significance to the forged decretals bearing the name of Isidore, which formed the legal basis of the papal monarchy. This forgery did not come from Rome, but from the land of the Western Franks. It set forth a collection of pretended decrees of early councils and letters of early popes, which exalted the power of the bishops, and at the same time subjected them to the supervision of the Pope. The Pope was set forth as universal bishop of the church, whose confirmation was needed for the decrees of any council. The importance of the forgery lay in the fact that it represented the ideal of the future as a fact of the past, and displayed the papal primacy as an original institution of the church of Christ. SBBS 257.1
The Papacy did not originate this forgery; but it made haste to use it. Pope Nicholas I claimed and exercised the powers of supreme ecclesiastical authority, and was happy in being able to exercise them in the cause of moral right.—“A History of the Papacy,” M. Creighton, D. D., Vol. I, pp. 13, 14. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899. SBBS 257.2
Isidorian Decretals, Influence of.—No document has ever had a more remarkable history, or a more lasting influence on the relations of society, than that in which this feeling found expression, and which is known in modern times by the name of the False or Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. A collection of decretal letters made by Isidore of Seville had long been in great repute in the West, based on the earlier collection made by Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century, containing the apostolic canons, the canons of the most important councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, and the decretal letters of the popes from the time of Siricius to that of Anastasius II. SBBS 257.3
Suddenly there appeared at Mainz, in the time of Archbishop Autcar, a collection purporting to be that of Isidore, brought, it was said, from Spain by Archbishop Riculf, but containing a series of documents hitherto unknown-fifty-nine letters and decrees of the twenty oldest bishops of Rome from Clement to Melchiades, the Donation of Constantine, thirty-nine new decrees of popes and councils between the time of Sylvester and Gregory II, and the acts of several unauthentic councils. The chief points to which the spurious decrees were directed were, the exaltation of the episcopal dignity, the security of the clergy against the attacks of laymen, the limitation of the power of metropolitans, reducing them to be mere instruments of the Pope, and a consequent enlargement of the privileges of the See of Rome.—“The See of Rome in the Middle Ages,” Rev. Oswald J. Reichel, B. C. L., M. A., pp. 89, 90. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1870. SBBS 257.4
Isidorian Decretals.—See Forgeries; Papacy, 332. SBBS 257.5