The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Some meat for the dogs . . .

IN resuming now the analysis of your argument, it may be well to repeat that the ultimate conclusion which you propose to reach is the infallibility of Rome as a witness for the truth. This point you endeavour to establish by showing, in the first place, that there must be some “body of individuals to whom, in their collective capacity,” God has graciously vouchsafed the precious prerogative which you claim for your pastors. According to you, the whole question of the truth of Christianity turns upon the existence of an infallible tribunal on earth, from which men may receive unerring decisions in matters of faith, and without which the overwhelming majority of the race must be abandoned to hopeless and complete infidelity.

Indeed. I think this writer would be aghast to see what Protestantism has become today, abandoned indeed to hopeless infidelity, those institutions which the Reformers began having one by one embraced apostasy and immorality in their teachings, such as the ordination of practicing homosexuals.

If there were, indeed, no escape from the dilemma to which you have attempted to reduce us, the means of salvation would be hardly less fatal than the dangers from which they are appointed to rescue us. But it may yet be found, sir, that a merciful God has dealt more gently with His children than to commit their fate to the teachings of a body “whose garments are dyed in blood,”

Ho now, the pot calls the kettle black. It was the Scottish Presbyterians whose history is one of blood...the blood of over 4,000 priests alone in Scotland who were murdered wholesale. Time would not allow me to list all the abominations of the Protestant persecutions of Catholics.

whose whole career on earth, like the progress of Joel’s locusts, has been marked by ruin,

Really? What ruin speaketh this man? The multitudes of orphanages, hospitals, and other charitable works for the good of man? Or perhaps he speaketh of the various ruinous doctrines which the Catholic Church defended and for which he should be thankful, for if it were not for the councils of the Catholic Church and the imprimateur of the pope, he would be an Arian heretic.

and which, if its future blessings are to be collected from its past achievements, can give us nothing but wormwood and gall, a stone for bread and a serpent for a fish.

Once again we see this has not come to pass, for while Protestant assemblies one by one are falling to humanism, the Catholic Church continues to oppose the humnanistic doctrines of modernity.

The friends of liberty and man, if reduced to the deplorable alternative of reaching the sacred Scriptures only on condition of submitting to a bondage more grievous than that from which the groaning Israelites were delivered by a strong hand and an outstretched arm, would, in all probability, prefer the frozen air of infidelity to the deadly miasma of Rome.

Yack yack yack. Ad hominum attacks are not doctrinal teaching. But he is in a state of greater enlightenment now.

What is this but to limit the Holy One of Israel? You would do well to remember that the purposes of God are not adjusted by the measures of human prudence or of human sagacity. As the heavens are high above the earth, so His thoughts are high above our thoughts, and His ways above our ways.

What a noble sounding appeal to rejection of the authority which God placed on earth to guide all men.

Plausible objections avail nothing against Divine institutions.

You said a mouthful, sir. The divine instutition of the Holy Catholic Church shall continue on regardless of both Her external AND internal enemies who would see Her ruined and made naught.

Do you not tell us, in effect, that God could not have given satisfactory evidence of the truth and inspiration of His own Word without establishing a visible tribunal protected from error by His special grace?

I wonder again what this man would say now seeing that there are as many denominations as there are human opinions of what is truth! Such a multitude of varying doctrines is EXACTLY why there needs be ONE and ONLY ONE infallible interpretor of the Bible. It is evident to everyone except those who are willingly blind that there is a serious problem with this idea of "private judgment".

And that He is thus limited in His resources, thus necessarily tied up to the one only plan which the pastors of Rome have found so prodigiously profitable to them,

This is typical of the Reformers that I read. They are weak on exegesis and cover it up with constant ad hominum attacks.

Why then is private judgment inadmissible? Why is it that each man is not at liberty to examine for himself, and form his own opinions upon those solemn subjects in which his own individual happiness is so deeply concerned?

Because in a covenantal hierarchy, there is authority given to only the covenantal head, according to the scriptural pattern. This is why the Holy Father alone has been given the grace of Infallibility, for he alone is the head of the kingdom ON EARTH, and is a picture of that divine Head Who is the King of kings over the covenantal family in Heaven. (Heb. 8:5).

Certain it is that there was not a single individual in the whole Council of Trent who possessed even a tithe of the learning without which, in your view, an accurate decision is hopeless.

Again with the ad hominums as he attacks the intelligence of the men who were on the Council of Trent.

“If any one say that the beginning or increase of faith and the very affection of belief is in us, not by the gift of grace—that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit correcting our will from infidelity to faith, from impiety to piety—but by nature, he is an enemy to the doctrine of the Apostles. If any man affirm that he can by the vigour of nature think anything good which pertains to salvation as he ought, or choose to consent to saving—that is, to evangelical—preaching without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all the sweet relish in consenting to and believing the truth, he is deceived by an heretical spirit”

This is STILL the teaching of the Church even today. Get a copy of the Catholic Catechism and see for yourself

The great Athanasius (Orat. Cont. Gent., c. i.) says:
A j uta krei" men gar eisin ai dgiai kai qeopneustai grafai pro" thn th" alhqeia" apaggelian. “The Christian faith carries within itself the discovery of its own authority, and the Holy Scriptures which God has inspired are all- sufficient in themselves for the evidence of their own truth.”

[b]Why does this man go to the Early Fathers to quote them in their beliefs and not at the same time practice their beliefs? They were fully and thoroughly CATHOLIC.

The issue here is not the truth of the scriptures or whether or not they are of divine origin. The issue is this: WHO is authorized by God to properly interpret them?[b]