Protestantism and Catholicity. Balmes Jaime Luciano
doctrine, they bend their noble and intellectual brows in respectful obedience to faith. Do we not seem to behold another planetary system, where globes of fire revolve in their vast orbits in the midst of immensity, always drawn to their centre by a mysterious attraction? That central force, which allows no aberration, takes from them nothing of their extent, or of the grandeur of their movement; but it inundates them with light, while giving to their motion a more majestic regularity.6
CHAPTER IV.
PROTESTANTISM AND THE MIND
This fixedness of idea, this unanimity of will, this wisdom and constancy of plan, this progress with a firm step towards a definite object and end; and, in fine, this admirable unity, acknowledged in favor of Catholicism by M. Guizot himself, have not been imitated by Protestantism, either in good or evil. Protestantism, indeed, has not a single idea, of which it can say: "This is my own." It has attempted to appropriate to itself the principle of private judgment in matters of faith; and if several of its opponents have been too willing to accord it, it was because they were unable to find therein any other constitutive element; it was also because they felt that Protestantism, in boasting of having given birth to such a principle, labored to throw disgrace on itself, like a father who boasts of having unworthy and depraved sons. It is false, however, that Protestantism produced this principle of private judgment, since it was itself the offspring of that principle. That principle, before the Reformation, was formed in the bosom of all sects; it is the real germ of all errors; in proclaiming it, Protestants only yielded to a necessity which is common to all the sects separated from the Church.
There was therein no plan, no foresight, no system. The mere resistance to the authority of the Church included the necessity of unlimited private judgment, and the establishment of the understanding as supreme judge; even had the coryphæi of Protestantism wished from the first to oppose the consequences and applications of this right, the barrier was broken, and the torrent could not have been confined.
"The right of examining what we ought to believe," says a celebrated Protestant, (Germany, by Mad. de Staël, part iv. chap. 2), "is the foundation of Protestantism. The first Reformers did not think thus; they thought themselves able to place the pillars of Hercules of the mind according to their own lights; but they were mistaken in hoping to make those who had rejected all authority of this kind in the Catholic religion submit to their decisions as infallible." This resistance on their part proves, that they were not led by any of those ideas, which, although erroneous, show, in some measure, nobleness and generosity of heart; and that it is not of them that the human mind can say: "They have erred, but it was in order to give me more liberty of action." "The religious revolution of the sixteenth century," says M. Guizot, "did not understand the true principles of intellectual liberty; it liberated the human mind, and yet pretended to govern it by law."
But it is in vain for man to struggle against the nature of things: Protestantism endeavored, without success, to limit the right of private judgment. It raised its voice against it, and sometimes appeared to attempt its total destruction; but the right of private judgment, which was in its own bosom, remained there, developed itself, and acted there in spite of it. There was no middle course for Protestantism to adopt: it was compelled either to throw itself into the arms of authority, and thus acknowledge itself in the wrong, or else allow the dissolving principle to exert so much influence on its various sects, as to destroy even the shadow of the religion of Jesus Christ, and debase Christianity to the rank of a school of philosophy.
The cry of resistance to the authority of the Church once raised, the fatal results might be easily imagined; it was thus easy to foresee that that poisoned germ, in its development, must cause the ruin of all the Christian truths; and what could prevent its rapid development in a soil where fermentation was so active? Catholics were not wanting to proclaim loudly the greatness and imminence of the danger; and it must be allowed that many Protestants foresaw it clearly. No one is ignorant that the most distinguished men of the sect gave their opinions on this point, even from the beginning. Men of the greatest talent never found themselves at ease in Protestantism. They always felt that there was an immense void in it; this is the reason why they have constantly inclined either towards irreligion or towards Catholic unity.
Time, the best judge of opinions, has confirmed these melancholy prognostics. Things have now reached such a pass, that those only who are very ill instructed, or who have a very limited grasp of mind, can fail to see that the Christian religion, as explained by Protestants, is nothing more than an opinion – a system made up of a thousand incoherent parts, and which is degraded to the level of the schools of philosophy. If Christianity still seems to surpass these schools in some respects, and preserves some features which cannot be found in what is the pure invention of the mind of man, it ought not to be a matter of astonishment. It is owing to that sublimity of doctrine and that sanctity of morality which, more or less disfigured, always shines while a trace is preserved of the words of Jesus Christ. But the feeble light which struggles with darkness after the sun has sunk below the horizon, cannot be compared to that of day: darkness advances and spreads; it extinguishes the expiring reflection, and night comes on. Such is the doctrine of Christianity among Protestants. A glance at these sects shows us that they are not purely philosophical, but it shows us at the same time that they have not the characters of true religion. Christianity has no authority therein; and is there like a being out of its proper element, – a tree deprived of its roots: its face is pale and disfigured like that of a corpse. Protestantism talks of faith, and its fundamental principle destroys it; it endeavors to exalt the gospel, and its own principle, by subjecting that gospel to private judgment, weakens its authority. If it speak of the sanctity and purity of Christian morality, it is reminded that some of its dissenting sects deny the divinity of Jesus Christ; and that they all may do so according to the principle on which it rests. The Divinity of Jesus Christ once doubted, the God-made man is reduced to the rank of a great philosopher and legislator; He has no longer the authority necessary to give to His laws the august sanction which renders them so holy in the eyes of men; He can no longer imprint upon them the seal which raises them above all human thoughts, and His sublime instructions cease to be lessons flowing from the lips of uncreated Wisdom.
If you deprive the human mind of the support of authority of some kind or other, on what can it depend? Abandoned to its own delirious dreams, it is forced again into the gloomy paths which led the philosophers of the ancient schools to chaos. Reason and experience are here agreed. If you substitute the private judgment of Protestants for the authority of the Church, all the great questions respecting God and man remain without solution. All the difficulties are left; the mind is in darkness, and seeks in vain for a light to guide it in safety: stunned by the voices of a hundred schools, who dispute without being able to throw any light on the subject, it relapses into that state of discouragement and prostration in which Christianity found it, and from which, with so much exertion, she had withdrawn it. Doubt, pyrrhonism, and indifference become the lot of the greatest minds; vain theories, hypothetical systems, and dreams take possession of men of more moderate abilities; the ignorant are reduced to superstitions and absurdities.
Of what use, then, would Christianity have been on the earth, and what would have been the progress of humanity? Happily for the human race, the Christian religion was not abandoned to the whirlwind of Protestant sects. In Catholic authority she has found ample means of resisting the attacks of sophistry and error. What would have become of her without it? Would the sublimity of her doctrines, the wisdom of her precepts, the unction of her counsels, have been now any thing more than a beautiful dream, related in enchanting language by a great philosopher? Yes, I must repeat, without the authority of the Church there is no security for faith; the divinity of Jesus Christ becomes a matter of doubt; His mission is disputed; in fact, the Christian religion disappears. If she cannot show us her heavenly titles, give us full certainty that she has come from the bosom of the Eternal, that her words are those of God Himself, and that He has condescended to appear on earth for the salvation of men, she has then lost her right to demand our veneration. Reduced to the level of human ideas, she must, then, submit to our judgment like other mere opinions; at the tribunal of philosophy she may endeavor to maintain her doctrines as more or less reasonable; but she will always be liable to the reproach of having wished to deceive us, by passing herself off as divine when she was only human; and in all discussions on