Protestantism and Catholicity. Balmes Jaime Luciano
paints a dark picture of the infamies and abominations which were committed in the spectacles and sacred games celebrated in honor of the gods – games and shows at which he had himself assisted in his youth; he continues thus: "Thence it comes that these divinities have taken no care to regulate the morals of the cities and nations who adore them, or to avert by their threats those dreadful evils which injure not only fields and vineyards, houses and properties, or the body which is subject to the mind, but the mind itself, the directress of the body, which was drenched with their iniquities. Or if it be pretended that they did make such menaces, let them be shown and proved to us. But let there not be alleged a few secret words whispered in the ears of a small number of persons, and which, with a great deal of mystery, were to teach virtue. It is necessary to point out, to name the places consecrated to the assemblies – not those in which were celebrated games with lascivious words and gestures; not those feasts called fuites, and which were solemnized with the most unbridled license; but the assemblies where the people were instructed in the precepts of the gods for the repression of avarice, moderating ambition, restraining immodesty; those where these unfortunate beings learn what Perseus desires them to know, when he says, in severe language, 'Learn, O unhappy mortals, the reason of things, what we are, why we come into the world, what we ought to do, how miserable is the term of our career, what bounds we ought to prescribe to ourselves in the pursuit of riches, what use we ought to make of them, what we owe to our neighbor, in fine, the obligations we owe to the rank we occupy among men.' Let them tell us in what places they have been accustomed to instruct the people in these things by order of the gods; let them show us these places, as we show them churches built for this purpose wherever the Christian religion has been established." (De Civit. lib. ii. c. 6.) This divine religion was too deeply acquainted with the heart of man ever to forget the weakness and inconstancy which characterize it; and hence it has ever been her invariable rule of conduct unceasingly to inculcate to him, with untiring patience, the salutary truths on which his temporal well-being and eternal happiness depend. Man easily forgets moral truths when he is not constantly reminded of them; or if they remain in his mind, they are there like sterile seeds, and do not fertilize his heart. It is good and highly salutary for parents constantly to communicate this instruction to their children, and that it should be made the principal object of private education; but it is necessary, moreover, that there should be a public ministry, never losing sight of it, diffusing it among all classes and ages, repairing the negligences of families, and reviving recollections and impressions which the passions and time constantly efface.
This system of constant preaching and instruction, practised at all times and in all places by the Catholic Church, is so important for the enlightenment and morality of nations, that it must be looked upon as a great good, that the first Protestants, in spite of their desire to destroy all the practices of the Church, have nevertheless preserved that of preaching. We need not be insensible on this account to the evils produced at certain times by the declamation of some factious or fanatical ministers; but as unity had been broken, as the people had been precipitated into the perilous paths of schism, we say that it must have been extremely useful for the preservation of the most important notions with respect to God and man and the fundamental maxims of morality, that such truths should be frequently explained to the people by men who had long studied them in the sacred Scriptures. No doubt the mortal blow given to the hierarchy by the Protestant system, and the degradation of the priesthood which was the consequence, have deprived its preachers of the sacred characteristics of the Holy Spirit; no doubt it is a great obstacle to the efficacy of their preachers, that they cannot present themselves as the anointed of the Lord, and that they are only, as an able writer has said, men clothed in black, who mount the pulpit every Sunday to speak reasonable things; but at least the people continue to hear some fragments of the excellent moral discourses contained in the sacred Scriptures, they have often before their eyes the edifying examples spread over the Old and New Testament, and, what is still more precious, they are reminded frequently of the events in the life of Jesus Christ, – of that admirable life, the model of all perfection, which, even when considered in a human point of view, is acknowledged by all to be the purest sanctity par excellence, the noblest code of morality that was ever seen, the realization of the finest beau idéal that philosophy in its loftiest thoughts has ever conceived under human form, and which poetry has ever imagined in its most brilliant dreams. This we say is useful and highly salutary; for it will always be salutary for nations to be nourished with the wholesome food of moral truths, and to be excited to virtue by such sublime examples.
CHAPTER XV.
DIFFICULTIES WHICH CHRISTIANITY HAD TO OVERCOME IN THE WORK OF SOCIAL REGENERATION. – OF SLAVERY. – COULD IT BE DESTROYED WITH MORE PROMPTNESS THAN IT WAS BY CHRISTIANITY?
Although the Church attached the greatest importance to the propagation of truth, although she was convinced that to destroy the shapeless mass of immorality and degradation that met her sight, her first care should be to expose error to the dissolving fire of true doctrines, she did not confine herself to this; but, descending to real life, and following a system full of wisdom and prudence, she acted in such a manner as to enable humanity to taste the precious fruit which the doctrines of Jesus Christ produce even in temporal things. The Church was not only a great and fruitful school; she was also a regenerative association; she did not diffuse her general doctrines by throwing them abroad at hazard, merely hoping that they would fructify with time; she developed them in all their relations, applied them to all subjects, inoculated laws and manners with them, and realized them in institutions which afforded silent but eloquent instructions to future generations. Nowhere was the dignity of man acknowledged, slavery reigned everywhere; degraded woman was dishonored by the corruption of manners, and debased by the tyranny of man. The feelings of humanity were trodden under foot, infants were abandoned, the sick and aged were neglected, barbarity and cruelty were carried to the highest pitch of atrocity in the prevailing laws of war; in fine, on the summit of the social edifice was seen an odious tyranny, sustained by military force, and looking down with an eye of contempt on the unfortunate nations that lay in fetters at its feet.
In such a state of things it certainly was no slight task to remove error, to reform and improve manners, abolish slavery, correct the vices of legislation, impose a check on power, and make it harmonize with the public interest, give new life to individuals, and reorganize family and society; and yet nothing less than this was done by the Church. Let us begin with slavery. This is a matter which is the more to be fathomed, as it is a question eminently calculated to excite our curiosity and affect our hearts. What abolished slavery among Christian nations? Was it Christianity? Was it Christianity alone, by its lofty ideas on human dignity, by its maxims and its spirit of fraternity and charity, and also by its prudent, gentle, and beneficent conduct? I trust I shall prove that it was. No one now ventures to doubt that the Church exercised a powerful influence on the abolition of slavery; this is a truth too clear and evident to be questioned. M. Guizot acknowledges the successful efforts with which the Church labored to improve the social condition. He says: "No one doubts that she struggled obstinately against the great vices of the social state; for example, against slavery." But, in the next line, and as if he were reluctant to establish without any restriction a fact which must necessarily excite in favor of the Catholic Church the sympathies of all humanity, he adds: "It has been often repeated that the abolition of slavery in the modern world was entirely due to Christianity. I believe that this is saying too much; slavery existed for a long time in the bosom of Christian society without exciting astonishment or much opposition." M. Guizot is much mistaken if he expects to prove that the abolition of slavery was not due exclusively to Christianity, by the mere representation that slavery existed for a long time amid Christian society. To proceed logically, he must first see whether the sudden abolition of it was possible, if the spirit of peace and order which animates the Church could allow her rashly to enter on an enterprise which, without gaining the desired object, might have convulsed the world. The number of slaves was immense; slavery was deeply rooted in laws, manners, ideas, and interests, individual and social; a fatal system, no doubt, but the eradication of which all at once it would have been rash to attempt, as its roots had penetrated deeply and spread widely in the bowels of the land.
In a census of Athens there were reckoned 20,000 citizens and 40,000 slaves; in the Peloponnesian war no less than 20,000 passed over to the enemy. This we learn from Thucydides.