CHAPTER XXII.

DENIAL OF THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

THIS subject, already noticed incidentally, deserves a separate consideration. Says cardinal Wiseman in his account of the Roman Catholic church (see Chapter II.):

"The Catholic church professes to be divinely authorized to exact interior assent to all that it teaches."

The same cardinal says in his preface to the Exercises of St. Ignatius:

"In the Catholic church no one is ever allowed to trust himself in spiritual matters. The sovereign pontiff is obliged to submit himself to the direction of another in whatever concerns his own soul.”

Says St. Philip Neri, founder of the Oratorians:

"Let him that desires to grow in godliness, give himself up to a learned confessor, and be obedient to him as to God."

Says St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, in his Exercises: "That we may in all things attain the truth, that we may not err in any thing, we ought ever to hold it as a fixed principle, that what I see white, I believe to be black, if the Hierarchical Church so define it."

Said Father Ignatius (= Hon. and Rev. Mr. Spencer) of England, after being "inhibited" by cardinal Wiseman from fulfilling his pledge to attend a meeting at Exeter Hall :

"We do not act as individuals: we act in concert as members of a great organization."

The creed of pope Pius IV. (see Chapter II.) and the decrees of the council of Trent (see Chapter XIII.) bind every

Roman Catholic to surrender his own judgment of what the Scriptures teach, and to receive the interpretation of "the Church." Bishop England amplifies this article of the creed thus:

"The Church requires of her children, that they shall conform their minds to that meaning, which has been received in the beginning with the books themselves, from their inspired compilers: and that they will never take and interpret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of those fathers, who in every age have given to us the uninterrupted testimony of this original signification. She knows of no principle of common sense, or of religion, upon which any individual could, after the lapse of centuries, assume to himself the prerogative of discovering the true meaning of any passage of the Bible to be different from that which is thus testified by the unanimous declaration of the great bulk of Christendom.”1

"The Philosophy of Conversion" (that is, from Protestantism, infidelity, &c., to Roman Catholicism) is the title of an elaborate article in "The Catholic World" for Jan., 1867, which may be considered as almost an official exposition of the subject. This article shows clearly that a true Roman Catholic must give up his right of private judgment. It says:

"Whether from the external Saharas of Christian skepticism, or whether from beneath the shadow of the truth itself, the path he follows leads to one goal, the goal of unconditional submission. Conversion may come to him through the successive adoption of Catholic dogmas, through fondness for external rites and forms, through personal friendship and familiarity, through any of those myriad ways by which God bends the steps of his elect towards Heaven; but when

1 This "unanimous declaration of the great bulk of Christendom" is regarded by Protestants as a myth or unfounded boast. Certain it is that nearly 20 years ago a reward of £100 (= nearly $500) was publicly offered in Manchester, Eng., "to any person who can produce the unanimous consent of the Fathers in their interpretation of the Scriptures." At the same time and place, a like reward of £100 was offered "for the best method of discovering the true church without the exercise of private judgment." These rewards were not accepted, though one of the most distinguished controversialists of the Roman Catholic church was then in the city. The “unanimous consent of the Fathers" is, like the infallibility of popes and councils (see Chapters III. and VI.), a very troublesome point.

it comes, it is the same change for each, for every one-the abnegation of all choice and self-affirmation, and the complete subjection of the heart and will to the obedience of faith. Then, and then only, is the work ended and the conversion made complete. What the Church teaches is from that hour the faith of that Christian heart. What the Church commands is the law of that Christian will. . .

Of those who, in the exercise of their private judgment, arrive at doctrines identical or nearly identical with those which the Roman Catholic church teaches, and, as a result of this identity, accept her formularies as expressive of their faith, the article says:

"These men apparently hang over the Church, ready to drop, like ripe fruit, into her open bosom. Nevertheless, whatever of her symbolism they may cherish, they cherish, not because it is hers, but because it is their own. It is not truth which she has taught them; they have discovered it themselves. It brings them no nearer to her in heart. It does not subject their will to hers. On the contrary, it often begets in them an arrogance of her divine securty, as if their similarity to her constituted them her equals in the authority of God. Such men are not with the Church, whatever proximity they seem to have....

The New York Tablet, in giving a synopsis of Rev. T. S. Preston's lecture on the temporal power of the pope, says:

"There is no difference of opinion among Catholics on this subject, for we do not allow any difference on such questions. The decrees of the Church forbid it."

A commentary on this declaration is found in the fact that Rev. Thomas Farrell, who had been for about 15 years in charge of St. Joseph's church in New York city, wrote a letter of sympathy with the great meeting for Italian unity held in the Academy of Music, January 13, 1871, and was tried before the archbishop and his council for his liberality of views and freedom of expression. The result was a vote in favor of removing Father Farrell from his charge, and he was informed by a note from the archbishop, Feb. 7th, that he must retract

or be removed; but his church and parish protested against his removal, and their petition being seconded by most of the parish priests of the city, he was subsequently restored to his parish by the archbishop after his humble submission.

The excellent and learned Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray in France, 1695-1715, being censured by pope Innocent XII. as a religious enthusiast, read from his own pulpit the pope's condemnation of his opinions, and publicly proclaimed his submission to the mandate which silenced his utterance of what he regarded as divine truth.

Other cases may also be cited to show the opposition between the Roman Catholic church and what Protestants understand by the right of private judgment, &c. Galileo, who had been required in 1616 never again to teach the Copernican doctrine of the earth's motion, was formally condemned by the Inquisition at Rome, June 22, 1633, for maintaining the propositions "that the sun is the centre of the world, and immovable from its place," and "that the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion," and was compelled to take an oath on the Gospels thus:

"With a sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies (viz., that the earth moves, &c.); I swear that I will never in future say or assert any thing, verbally or in writing, which may give rise to a similar suspicion against me... "I Galileo Galilei have abjured as above with my own hand."

After the French revolution of 1830, the Abbé de Lamennais founded the journal L'avenir (= the future), in which he aimed to combine democracy with papal supremacy, and liberal opinions with Catholic doctrines. He was assisted by Père (Father) Lacordaire, Count de Montalembert, &c. They advocated in their journal, among other things, liberty of worship, of conscience, and of the press; the prelates and Jesuits met them with violent opposition and denunciation; in November, 1831, the publication of L'avenir was suspended; 3 of its editors, named above, went to Rome and sought the

papal approbation without receiving any attention at the time; the pope, however, in an encyclical letter, dated Aug. 15, 1832, condemned the doctrines of L'avenir, and characterized as a delirium the idea that "liberty of conscience and of worship is the right of every man ;" the editors were cited to Rome and signed their submission; the brilliant Lamennais, having become a skeptic, died in 1854, and, in accordance with his will, he was buried without any religious service, and his grave, in the Potter's Field, is unmarked by any stone; Lacordaire became a Dominican and the most celebrated preacher of his time, lived the life of a devotee and ascetic, and after abundant self inflicted flagellations and fastings and other "punishments" of the flesh, died in 1861; Montalembert, who was in 1843 the recognized leader of the Catholic party in the French legislative assembly, and in 1863 an eloquent advocate of liberty of conscience in an assembly of Catholic Liberals at Malines, was denounced by the ultramontane journals, while he was on his death-bed in 1870, as an enemy of the Church, and French bishops were forbidden by the pope to celebrate a public mass for his soul after his death.

Father Hyacinthe, originally Charles Loyson, a Sulpician priest 1851-9, and subsequently a Barefooted Carmelite 185969, became the successor of the eloquent Lacordaire and of the Jesuit Ravignan as preacher in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, 1864. He was an earnest, devout, and loyal member of the Roman Catholic church, yet has been styled in a Protestant sense Scriptural and evangelical in his preaching, giving prominence to the Bible and its grand truths of the apostasy and ruin of our race through the sin of Adam, of the universality of human guilt, of the great atonement by the Son of God, of the certainty of the future punishment of the impenitent, and of the sovereignty of God in his providence over men. He also held and fully expressed the opinion that the true church of Jesus Christ includes many who are not in outward

1 This utterance of Gregory XVI. was cited with approval by Pius IX. in his encyclical letter of Dec. 8, 1864.