christianity; the virtue of the Greek and Roman, and other nations of antiquity, was at best only an ennobled sensuality. But christians, with a Virgin mother of the church, recognise in celibate establishments a divine character. I was however unaware, till lately, of the completely philosophical defence which might be made of a monastic life, and which I shall submit to further consideration. It is a principle proved by M. Malthus, in his book on Population, and acknowledged by all able writers, that man, in common with other animals, has a power and tendency to multiply beyond the means of sustenance which the earth produces; there must be, therefore, checks to fecundity. Various have been the endeavours to make this principle out to be fallacious, but none have succeeded. For if alone every couple could produce four children, and this is a small allowance to young natural and healthy persons, the time must come when there would be too many people in the world. For let even the whole surface of the earth be cultivated, its annual produce is, after all, only a constant quantity; while population, though not unlimited, proceeds on an arithmetical ratio of increase. Various means have been devised for checking an undue advance of population; and wars, diseases, and vice, have been shown to be the natural source of that untimely devastation of human life and fecundity, which everywhere thins the inhabitants of the globe. Now, in proportion as moral and physical knowledge may be promoted, may it be hoped that these natural sources of destruction will be diminished, and that population will find some check more congenial to the advanced state of society? May not, then, the increased fervor of devotion which shall accompany multiplied proofs of christianity induce a yet larger number of individuals to assume professions of celibacy, so as to arrest an undue increase of mankind? For such a state of things would, in fact, be substituting a holy and contemplative life of voluntary moral restraint and sacrifice as a check to population for those disgusting moral and physical calamities which are now so frequent, even in Christendom, as to make many well meaning persons hastily call in question the authenticity of religion, from a contemplation of its apparent incapability to subdue the irregular animal propensities of human nature. FIDES CATHOLICA. Reasons of Philostratus for preferring the Catholic Religion. 1. BECAUSE, being by nature a philosopher, in the real and ancient sense of the word, however imperfect his attempts to attain to wisdom, he is incapable of admitting the truth of any system of religion that is not thoroughly consistent with itself in all its parts, embraced by members united in opinion at all times and places, universal in its application, deducible from the doctrine and practices of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, and whose divine origin is not proved by the moral tendency of its doctrines, and attested by the miraculous interposition of its author. 2. Because he finds the catholic religion, commonly called Roman from its connexion with the Holy See of Rome, to be the only form of christianity which is thus distinguished, by consistency and adaptation to the wants and infirmities of human nature. 3. Because, though human reason can never be successfully employed in any inquiries why and wherefore it has originally pleased the Creator to establish any particular laws of the universe, or any particular religion, nevertheless, human inquiry can be legitimately directed to discover what may be the nature of those laws, and what may be the real marks of that religion; both which, the Creator has ordered for the physical regulation of the material world and the moral control of its inhabitants. 4. Because he finds it admitted on all hands that UNITY, CATHOLICITY, APOSTOLICITY, and SANCTITY, are the marks of the true faith, and that the catholic religion is the only one apparently designated by those marks, and thereby contradistinguished from all spurious branches of christianity. 5. Because a particular examination of the catholic doctrines and practices, contrasted with those of protestants, confirms the above statement. That is: 6. Because the catholics have evinced a unity of doctrine and practice, from the earliest period to the present day; and because local situation and circumstances have never, in any way, changed the character of their religion while protestants are divided into numberless societies, which mutually contradict each other, and accuse each other of heresy and blasphemy to such a degree, that, even among the members of any one protestant schism, there are hardly two intelligent members quite agreed on all points. 7. Because, from the first moment the trumpet of disunion was sounded at the pretended reformation, the minute subdivision of heretical christianity has been proceeding rapidly; while the opportunity offered by schism, of confronting the mutual contradictions of protestants, has armed infidels with their most powerful arguments against the truth of christianity in general. 8. Because CATHOLICITY SO exclusively belongs to that religion whose character it announces, that, to produce any counter arguments would be to insult the reader's mind with a species of sophistry so literally paradoxical as to tend to the utter abolition of the validity and use of language; while the very names of protestant congregations, such as, Church of England, Kirk of Scotland, Calvinistic Creed of Holland, Lutheran Faith of Northern Germany, and various others, not to mention Methodists, Quakers, Jumpers, Squeakers, Moravians, Swedenburghers, Socinians, Arians, Independents, and Nonconformists, all show that protestant heresies want the mark of catholicity, and are ever nominated according to their local character, and their origin from the particular notions of individuals. 9. That the APOSTOLICITY is equally proved by the History of the Lives of the Saints and Fathers of the Church; while only one protestant sect, namely, the Church of England, even pretends to this sign, and the members of that church are circumscribed within a small and seagirt periphery. 10. Because SANCTITY of doctrine belongs supereminently to the catholic church while the good done to the human mind even by protestant communities, which candor ought not to deny, is referrible alone to the power of all systems of moral obligation, founded on hope and fear, to regulate the conduct, and is possessed by protestants, in common with Jews, Mahometans, and almost all other known religions. 11. Because a particular examination of the catholic doctrine bears one out in the proof of its sanctity. That is : 12. Because, from viewing in various countries of Europe, the christian character of the virtues of catholics, compared with the heathen virtues prevalent in protestant countries, the author has repeatedly practised that rule of judging of holiness laid down and enjoined by Jesus Christ, who directed us to infer the nature of the tree from its fruits; and has, in every instance in which he has so judged, been led to perceive the conduct of virtuous and sincere catholics to be the Fruits of Sanctity. 13. Because, the miracles which continue to be wrought from time to time, in attestation of the sanctity of the catholic church alone, are established on evidence equally strong with that on which protestants, in common with catholics, believe the miracles recorded in the Holy Scriptures; because these modern miracles have, in some instances, been proved by a series of corresponding testimony, from witnesses of the facts, of such a consistent and positive nature as could not be rejected on any ordinary subject in a court of law; and, because there have been a succession of such miracles wrought in favor of catholicism, from the time of Jesus Christ to the present day, many of which have possessed all the requisite characters of truth laid down by the most scrupulous critics: lastly, because the doubting of catholic miracles would tend to invalidate those of holy writ, whose greater relative distance of time and place lessens, cæteris paribus, their comparative probability. 14. Because the monastic, eremitical, and other celibate institutions of catholics, are conformable to a philosophical view of the necessity of checking fecundity, and are calculated, with fasting and vegetable food, to clear the mind and elevate the spiritual character of religious individuals. Moreover the poor mendicant Friar, the benevolent Jesuit, the Sœurs de la Charité, and the sequestered Hermit and Anchorite, present a contrast to the lazy beneficed parson, of many protestant congregations, which is very favorable to the catholic cause. 15. Because, viewing how infinitely mixed and interwoven are vice and virtue in all persons, in different degrees, the doctrine of a general division of mankind into those who are to be eternally happy and those who are to be eternally miserable, in consequence of their conduct on earth alone, is, to a philosophic mind, quite inadmissible; while the catholic doctrine of Purgatory and Penance is a comfortable and a scriptural mode of explaining the apparent difficulty, and presents a further encouragement to virtue and religion, by identifying our own eternal interest with that of our departed fellow creatures,-to pray for whom is, to catholics, not only an act grateful to the benevolent attachment of the friends of the deceased, but is enjoined as a duty, and thus connected with our own hope of enjoying their society in a future state for ever. 16. Because, the enjoyment of future life, as believed by protestants, deprived of its sensible form and consistency, must, by the very laws of our nature, cease to be an object of hope, since it is represented as a state of existence in which we shall be, as far as certainty of proof goes, deprived of all those associations of friendship, love, and community of interests, which alone endear the better part of mankind to life at all: for the author would prefer believing, according to the atomic philosophy of the Atheist, that he were merely a part of the earth, and would sooner run the chance of annihilation, or of an uncertain resuscitation of his personal identity, by a fortuitous recomposition of his elementary atoms in the lapse of ages, than accept of future life, coupled with all the uncertainty as to its nature, which must result from the vague manner in which protestantism would induce him to view it. 17. Because, the author contrasts with the above, the truly inspiring character of the Catholic Purgatory and Heaven; and when he considers that we are, by the catholic doctrine of intercourse with the Saints in Heaven, and with our departed friends, to whom, in Purgatory, we may, while we are yet on earth, render assistance by prayer, enjoined only to do that which must constitute the greatest consolation of this precarious life, he is led in consequence to ascribe that doctrine to the Primordial Fountain of Goodness. 18. Because, the catholic doctrine of prayer to the BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, and the Invocation of Saints, if it were not to be found in the Scripture, is, nevertheless, confirmed by the traditional word of God, without which christianity would lose the greater part of its support. 19. Because the charge of idolatry made against catholics, does not belong to them. Images of the Crucifix, of the Holy Virgin, and other Saints, like the pious paintings of the Resurrection of Lazarus, of Sainte Marguerite vanquishing the Dragon, of ST. PETER WITH THE KEYS, and many others, are outward and sensible mementos of really existing truths and though the emblematical symbol is sometimes ignorantly confounded with the real signification, yet these images and pictures, in general, are beneficial and pious memorials, when contemplated with a corresponding feeling of devotion. 20. Because persecution does not belong to catholics, but to the times in which it prevailed; since the blasphemer Calvin, and the immoral and vain-glorious Luther, with their protestant followers, are known to have committed more acts of persecution unto death, in proportion to the number of protestants, than the catholics did, even if we include the Inquisition. 21. Because transubstantiation, and other peculiarities of catholic doctrine, are not more incomprehensible than the Trinity, or the atonement, as acknowledged by protestants, or than the compatibility of an all-powerful Omnibeneficence with the evil existing in the world. 22. Because such a firm persuasion of christian truth, as catholic doctrine and discipline are calculated to produce, must supersede the absurd method of having recourse to physiology and other profane sciences, for proof of a soul in man; and by keeping the mind fixed to one point, must prevent the wanderings of a distracted imagination in spiritual things, which, in protestant countries, fills lunatic hospitals and madhouses with crazy enthusiasts. 23. And, lastly, Because the author cannot adopt the absurdity of a middle course, he must be either a Believer of the whole or of no part of Christianity; and while the whole may be yet proved beyond all doubt by the multiplication of miracles, and the further development of prophecy, he prefers the adoption of Catholicism to Atheism, and believes that the former would be better adapted to the comfort of human life than the latter, even were it proved to be an illusion. |