Higher Criticism and the Papacy
Because of the indorsement of the extreme higher criticism by the Episcopal Church in receiving Dr. Briggs into the Episcopal ministry, Benjamin F. Da Costa, D. D., felt himself logically obliged to leave that church and go over to the Catholic Church. He says that “all those forces of science, which it was once thought would be fatal to her [the Catholic Church], are now, in a way which constitutes one of the great surprises of history, so grouping themselves as to afford her a new foundation.” Fifteen years ago it was published that “a day of great intellectual darkness has been shown to be favorable to the success of popery. It will yet be demonstrated that a day of great intellectual light is equally favorable for its success. In past ages, when men were without God’s word, and without the knowledge of the truth, their eyes were blindfolded, and thousands were ensnared, not seeing the net spread for their feet. In this generation there are many whose eyes become dazzled by the glare of human speculations, ‘science falsely so-called;’ they discern not the net, and walk into it as readily as if blindfolded. . . . Thus the false science of the nineteenth century, which undermines faith in the Bible, will prove as successful in preparing the way for the acceptance of the papacy, with its pleasing forms, as did the withholding of knowledge in opening the way for its aggrandizement in the Dark Ages.”—‘Great Controversy,’ chapter on ‘Character and Aims of the Papacy.’ That thing is now being demonstrated; and it may be expected that soon there will be seen a perfect tide of these “intellectually great,” flowing into the Catholic Church; and all only the result of the apostasy of Protestantism from the word of God to “science falsely so-called,”—evolution, etc.