Faith, Purgatory, etc by I. E. Kimball

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 23, 1896

Faith, Purgatory, etc

By I. E. Kimball

THE CREED OF CATHOLICISM. No. 4.

BY I. E. KIMBALL.

Faith, Purgatory, etc.

I WISH to notice in conclusion some minor things in the Catholic confession, concerning faith, purgatory, worship of the Virgin and the saints, images and indulgences. Faith in the Church of Rome is defined as mere orthodoxy—that is a consent of the mind to the creeds and constitutions of the church. Bible faith is not this, but “the substance of things hoped for.” Faith takes hold of things hoped for, and makes them realities, through the power of God. Faith is living, active, trustful, relying upon the sure word of promise. It asks and receives, seeks and finds, and works by love, and purifies the heart; it justifies, and is the open door of sanctification. Faith to the Protestant makes all things possible; to the Catholic it means to accept the creed and the traditions.

Now, which kind of faith was manifested in Christ? Somehow he did not believe the creed, or the traditions; but he could walk the stormy waters and speak words full of meaning to the boisterous tempest. He struck out on a new path from the church because they were more zealous for traditions and human authority than for the naked word of God. Let honest members of the Catholic communion follow their “Master, Christ,” not the master, the pope. “Call no man master.”

Purgatory.

As to purgatory, it is believed that in the unknown regions is a land of fiery tempests, where poor souls, not incorrigible, but filled with venial sin, with unconfessed faults, are remanded to suffer till their sins are burned and purged away. If, forsooth, the priest may have given him the final unction and offered up prayers in his behalf, he may have escaped; or possibly some saint may have a stock of superabundant merit sufficient to advance himself and every soul in purgatory to heaven. So it has been, they say. If so, then he escapes to Paradise.

This is what the Lord says: “Tho Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.” None will get to heaven by another’s merits. This is taught in the parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25), where, “Give us of your oil,” is answered with, “Go to them that sell and buy for yourselves.” And Jesus said: “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do.” Luke 17:10. It would be a strange thing to see a person better than he need to be?

Works of supererogation are the treasury from which indulgences are drawn—the doctrine against which Luther so inveighed. It commenced with the remittal of a part of the penance of poor penitents who had fallen and would recover themselves; and finally was stretched so far as to cover all punishment for time and eternity, as in the indulgences granted to the crusaders, and virtually was looked upon as a remittal of sin, without contrition or repentance. And it amounted to just that, although the skillful theorist of Rome would make the indulgence appear to be nothing but a remittal of punishment for sin which the penitent has confessed and forsaken but for which due satisfaction in the way of punishment is required of God. Thongings, scourgings, flagellations are meritorious, but sometimes it may happen that altho the sin be forgiven, yet punishment is yet treasured up of God for the offense; then an indulgence will remit this punishment.

But indulgences are no part of Christ’s plan or work, simply because “he delighteth in mercy,” and because there is a passing over of sin completely through the blood of Christ, to such as repent and forsake. Christ took the chastisement wholly.

Images.

The pious Catholic of to-day will say that he bows to and kisses the image as calling to memory the saint, etc., putting it on a level with relics, but it has been much more than this to them. In Chrysostom’s day they bowed not only to statues but to coffins and shrines, and verily worshiped the relics of the deceased in that they retained the heathen notion of the spiritual presence of the departed, working miracles and showing signs. The heathen claimed in their confession that senseless silver and gold was naught to them, but they worshiped the demons brought into these statues by sacred dedication. All that the images ever were to the heathen they were to the Catholic Church of early times. They no longer trusted in the demon of Socrates or other heathen heroes, but the demons of the martyrs, for demons were understood to be dead men. The church, however, understood the mistake of the heathen, but by a strange inadvertence, permitted these same wicked spirits to deceive them, palming themselves off as spirits of the martyrs. When once this delusion was fully fixed in the church, images and relics and shrines and sepulchers were to the Catholic Church just exactly what they had been to the heathen. The saints are confidently believed to be advanced to heaven, and prayers are offered to them as mediators with Christ. So saint worship is little more than the demon worship of former times. This continues in the Catholic Church.

But I must mention the Mariolatry of the Papacy, as a marked feature of idolatry. The immaculate conception of Mary was formally decreed as a formula of faith, in 1854. Pius IX. invited expression with reference to this on the part of all the bishops. Said he in the encyclical:—

You know full well, venerable brethren, that the whole ground of our confidence is placed in the most Holy Virgin. God has vested in her the plenitude of all good; so that henceforth if there be in us any help, if there be any grace, if there be any salvation, we must receive it solely from her, according to the will of the Lord, who would have us possess all through her.

The dogma was solemnly proclaimed Dec. 8, 1854. It reads:—

It is a definitely revealed fact and dogma, which must be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful, that the most Holy Virgin Mary, from the first moment of her conception, by a special grace of Almighty God, in virtue of the merits of Christ, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin.

Thus “a worthy dwelling for the Son,” was prepared. So the Virgin is freed from all hereditary or actual sin. She is above the need of redemption, repentance, forgiveness, regeneration; conversion and sanctification are inapplicable to her. The rosary counts off fifteen paternosters, or Lord’s prayers, in the large beads and 150 Ave Marias in the small beads. The Ave Maria is to the Catholic what the Lord’s prayer is to the Protestant. She is spoken of as “the fountain of all grace,” “the mighty mediatrix,” “the queen of heaven.” The psalter of the middle ages sang her praises thus: “The heavens declare thy glory, O Mary;” “Offer unto our lady, ye sons of God, praise and reverence.” She is “our life,” “hope of sinners,” “advocate mighty to save,” etc. Mary “crushed the head of the serpent with her immaculate foot,” according to Pius IX. “She shall crush thy head, thou shalt assail her heel;” thus they read Gen. 3:15. The woman of Revelation 12 is Mary.

They boldly speak of Mary as “destroying the power of Satan, and saving the human race.”

St. Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, and several popes opposed the above dogma, but it seems they were on the wrong side. In early times she was considered a perpetual virgin. Then Augustine and all finally released her from actual sin, and at the last she is freed from original sin and proclaimed immaculate. Leo I., Gregory I., Innocent III., and four more popes rejected this dogma. She is now the “bride of the Holy Ghost,” and “mother of God.” Having been definitely declared, whoever now rejects the dogma is sure of hell torments, although infallible popes declared against it.

Finally, this Roman Catholic system sacrifices, if need be, all spirituality for a visible succession. The principle, “If ye forsake Him he will forsake you,” they may conceive of as being applicable to an individual, but not to a company of visible successors who have received the imprint of the apostolic hand. She can not conceive of unity according to the New Testament idea, that is, of being all taught of God through his word and the kindly offices of his Spirit, and thus being led onward and upward into a perfect harmony, all growing up fully into the mind and life of Christ. But union must come through the bishopric, which, in its accepted sense, has no place in the New Testament, but was instituted, as Jerome says, to “cut down the thickets of heresy.” Thus union is born of force not persuasion. God is love, but love is not manifest in the cannibal way of cutting down men of another opinion according to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, who would have them “exterminated,” according to the way Waldenses and Albigenses were treated. Can we conclude that God is in that church? Of all combinations she is the most to be feared.