The Tridentine Faith by I. E. Kimball

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 9, 1896

The Tridentine Faith

By I. E. Kimball

THE CREED OF CATHOLICISM. No. 2.

BY I. E. KIMBALL.

The Tridentine Faith.

The Roman Church embraces 180,000,000 communicants, one-half of nominal Christendom. All not of her faith are understood to be schismatics. Her monarchy is a pyramid whose head reaches to heaven and its base fills the earth. The fabled realms of purgatory are subject also to her, for many of her communicants are thought to need the salutary pains of fire to purge their sins.

Romanism doctrinally may be learned from the Council of Trent, which for twenty years (ten of actual service), looked up articles of faith, and defined and condemned heresy. Since that time Bellarmin, the great controversialist, Bossuet, a skillful and very effective writer of France, and Mohler, of Germany, have written out Romanism very fully.

The Council of Trent is reckoned the eighteenth ecumenical council, and was called by Pope Paul III., Dec. 13, 1545. Its decrees were finally signed by 255 members, two-thirds of whom were Italians.

The articles for consideration were drafted by the pope. Twelve sessions were given to doctrines. Virulent anathemas upon heretics closed the record of the council, whose decrees were solemnly affirmed by a bull of Pius IV., 1564, with the reservation of the sole right to interpret them.

The Tridentine Faith formulates these decrees in a precise summary, and this creed was made binding by a double bull of Nov. 13 and Dec. 9, 1564. All preachers, teachers, professors of colleges, etc., are made to subscribe to these articles. It is the plainest symposium of Catholic faith, although two new dogmas have since been introduced.

The Tridentine Faith is put in the form of a personal confession, and made binding by the most solemn oath. It begins with profession of faith in the Nicene Creed, with all the western additions; then follows the summary of the creed, which begins as follows:—

I most steadfastly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and all other observances and constitutions of the same church. I also admit the Holy Scriptures according to that sense which our holy Mother Church has held and does hold, to which it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; neither will I ever take and interpret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.

It will be observed in this, first, that the church is held up high above everything else; her observances and constitutions must be steadfastly embraced altogether intact. Secondly, that tradition is put before the Scriptures as the next necessary thing. The traditions of the church are law and life, more sacred than Scripture, because oral expositions, or stories, forsooth, transmitted from the past, are settled matters, having received the sanction of the church, whereas the Bible is an unsettled matter to all who read it carefully. A dogmatic definition stands forever; consequently the Bible is brought in last; and while they “steadfastly embrace” tradition, they “admit” the Scripture, but “only according to that sense which holy Mother Church has held and does hold.” It is plain enough that the Scriptures are not held as an infallible guide of the church, but are completely taken out of the hands of the people. The church, not the Bible, instructs the mind and heart.

It was a notorious fact, which Luther made very plain, that there was no such thing as the “unanimous consent of the Fathers.”

The consent of Augustine or of Basil is not a universal thing, simply because there are differences of opinions amongst the Fathers. They claimed no lordly authority in the interpretation of the Scriptures. The church would thrust them into the chair of infallibility—a place they had no idea of occupying. Think of it now: I must be gauged in the interpretation of Scripture according to “Mother Church’s” opinion, which is often a medley of opinions.

St. Bernard—shall I say the greatest saint of his age—opposed the idea of the immaculate conception of Mary; popes and Fathers have stood on both sides of this issue, stood there, and died standing there, and yet the church settles the dogma with an anathema upon the head of every opposer. And then the church tells us to interpret according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers. Thomists and Scotists, Franciscans and Dominicans, Augustinians and Jesuits, have thrown down the gauntlet to each other, with charges of mortal sin upon their lips. The corrupt harmony of the Catholic Church is a perpetual discord. But, right to the point of fact, it takes away wholly the right of private judgment or choice; it makes us dummies in the hands of man; makes us depend upon the voice of the church for knowledge of the way of salvation; and the voice of the church is quite commonly the voice of one or two or three men, whose controlling influence is definite with the body.

Are we to be children and babes before the Fathers of the church? The Catholic answers, Yes. No, say I vehemently, for Christ teaches to “beware of false prophets,” and try them, whether they be false or true. He enjoins us to call no man on earth your Father, that is, regard them not as such in spiritual matters, “for one is your Father, which is in heaven,” and “all ye are brethren.” “They shall be all taught of God,” and he will pour out his Spirit upon “all”—not two or three. He gives his Holy Spirit to them that ask, “richly, to teach them all things.”

This doctrine of limiting our investigation or belief is altogether subversive of faith in God. It tends toward the glorification of man, and trusting in man, contrary to the Scriptures, which say, “Cursed is the man that trusteth in man;” and again, “Put not confidence in a guide.” The Catholic Church so abounds in mediaries that they will never know that we have access by faith directly to God, through Christ, who needs no colleagues of mediation. The Tridentine Creed goes on to make profession of faith in the seven sacraments of the church, baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, and extreme unction, holy orders, and matrimony. A Protestant will hesitate as he goes over this list in the acceptance of all this as “necessary for salvation.” Protestants choose the word “repentance” rather than “penance;” and anointing with holy oil consecrated by the bishop, at

the dying hour, they deem altogether unnecessary, unless the instruction of James is to be carried out for the recovery of the sick. It was not made a sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church until the council of Florence, 1453. Marriage was also made a sacrament in the days of Innocent III., 1199 A.D.

But it is a fact that one and all of these sacraments are utterly perverted. Baptism is not only perverted in method, but in principle. Man “believeth unto righteousness,” the Bible says not, “is baptized unto righteousness.” Baptism is only a sign of what believing has wrought in the soul. It is made to show death to self and resurrection unto life with God. Rom. 6:3–5. Thus we show that we are dead to self by being buried, and that we now live with God and unto him, by our resurrection from the watery grave. The sprinkling of holy water does not show this. The Catholic idea is that water made holy by bishop or priest imbibes the power to sanctify the initiate, and that it “washes away sin;” but the blood of Christ alone can do that. Thus they trust to an empty form and remain unchanged in heart and life. It is faith in the blood of Christ and the power of God “which worketh by love and purifies the soul.” Confirmation is but an empty form if the one who confirms be not filled with the Spirit of God. The laying on of hands indeed should be practiced, and will be by those who are baptized with the Holy Ghost. Then indeed it will “confer grace.”

The Eucharist.—On this I must quote the sixth article of the creed:—

In the mass there is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice, for the living and the dead; and that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that there is made a change of the whole essence of the bread into the body, and of the whole essence of the wine into the blood, which change the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation. . . . Under either kind alone Christ is received whole and entire, and a true sacrament.

This has a strain above all the idolatries of heathendom. The spiritual Christ and the sacrifice on Calvary are lost sight of. They manufacture the Deity out of bread and wine, because, forsooth, Christ said, “This is my body,” and “this is my blood.” But did he not say, “I am the Vine,” and “I am the Light of the world,” “I am the good Shepherd,” and “I am the way, the truth, and the life”? But “the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit,” and are to be spiritually interpreted. He is the spiritual Vine, the spiritual Bread, the spiritual Shepherd, and the spiritual Way, Truth, and the Life,” so that even the dead might hear his voice.

This dogma of transubstantiation obliterates all traces of the spiritual life. We do not eat our Christ as a biscuit, but feed upon his word, his life, and thus bring his mind and principles into the soul. The mass purports to be salvation for the living and dead, as a sacrifice in and of itself. So it no longer stands “to show the Lord’s death till he come,” as a memorial, but is simply a repetition of his sacrifice by the hand of the priest. It tends to lead all to trust not in the sacrifice of Calvary, but in works, in human efforts for salvation. How damnable is such a sacrament! It puts Christ’s atonement entirely out of sight.