IS IT TRUE?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 20, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 51.

CARDINAL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, in his letter to his nephew, Mr. Mozeley, declares that, notwithstanding all the mistakes of the church, all the corruptions and changes, "still the ethos of the Catholic Church is what it was of old time, and what or whoever quarrels with Catholicism now quarrels, virtually, and would have quarreled, if alive, eighteen hundred years ago, with the Christianity of apostles and evangelists."

Upon this Mr. Mozeley thus comments: "The question, it will be seen, is this—and truly it is an important one—whether the spirit of St. Peter and St. Paul can be shown to differ, in any material respect, from the spirit of the Church of Rome at the present day."

To him who knows the Word of God there can be no question.

To the early church, as represented by the apostles, man and man's work was nothing; Christ was all in all. But in the Roman system the good works of men are an important part of the salvation of men. With the apostles man did good works because he had faith and was saved; with Rome man must do his works in order to be saved.

To the early church, Jesus alone was all sufficient—a merciful, present, helpful, personal Saviour and Friend; but to Roman Catholics He must be approached through human merit in penance and through saints and popes, bishops and priests.

Simple, personal faith in Christ, leading to obedience to every precept of God, was the ethics of the early church; obedience to the church and the perverted law of God is what the Roman Catholic Church now requires.

The "real presence" of the early church was "Christ within" every individual believer, "the hope of glory;" the "real presence" of Roman Catholicism is an alleged presence of Christ in a dead wafer.

The early church knew and kept the Sabbath of the Lord, the sign of God's power to recreate and regenerate; the Roman Catholic Church has substituted a heathen festival, the sun's day, in its stead.

The children of God in the early church were buried in baptism, immersed, truly typical of faith in a dead, buried, and risen Saviour; the Roman Church has substituted sprinkling or affusion.

The early church knew no organic or living relation with politics or the State, knew nothing of the doctrine of force, compulsion, or corporeal punishment; but the Roman Church, since the days of Augustine and Justinian, has not ceased to show its zeal in uniting with the State when possible, plotting with politics when profitable, and hectoring and persecuting heretics when permitted.

The lowliness, the meekness, the separation from the world, the self-denial, of the apostles as compared with the proud claims of the man on the Tiber need not be mentioned.

In Rome may be found the perversion of the true church, but perverted truth is error. A corrupted woman is not the pure. Union with the world is not union with Jesus Christ.

What is wanted is the ethics and the power of Jesus Christ.