Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Plain Talk about the Protestantism of Today [1868]

[Stone]

XIX. Protestantism and Primitive Christianity.


— It is very common for certain Protestant sects to pretend that they have revived primitive Christianity, or rather that they are the Christianity of Primitive Times. Some Protestant authors have endeavored to give a color of truth to these pretensions of antiquity by forging, with great trouble, interminable genealogies, and pointing with a zeal, worthy of a better cause, to all the characteristics of the primitive Church in the different branches of the reformation. Let them do their best to cover with dust this Protestantism, which did not exist three hundred years ago; let them cover it with cobwebs like those bottles which merchants place on the front of their shops, but which, on being broken, reveal only sloe-wine and vinegar.

But such boasts are not believed, and many Protestant writers, well instructed and conscientious, avow their absurdity. However, it is not in behalf of the Catholic Church that they strip the Protestant sects of their pretensions. They do not recognize our practices of piety and the forms of our worship in the Gospel or in the writings of the Apostles: hence they accuse the Catholic Church as having encumbered Christianity with dogmas and practices which have disfigured it; and in their opinion Catholicity is as different from the Christianity of the primitive ages as the Protestantism of to-day.* This is the place to give a distinct and true idea of this Catholic Church, which is so contradictorily accused both of inactivity and stagnation, and of restlessness and innovation.

There never was, nor can there ever be, but one Church of Christ, — a Church immutable like her head and founder, who is God. But this Church is a living body, and however perfect she is from her origin, she develops and adapts her beneficial influences apace with the progress of centuries. Man does not possess at his birth that fulness of strength, that beauty of symmetry, that expansion of all his faculties, which add so much to the perfection of his nature. At his birth he possesses all this; but he has had no opportunity as yet to work out its development. But still he is always the same individual, whether he is a tender infant, an adolescent, or a full-grown man. Thus the Church, which was born with the Twelve Men in the cenacle, has grown and developed her strength through the growth of succeeding ages. Like a splendid drapery, which slowly deploys and progressively unfolds its beautiful colors, so the Church has successively opened to the world the treasures of her doctrine and the sanctification which emanates from her bosom.

The Catholic Church is ever old and new. She teaches to-day what she taught in her primitive days. Some of her teachings have been more clearly defined, according as they have been attacked by her enemies, or the wants of the people have required more explicit definitions.

At the same time, whoever has seriously applied himself to the study of antiquity, the origin of Christianity, and the writings of the Fathers, has invariably found in the documents of ancient times repeated proofs of the perfect unity of Christian faith and religion, from the Apostolic Fathers down to our own times. The Papacy, Catholic Hierarchy, the Priesthood, the Sacrifice of Mass, and the Real Presence, Confession, the veneration of Our Lady, of saints and of relics, the prayers for the dead; in a word, whatever is attacked in our belief by dissenters, all is fully proven and justified by those monuments so venerable and so authentic.

The discoveries made, during the last twenty years, in the catacombs of Rome,* bring to light every day new testimonials of our faith and practices. Learned Protestants, on visiting the capital of the Christian world, admit at once the undeniable authenticity and the religious importance of these discoveries. Inscriptions, paintings, monuments, etc., etc., portray the forms of our worship, and trace the origin of our belief. The catacombs contain numerous chapels, with altars, upon which the relics of the martyrs are enshrined. On their walls frescos, greatly injured by the hand of time, still reveal the faith of the primitive Christian in the Real Presence, in the eucharistical sacrifice, and in confession. At every step you meet with proofs of the belief in the Papacy, the Episcopacy, and the Priesthood.

I happened once to visit the catacombs with a young Protestant gentleman, who had just come from Strasburg, where he had been studying for the ministry. He was greatly astonished with what he saw. He was a well-disposed young man, intelligent, and loyal. He did not dare to deny the evidence of what he saw before him, and knew not what to say.

I have not seen him since. God grant that those mighty truths, so plainly spoken to his heart from the walls of the catacombs, may lead him to the pale of Catholic Unity!