SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
THE BIBLE OR THE CHURCH
APPENDIX 2
ROMISH PROPAGANDISM
A FEW years ago I received a letter from a gentleman
living near London, expressing solicitude for my spiritual welfare, and an
earnest desire to see me within the fold of the Catholic Church.
Though the
writer was a stranger to me, the tone in which he wrote was such that I was
careful to reply in terms befitting the courtesy and grace which marked his
letter. My acknowledgment drew from him a rejoinder of several sheets, in
which, still more urgently, he pressed his appeal. In answer to this I wrote in
terms which I supposed would be deemed final, and enclosed a copy of one of my
books (The Gospel and its Ministry), to which I referred as proof that I
already possessed in Christ every blessing which he imagined the Church could
give; and moreover, that I was, from his point of view, a hopeless heretic. My
surprise therefore was great at receiving again a prompt reply at considerable
length, assuring me of the pleasure with which he had read my book, and of the
increasing desire be felt that I should be in my right place, namely, within
"the Church."
My kind and courteous, though unknown, friend, never failed
promptly to renew his appeals to me, whenever, by replying to his letters
(which I did generally after long intervals), I afforded him the opportunity. I
fear my Protestant zeal led me to say many things that were galling and some
that were unjust ; but nothing from my pen availed to betray my correspondent
into an expression of anger or even of disappointment.
Towards the close
of our correspondence he sent me a copy of a Catholic treatise, to show me how
grievously I misjudged his Church. His letter, enclosing the book, gave me the
first definite hint of what I naturally guessed, that his letters to me were
part of a systematic effort to lead selected Protestants to make their
submission to Rome. This fact renders the correspondence worthy of mention in
these pages. Nor is there any breach of confidence in my giving extracts from
his letters, for I exclude everything that could possibly betray his identity.
Such are the methods by which the perverts to Rome are won. Here are the
arguments which influence them.
In returning the book I wrote refusing to
listen to the Church and appealing to Holy Scripture.
The following is an
extract from his reply :
You refuse to listen to the Church, and you
turn with confidence to a Booka Book which you have received from the
Church, and apart from which you cannot understand. Christ referred you to no
book. He told you to hear the Church, and no one for 16oo years after His
ascension ever thought that faith came by reading a book or a collection of
books, but by humbly hearing the voice of the Divine Teacher. I know the Book
is the written Word of God, and I value it and reverence it as such; but the
written word and the spoken word are to me one and the same Word. God does not
speak one thing, and cause men to write as His Word another thing. Gods
Word is one, spoken and written; and He cannot contradict Himself. What the
Church teaches is Divine; she is Gods voice speaking to the unbelieving
world; qui vos audit me audit. What has been preserved to us of the written
Word confirms the teaching of the Church. The Church received her teaching, not
from the Bible, but from Christ. She taught before a word of the New Testament
was ever written, she could have gone on teaching for ever if it had never been
written, or if it had perished. The living Word of God can never perish, the
Churchs voice is eternal and it is world-wide.
To this letter I
wrote a reply at once, but my letter lay unposted for more than six months. I
then sent it with an explanatory note, again expressing my appreciation of his
kindness and zeal, and making one more appeal to him. The following is copied
from the enclosure
"You refuse my appeal to the written Word of God, and
point me to "the Church." But when I ask, "Why should I trust the
Church?" you refer me to the written Word of God! It amazes me that an
intelligent man like yourself cannot see the inconsistency of such a position.
Either "the Church" can justify its pretensions by an appeal to Scripture, or
it cannot. If it cannot there is an end of the matter. If it can, then let us
turn to Scripture and bow to its decision. The passage you have quoted again
and again (Luke x. i6) consists of words spoken by the Lord to a company of
Jews who were sent out as Jews to preach the kingdom to Jews, in a dispensation
before the Church was constituted ! .
I accept your clearly implied, but
courteously veiled, taunt that I am setting up my judgment against that of
Christendom. And I am not afraid of this. Even if I stood alone I should not
swerve. But behind me are the apostles and prophets and the million martyrs who
have dared to stand for God and His Word against an apostate Christendom, and
have sealed their testimony with their blood. And speaking of martyrs, may I
ask in the name of common fairness and common sense, how is it that if your
Church believes, as you say, that God alone, and His grace alone, can produce
the change of mind and heart which is called conversion, that same Church has
tortured and murdered the unnumbered victims of her persecutions -for not
getting "converted" ? Do you not know that if my lot had been cast in darker
days, your Church would have burned me at the stake, or torn me to pieces on
the rack? You seem to me to shut your eyes both to history and Scripture, and
blindly to accept a theory which Scripture knows nothing of and history
refutes. Have you not read such passages as the close of Matt. xxiii.? If the
Church of the last dispensation merited such scathing words, may not the Church
of this dispensation be equally apostate ?- Have you never read 2 Tim.? And
pray look at the close of chap. iii. In the midst of error and apostasy, even
then leavening the whole lump, "the Holy Scriptures" are declared to be the
true safeguard and guide."
This brought me a reply, from which I quote the
following
"I am much obliged to you for your letter of yesterdays
date, enclosing your reply written last September. My correspondence is rather
voluminous, and I regret to say that I forget what I then said.
I am
always very grateful to any one who wishes and tries to do me what he
conscientiously believes is good, however misled and mistaken I may myself find
him to be. It is therefore no mere form when I cordially thank you for your
kind wishes and kind expressions. I value both, but I believe your religeous
opinions to be in many important matters entirely erroneous arid, indeed
pernicious and contrary to revealed truth and to the revealed will of God.
Therefore it would be the greatest calamity to me if I were able and perfectly
impossible to adopt such opinions in lieu of the one eternal truth revealed by
God, and taught by the Divine Teacher sent by God, i.e., His Church. If I lost
confidence in the Divine Teacher, I should at once lose confidence in the Deity
whose mouthpiece she is. If the Catholic Church is not true, not Divine,
therefore fallible, "apostate," &c., &c. (as her enemies suppose), then
to me Christianity is an illusion a mythology, a falsehood, a merely human
thing on a level with Buddhism, Islamism, &c., &c., in many respects
superior to them, doubtless, but no more Divine than they. I see no alternative
between Catholicism and Agnosticism. I accepted the former in exchange for the
latter, and I daily see more and more its holiness, beauty, perfection,
divinity, truth. You are surprised at this. No wonder. You see the painted
window on the outside, I see it from withinthat is the difference. . . .
You trust the New Testament which came after the Church and which she has
declared to be the written word. I require no Bible to convince me of the truth
and divinity of the Holy Church of God. I value the Bible because the Church
tells me it is the written word. . . . -
You ask me how it is that the
Church "has tortured and murdered the unnumbered victims of her persecutions
for not getting converted." The answer is most simple. The Church has never
"tortured or murdered" any one whatever! Did not Fénélon say,
what all her best divines approve: "By force hypocrites and not converts are
made." You read "history" written by bigots, who distort and pervert the truth.
The cruelties inflicted by kings and statesmen for State reasons cannot with
justice be referred to the Church. . . . The Church is not the author of those
uncivilised methods, and they form no part of her teaching; - The Church and
Christ are one. Her voice is His voice and so long as we hear that, and obey,
we are doing Gods will. That is our position. Conversion is the work of
God aloneno force, argument, or persuasion of mans invention can
accomplish it.
Place yourself on your knees before God and ask light and
grace from Him, tell Him you will sacrifice all things for His sake; that you
are ready to do His will and to obey; and you will rise up, if He will, as new
a creature as Saul of Tarsus after he had heard the voice."
His last letter
remains unanswered ; for I am utterly at a loss to know what answer is possible
to one who thus ignores or distorts both history and Scripture, and honestly
and earnestly believes in what he calls "the Church." Here, I repeat, are the
arguments by which the perverts to Rome are being won. Here, in its most
advanced development, is the pestilently evil and profane view of "the Church"
which is slowly but surely undermining Christianity in the Church of England at
this moment.
Appendix Three
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