Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural LawsBuchanan, James
Religion
Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws
Buchanan, James
Atheism
infidelity_." This marvellous power of assimilation, which made "those
observances pious in Christianity" that were "superstitions in
Paganism," advanced, rapidly in its work, and successively introduced
the deification of man, the _cultus_ of angels and saints, and the
beatification of Mary as Queen of heaven and earth. The sanctification,
or rather _the deification of the nature of Man_, is one of these
developments. Christ "is in them, because He is in human nature; and He
communicates to them that nature, deified by becoming His, that it may
_deify_ them." The worship of saints is another of these developments:
"Those who are known to be God's adopted sons in Christ are fit objects
of worship on account of Him who is in them.... Worship is the necessary
correlative of glory; and, in the same sense in which created nature can
share in the Creator's incommunicable glory, do they also share in that
worship which is His property alone." But a "new sphere" was yet to be
discovered in the realms of light, to which the Church had not yet
assigned its inhabitant. "There was 'a wonder in heaven;' a throne was
seen, far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title
archetypal; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the
Eternal Throne; robes pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all. And
who was the predestined heir of that Majesty? Who was that Wisdom, and
what was her name?--'the Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope,'
exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi and a rose-plant in Jericho, created
from the beginning before the world in God's counsels, and 'in Jerusalem
was her power.' The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed
with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of
twelve stars." The DEIFICATION of Mary is decreed. The doctrine of her
Immaculate Conception is a further _development_ at the present moment,
and who can tell what other developments may be in store for the future?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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