Sermons of the Rev. Francis A. Baker, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul: With a Memoir of His LifeBaker, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius)
Religion
Sermons of the Rev. Francis A. Baker, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul: With a Memoir of His Life
Baker, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius)
Baker, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius), 1820-1865; Catholic Church -- Sermons; Sermons, American -- 19th century
Let it be remembered that the point is not now to prove the truth
of the Catholic doctrine respecting the sacraments or any
inferior rites, practices, or pious works. It is to refute the
charge that by these things we subvert sound morality, solid and
spiritual piety, and faith in Christ as the Author of grace and
justification. This charge is untrue, irrespective of the
question of the claim of the Catholic Church on faith and
obedience. The author of the "Price Lecture" has made it without
due study and examination, on the faith of the writers of the
Church he has recently joined, and into whose views he has thrown
himself by a voluntary effort, without waiting to mature the
results of his own theological principles. He is capable of
better things than this hasty and superficial lecture. Let him be
true to the dying declaration of the great Anglican divine which
he quotes with so much approbation (p. 6), "I die in the faith
and Church of Christ, as held before the separation of East and
West," and he will no longer be found in unworthy companionship
with the revilers of the Roman Church. How much more dignified
and noble is the position taken by such men as the great
philosopher Leibniz, in the past, and, in the present, by the
great statesman and champion of the truth of revelation and
Protestant orthodoxy, Guizot!
{144}
The latter does not hesitate to avow that he considers the cause
of which he is a champion essentially identical with that of the
Church of Rome. I agree with him, in the sense that the whole of
the Christian tradition which is found in the various Christian
bodies, and which constitutes the positive and objective creed
which they cling to, is all preserved in the Catholic Church. I
know the doctrine of Luther and Calvin, in which I was brought
up, thoroughly, and I can testify that the positive portion of
it, respecting the mystery of Redemption and the inward
sanctification of the Holy Spirit, I retain unchanged. I know
thoroughly, also, the Church principles of Reformed Episcopacy,
and I retain all these unchanged. I have found also all that true
and sound rationality, or respect for human reason and its
certain science, together with all that high estimate of the
moral virtues, which is professed by Unitarians, in Catholic
theology. I have never lost any thing or been required to
abdicate any thing which I had previously acquired in the
intellectual or spiritual life, by embracing Catholic doctrine
but have only added to it that which makes it more integral and
complete. The real question of discussion is about that which is
positive in the Roman Church, in addition to that which is common
to her and Protestant communions, and not about those more
primary articles of the Christian creed which form the basis of
all religion and Christianity. It is the question, whether the
Catholic Church is really the one, only Church, founded by Christ
on the Supremacy of St. Peter and his Apostolic See of Rome; and
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