The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
method that can be conceived to ignore it, or leap over it by the
aid of fanciful hypotheses, as Mr. Alger does. The manner in which
the Catholic doctrine is distorted and misrepresented, in extremely
bad rhetoric, is also unscientific. Nearly all the pith of this
so-called argument consists in a violent invective against the
notion of a partial, unjust, vindictive Divinity, who rewards and
punishes like an ambitious tyrant, without regard to necessary and
eternal principles of truth, right, and moral laws. So far as this
invective is directed against Calvinism, considered in its logical
entity, and apart from the correctives of common sense and sound
moral sentiment which practically modify it, we give the author the
right of the case. But it is palpably false, as the author has had
ample opportunity of knowing, as respects the Catholic doctrine. He
is unscientific, moreover, in confusing the substance of the doctrine
that the generation of the human race will cease, all mankind be
raised from the dead in their bodies immortal, the ways of God to
man be openly vindicated before the universe, and each one assigned
to an immutable state according to his deserts or fitness, this
visible earth also undergoing a corresponding change of condition;
with the scenic act of proclaiming judgment and inaugurating the
new, everlasting order, which is commonly believed in, according to
the literal sense of the New Testament. If Mr. Alger can show good
reasons for substituting a figurative, metaphorical interpretation of
the passages depicting this last grand scene in the drama of human
history for the literal sense, he is welcome to do it; but he has not
touched the substance of the Catholic dogma which he gratuitously
denies. Mr. Alger tells us, (p. 46,) "Loyalty to truth is the first
duty of every man." It is also one in which he himself signally
fails, by a persistent misrepresentation of Catholic doctrines, by
disregarding the evidence which has been clearly set before him
of their truth, subjecting his intellect to his imagination, and
preaching as "truth" opinions which he cannot possibly prove, in the
teeth of arguments which he cannot possibly refute. One who wilfully
sins against "the first duty of man," by rejecting the faith and law
of his Sovereign Creator when sufficiently proposed to him, must
surely be condemned by divine justice; and it is only such who, the
Catholic Church teaches, will be condemned for infidelity or heresy
at the tribunal of Christ. "The judgment of God," says the author,
"is the return of the laws of being on all deeds, actual or ideal."
(P. 66.) God, therefore, will judge all men by acting toward them
throughout eternity in accordance with that revealed law which is
the transcript of his own immutable nature, and which assures us
that beatitude is gained or lost by the acts which every responsible
creature performs during the time of probation, and that every merit
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